It's definitely best to start off with Zero since Zero explains everything unlike dropping you right into the holy grail war like ubw. Zero sets everything up in detail, explaining the process of servants, the mages roll, etc much better than ubw.
but yeah the existence of Heaven as a storyline shouldn't spoil anything from an anime perspective. It's a lil messy as they all are. But if you had no clue of the VN's existence then Fate Stay Night would've messed me up as a first time viewer. It does almost nothing for new viewers.
Fate Zero does a MUCH better job establishing the Holy Grail War. UBW struggles through it's explanation of it very obscurely and UBW is a story that breaks a LOT of rules of this world before even teaching you most of them. Very hard to keep up with if you haven't seen the expositionfest which is Fate Zero's first few eps.
Chronological order makes complex stories that play with time easier to digest.
Half of the servants in UBW do not do what their class actually denotes. (Rider/Archer/Assassin/Gilgamesh etc.) This can be super confusing when tryna learn the rules of this world.
Spoils many plotpoints and the ending to Fate Zero.
UBW has a MUCH grander finale than Fate Zero in scale, viewing Zero last will feel like a step down in stakes.
Moments such as Waver's speech & Rin finding out who killed her father actually MEAN something if you've seen the previous series.
Shirou's character arc is literally a copy/paste of Kiritsugu's but a version that surpasses it. If you saw Shirou's struggle with idealism first then Kiritsugu's themes are going to be boring & lacking.
Yeah I see where you're coming from. See the real order is FSN>Fate/Zero and FSN would include the Fate route of the visual novel too. That is the first route of the series and it's there where most of the world building is done and rules of the war are explained and laid down. They do explain them in UBW, even they did in the anime, but not to the extent they did in Fate route and mostly just go to an advanced level directly. I can agree that if you're an anime only watcher, in this case Fate/Zero would work better than UBW but there are other things about Zero as to why it's said to be watched after FSN.
Yes watching in chronological order most of the time do make them easy but there are are few problems in this case.
First is that you need info from Heaven's Feel and knowledge about grail's true nature to properly understand what happened in the end of Fate/zero and why the grail was like that. And a few other references in the series which would be easily understood if you've read/seen FSN before.
Another thing is that Fate/Zero just spoils quite a lot of stuff from FSN, so the impact of them wouldn't be the same once they reveal it in FSN. About Illya's identity, Saber's identity, Zouken, Rin/Sakura relationship, Kirei's nature and quite some other stuff.
So it's for the sake of both series that order is mostly recommended.
Actually they do what their class donates and if they don't the reasons are specified so that the viewer doesn't get confused you see.
Rider does rides :bdpf: but what? unfortunately that we get to see in Fate route and her role in UBW was limited anyway. Archer's circumstances are explained by the fact that he was a mage before anything. So is Assassin's summoning and how Gil was there.
Yes the ending of Zero is spoiled, even as early as fate route. We only get to know that the war ended with a big fire.
A necessary sacrifice one must made.
Now that's subjective, I actually enjoyed Zero's finale more than ubw whose peak points were about Kiritsugu and his confrontation with the grail.
Waver was never originally introduced in the visual novel. They did it in the anime and it's definitely something done while keeping in mind the viewer may have watched Zero too. So yes, you will only get that if you have watched Zero. However it doesn't matter with what happened with Rin's father. It would still be a shocker if you hadn't watched Zero first. You will know the end result of Rin's father in Zero if you went through FSN first though and would get to witness how and when that happened.
Absolutely disagree with that. There is nothing same between Shirou and Kiritsugu except for that fact that they both wanted to be a superhero. Shirou is not a version of Kiritsugu that surpasses it since he isn't a version in the first place. Both wanted to save everybody but their methods, beliefs, psychology, everything is different from each other. If Shirou were to meet "the Mage Killer" Kiritsugu in any other circumstances, they both would probably be enemies of each other since there is no way Shirou would approve of Kerry's methods.
Lastly, both are different characters and have different characterization and development which makes sense, and that is what matters. Thus no matter the order, depending on the person he may end up liking kerry more or maybe even Shirou.
Actually they do what their class donates and if they don't the reasons are specified so that the viewer doesn't get confused you see.
Rider does rides :bdpf: but what? unfortunately that we get to see in Fate route and her role in UBW was limited anyway. Archer's circumstances are explained by the fact that he was a mage before anything. So is Assassin's summoning and how Gil was there.
Ah yes, great response back but couple misunderstandings of where I should've probs been clearer. I know they DO explain why they're not what their names suggests but it's just another explanation and a suspension of disbelief that we don't necessarily need. If not for simplicity then you gotta admit it's at least frustratingly unorganised haha, one or 2 special cases are fine to mix it up (Gil & maybe Archer) but Assassin and Rider took me out of the escapism personally. Reminded me I was watching a narrative.
[*]Now that's subjective, I actually enjoyed Zero's finale more than ubw whose peak points were about Kiritsugu and his confrontation with the grail.
Haha I didn't mean I enjoyed it more (although I personally did) I meant the stakes were literally larger. Gil wanted to amp up the destruction of his last failed attempt and it's on a much bigger scale. They're equally enjoyable as finales but viewing Fate Zero second would be like watching Sage Naruto VS Pain and then downscaling to Naruto VS Kabuto. I know which one i'd prefer as a finale scale-wise haha
[*]Absolutely disagree with that. There is nothing same between Shirou and Kiritsugu except for that fact that they both wanted to be a superhero. Shirou is not a version of Kiritsugu that surpasses it since he isn't a version in the first place. Both wanted to save everybody but their methods, beliefs, psychology, everything is different from each other. If Shirou were to meet "the Mage Killer" Kiritsugu in any other circumstances, they both would probably be enemies of each other since there is no way Shirou would approve of Kerry's methods.
Lastly, both are different characters and have different characterization and development which makes sense, and that is what matters. Thus no matter the order, depending on the person he may end up liking kerry more or maybe even Shirou.
Different methods but the entire point of Shirou's arc is that he comes to terms with the fact that he's somewhat of a fake and follows somebody else's way of life. He embraces that which is super interesting but DOES become more than Kiritsugu's 'hero' image. Archer was eerily similar to Kiritsugu and whilst their methods may be slightly different- I believe to the bottom of my heart that Shirou not only inherited this ideal but went even further and deeper into it. Thanks to Rin, he overcomes and pushes through and makes sure his life is spent not chasing somebody else's dream- becoming Archer.
They are different characters sure but it IS like say, the Will of Fire. Naruto takes the peace ideology WAY further than say Jiraiya or Sarutobi and explores it in more detail. But if we had a sequel series that followed Hiruzen Sarutobi with the will of fire as the main theme as well....you'd be wondering where the rest of his development was- because you've seen this theme be taken further already before if that makes sense. Would feel...lacking.
Ah yes, great response back but couple misunderstandings of where I should've probs been clearer. I know they DO explain why they're not what their names suggests but it's just another explanation and a suspension of disbelief that we don't necessarily need. If not for simplicity then you gotta admit it's at least frustratingly unorganised haha, one or 2 special cases are fine to mix it up (Gil & maybe Archer) but Assassin and Rider took me out of the escapism personally. Reminded me I was watching a narrative.
Haha I didn't mean I enjoyed it more (although I personally did) I meant the stakes were literally larger. Gil wanted to amp up the destruction of his last failed attempt and it's on a much bigger scale. They're equally enjoyable as finales but viewing Fate Zero second would be like watching Sage Naruto VS Pain and then downscaling to Naruto VS Kabuto. I know which one i'd prefer as a finale scale-wise haha
Tbh, it was the same in Zero.
>Had Kotomine won he would've accepted the wish to destroy all humanity. It was because Saber weakened the grail with the Excalibur that the damage only spread to a portion of a city. And to be fair, FSN didn't reach this level.
Also, six billion lives were on the line and Kerry only had to just wish for his ideal to essentially kill everyone.
It was the grail and everything was there but nothing wrong with prefering FSN one.
Different methods but the entire point of Shirou's arc is that he comes to terms with the fact that he's somewhat of a fake and follows somebody else's way of life. He embraces that which is super interesting but DOES become more than Kiritsugu's 'hero' image. Archer was eerily similar to Kiritsugu and whilst their methods may be slightly different- I believe to the bottom of my heart that Shirou not only inherited this ideal but went even further and deeper into it. Thanks to Rin, he overcomes and pushes through and makes sure his life is spent not chasing somebody else's dream- becoming Archer.
They are different characters sure but it IS like say, the Will of Fire. Naruto takes the peace ideology WAY further than say Jiraiya or Sarutobi and explores it in more detail. But if we had a sequel series that followed Hiruzen Sarutobi with the will of fire as the main theme as well....you'd be wondering where the rest of his development was- because you've seen this theme be taken further already before if that makes sense. Would feel...lacking.
Not really, he did know that the origin of the wish was someone else but he himself followed it because it was just a beautiful thing to work for and that is something which is never wrong. That is exactly what he told Archer which he had forgotten.
Shirou went even further into it... in his own way. See it doesn't really matter what he did with own wish because both Kerry and Shirou approached it differently. None of them could fulfill it, self explanatory in Kerry's case while the same goes for Shirou. That ideal is something which you can just strive for, not make it real since it is just impossible. Shirou understood it and went accordinly, after meeting Archer he wouldn't cross the line with it(with help from Rin too), we never actually got to see the conclusion of his way in ubw but we can assume this from what we know. While it was completely different for Kiritsugu, he KNEW his wish was impossible from the start and just wanted to save as many as he could. We know what methods he employed for that and since the wish of saving everyone was impossible, therefore he sought out a miracle(the grail) and in the end got to learn that it was impossible even with that since the grail was corrupted.
Both their ways aren't similar and both never got to get to the very end in their respective ways, that is why I say that Shirou didn't went on further with what Kerry had already developed, because he just did it in a different way without ever reaching to an end.
Shirou never actually reached to the point where he had to make a difficult choice as far as his ideal was concerned in ubw. Major spoiler for Heaven's feel ahead
> In HF he had to choose between his ideal and a loved one and what happened? He gave on his ideal and let hundreds of innocent people die. And with Kiritsugu we have seen multiple times that he stuck by his rules even if it meant killing a relative. So who really went further with their beliefs between the two?
Now one can also say that Kiritsugu did wrong and Shirou did right, that in this situation it is right to choose the one more important to you(set a limit to yourself unlike Archer) and thus that would be the right way to approach that ideal, but that would depend on the person. I myself would say that how Kiritsugu approached it was the right way(well uptil the grail happened). That's what I'm saying, it's not that shirou took something further. The idea was borrowed but he went for it in a completely different way and what the main point is that, that way still don't give you a definite answer so why say that "he went further with it"? For both characters you get different circumstances and results and that is why in my opinion it doesn't really matter what you watch first as far as this is concerned.
Archer is a person with a different mindset than Shirou. He went on with his ideals without restraining himself and ended up regretting it afterwards. His methods to do thing maybe similar to Kerry in the way that they tend to do things efficiently but both strive for different things. Archer would never think about saving the world.
This series doesn't really have a complex hard-to-understand watch order. The reason people think like that is because not only were the anime adaptions released in the wrong order (given that a F/SN anime wasn't planned and the Zero anime was just a bonus for FSN fans) and because various anime only fans haven't really read the VN and so they spread the false watch order because of the fact that Zero came out first in terms of anime adaption.
Both the FSN author and the Zero author intended for you to read Fate/Stay Night first. There was even a note about in the original light novel, I believe. It's really that simple. Unfortunately, this series has such a complicated fanbase that the whole watch order got overblown simply because Zero got an anime adaption first.
Fate Zero does a MUCH better job establishing the Holy Grail War. UBW struggles through it's explanation of it very obscurely and UBW is a story that breaks a LOT of rules of this world before even teaching you most of them. Very hard to keep up with if you haven't seen the expositionfest which is Fate Zero's first few eps.
Maybe because UBW is not the starting point of the Fate/Stay Night series? UBW lacking the explanations of the Holy Grail War is not it's problem in the slightest. It's the fact that UBW is the second route in Fate/Stay Night and all the explanations you need are in the first route; Fate. The first route expansively explains everything you need to know and doesn't leave out a lot of things like Fate/Zero does. In fact, Fate/Zero's first episode is meant to just as a reminder of the explanations in the Fate route, it is a watered-down version of it. Not only that, but at the same note, you could say that Fate/Zero needlessly throws too much information at you in the very first episode and that the average viewer could easily get confused by the rules and the workings of the HGW.
Meanwhile, in the Fate route, you'll be able to learn everything more expansively throughout Shirou's own lack of knowledge on the HGW. The explanations are spread out throughout the route and are there only when you actually need them. More so, Fate/Zero uses a lot of terms in the last episode that will NOT be understood by someone who has seen Zero first as they are terms from both Heaven's Feel and Fate. The average viewer probably won't even notice the ridiculous amount of references to Fate/Stay Night either.
[*]Chronological order makes complex stories that play with time easier to digest.
Not really. Chronological order doesn't really make things easier to digest here. Like, at all. The only reason people think you should watch Zero first is because the anime adaption of Zero came out first and that is because Fate/Stay Night wasn't supposed to have an anime adaption by ufotable in the first place. This newest UBW anime was only a cashgrab and they skipped the first route all-together. Going by anime alone, you can't actually watch the whole Fate series. Solely because the anime adaptions are all over the place regarding to which order they came out in.
A lot of stuff in Fate/Stay Night - especially the Heaven's Feel route - are supposed to be considered as plot twists that would be such if you went in blind, but if you went in as a Zero watcher, you would know around 80% of those plot twists. Examples?
The Grail's corrupted nature. Kiritsugu's real identity. Gilgamesh's appearance. Sakura's and Rin's relationship. Illya's identity. The reason behind the big Fuyuki Fire. Sakura's home life. Etc., etc. There are many more.
All of these would have been plot twists that would have made the whole story even crazier if you haven't been spoiled by Zero already. One of the other many things that you won't understand by watching Zero first is Kirei's mindset. Why the hell is he the way he is in Zero, what is his wish, etc.? You can speculate, but for the most part, you won't understand him without Stay Night's context.
[*]Half of the servants in UBW do not do what their class actually denotes. (Rider/Archer/Assassin/Gilgamesh etc.) This can be super confusing when tryna learn the rules of this world.
Zero is meant to be told in this way. You have a predetermined ending and then you throw elements into the story to see how they reach that predetermined ending. Fate/Stay Night -> Fate/Zero order was intended by the author.
[*]UBW has a MUCH grander finale than Fate Zero in scale, viewing Zero last will feel like a step down in stakes.
I'll agree to this to a point. Fate/Stay Night in general does have a bigger scale grand finale than Zero does. However, Zero isn't really the last entry in this Stay Night storyline. Stay Night has a sequel, too, called Fate/Hollow Ataraxia that serves as more than a decent end to the whole series. Zero's finale won't seem that dissatisfying either if you know what will happen in the end thanks to F/SN and what happens to everyone afterwards.
[*]Moments such as Waver's speech & Rin finding out who killed her father actually MEAN something if you've seen the previous series.
Waver's speech was anime original. Didn't happen in the original source. And Rin's father's killer is meant to be a plot twist in the VN as well. It goes both ways in this case.
[*]Shirou's character arc is literally a copy/paste of Kiritsugu's but a version that surpasses it. If you saw Shirou's struggle with idealism first then Kiritsugu's themes are going to be boring & lacking.
Likewise, you can say that Kiritsugu's theme is supposed to bring a new viewpoint on the topic of heroism that Shirou's character hasn't. That being the whole anti-hero thing and sacrificing the minority for the majority. It's supposed to bring a parallel with Archer and show you what Shirou has been avoiding to become throughout the F/SN story events really.
I mean, there IS a reason why Stay Night came out before Zero.
Anyways, I've been taking the original sources into consideration, too, while arguing this so if we're talking about anime adaptions solely, I can't tell you much here. You won't really get the full Stay Night storyline due to the lack of Fate route adaption and Heaven's Feel will be fully released after who knows how many years (assuming it will be multiple movies because it cannot be adapted into a single movie at all) so you might as well watch Zero first if you're aware that you're going to be spoiling yourself.
Maybe because UBW is not the starting point of the Fate/Stay Night series? UBW lacking the explanations of the Holy Grail War is not it's problem in the slightest. It's the fact that UBW is the second route in Fate/Stay Night and all the explanations you need are in the first route;
Couldn't say it better myself. That's all this post is about. This isn't a VA, it's an anime series with a narrative. Establish your world before you blow it to pieces & break all the rules, so- start with the establishment. Fate Zero.
You mean Fate route. If you're actually gonna care about rules and world building then watching anime adaptions is the wrong thing to do in the first place.
Zero is a watered down version of Fate route's explanation and it doesn't explain some things itself as well. It's a reminder, not an establishment of world rules. While UBW anime is a bad adaption so it didn't establish some things that the UBW route in the VN did. NEITHER anime adaptions explain some terms and world building properly.
There's no point of glossing over things like world building/rules if you're watching the anime adaptions. Both fail at it. Zero does a bit of a better job simply because it was supposed to be a reminder of the Fate route and was intended towards FSN fans.
You mean Fate route. If you're actually gonna care about rules and world building then watching anime adaptions is the wrong thing to do in the first place.
Zero is a watered down version of Fate route's explanation and it doesn't explain some things itself as well. It's a reminder, not an establishment of world rules. While UBW anime is a bad adaption so it didn't establish some things that the UBW route in the VN did. NEITHER anime adaptions explain some terms and world building properly.
Okay i'm sure that you're right but this thread is about the anime series. Out of the two options you're given- if you care about a narrative (aka the story) then Fate Zero is what you should start with
