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The only reason this is even a part 1 is just because of time, as I don't see any real reason to view the two seasons of F/Z separately. I'll append part 2 to this thread later, regardless of whether I get challenged or not (btw this is fulfilling CC's challenge, sorry I'm a bit late buddy).
Firstly, a note about Gen Urobuchi that I feel the need to share: I (more or less...) respect him as a writer, I think, as far as his talents and such go. However, I feel that he has a tendency to think about themes/message/ideology first, and characters/plot second (or, hell, maybe even plot third). I find that his characters are -- usually -- less often characters, and more just vessels for him to portray various ideologies and/or human characteristics (example, the characters in Madoka Magica being two-dimensional to embody certain traits so that we can see how they suffer because of said traits). I also think he's got a habit of introducing themes/ideas for the sake of introducing them, but not necessarily doing anything meaningful with them -- or at least, not all the time. Anyway, I think this show suffers from a bit of that in general and I'll go into that slightly as I explain some details.
I do have positive things to say about the series, but that's a bit redundant as it's a very beloved show anyway. Overall, I think the show is an OK one, so it's not as though I hate it either, but I do have more gripes with it than other people I guess, which is why I find it worthwhile to make a thread on this show in the first place, instead of something like SAO which has a far more prominent hatewagon that's been ridden to death (not that I haven't indulged in that before). Anyway, this is just to get the obvious positive of nice looking visuals + music out of the way right now, along with some good fights. It's certainly a well-made show.
Spoilers ahoy!
One issue I have with the show is that it often feels like it's stalling for time. As an example from very early on, we have the Lancer/Saber fight wherein both warriors stop constantly after every sequence to engage in some rather verbose banter. Shortly after, when multiple servants are in one spot, all of them just sit around and watch as Archer and Berserker duke it out. I can only imagine that this was done to make things easier to follow, because it doesn't make any logical sense to me. This is a battle royale to the death.
The show tries to keep its characters alive for longer than I can suspend my disbelief for so that it can go on for a bit longer, and maybe have a chance to develop them more in episodes to come (although we'll get to that development later). I already mentioned the scene where several dudes just watch two other dudes fight -- an inconclusive batte, by the way. Soon after, Saber and Caster confront each other (the exact context escapes me at the moment) and Saber has the opportunity to execute a surprise attack, but she merely uses it as a scare tactic and threatens that "the next one will be real" if he doesn't run away. The explanation is that Caster would be a tough foe while she only has one arm, but...the element of surprise? If the implication is that she wouldn't have actually been able to finish him with a surprise attack, then I didn't buy it. Caster actually did run away to boot.
As far as plot/character go, I'm unsure as to what the Caster subplot even brought to the show that required him to stay alive past this point. Levity? I admit I'd have been a little down if Ryonosuke's partner croaked this early, I guess. A reason to show off Saber's final attack? Just find another reason.
Going in another direction entirely, I'd like to talk a little about Kiritsugu. Though it was cliche, I did find potential in his "ends justify the means, but actually wait that's wrong" character (since you could tell that's what his character arc was gonna be). He at least had something of an arc. But right now I just want to talk about his power and how it gets used. He is able to manipulate his own time for a little while, and despite the limitations of his ability there's a lot you could do with that, and I just think it gets poorly used in general. The fight with Archibald being the prime example. There's no way you don't just finish that guy when you meet him face to face with your ability imo. Moreover, he could get through Archibald's defenses and yet opted to shoot his shoulder at one point instead of head, heart, etc. It was a cool fight other than these moments though.
It's around this time in the series that Kiritsugu/Kirei get that weird rivalry dynamic going on despite the fact that they never met. I have mixed feelings on that. On one hand their reasoning makes sense, but part of that is just because we're the audience and we're fully aware of all the information at hand, naturally. I think a lot of it just gets eaten up for being cool, but I can't say it's completely uninteresting.
Now I'd like to take a moment to talk about one of my least favorite characters in this series -- probably my least favorite servant at least. Assassin. He's actually retarded. First off, he fakes his death. Fantastic. But he doesn't really do much with that. Certainly doesn't live up to his name. No, instead he just shows himself to Rider and Waver with like 4 clones, but just uses one of them to attack Waver who gets saved by Rider. Why didn't you have the other 3 attack Rider? And hell, you'd probably lose if you tried that anyway, so why are you attacking right now anyway? Why not wait for the battles to go on for some time...as people kill the others off...and then strike, you know, like an Assassin.
Not only has he already goofed up his advantage several times (for example he revealed himself to Irisviel previously, and by extension Kiritsugu -- at least, I don't see why she wouldn't tell him, don't remember whether that's on-screen or not), but it all comes to a head when he shows up after the banquet of kings against 3 dudes who outnumber him and are probably stronger than him individually with a retarded kage bunshin no jutsu onslaught. What the fuck. He rightfully gets his ass whooped. Headass. Rider doesn't earn his moment of badassery here because it's fucking Assassin.
Anyway. Plot-wise I went ahead a little, as I believe prior to the Assassin zerg rush, there were several fillers with flashbacks of Rin/Kiritsugu, right? I don't believe that these flashbacks should have taken up the time that they did. Certainly not entire episodes. They break up the pacing of the show in such a way that I find unnecessary for a single cour run. I'd rather they spend less time on these backstories as they're not particularly intriguing on their own, and instead hint at them with pieces as the series goes on as a way of slowly fleshing out the characters' backgrounds in a way that takes up less overall time, but conveys the same amount of information over a longer period of time which is more engaging.
Now, I'd like to take a moment to talk about my favorite part of the first season, which would be Kirei's development. I initially said that the show likes to stall a lot and one way of doing so is by having increasingly verbose conversations between the characters, but the best ones were the ones between Archer and Kirei as the philosophical mumbo jumbo there actually served the purpose of driving Kirei's character forward in a certain direction. They weren't the only conversations that were meaningful, but to me they were the most meaningful of them all by a longshot and as such, actually prompted me to look into them more to deduce some kind of hidden meaning, overarching message or theme, etc. Although Kirei concluding that he could use the grail to find his desires it kind of a predictable outcome, the way his character is given agency over time is good.
Another quick positive is Ryonosuke's character. He's not exactly a good character and his/Caster's subplot doesn't exactly go anywhere, but he brings some much-needed levity to the show in my opinion. Every character has an ideology/worldview and his is by far the most hilarious and, by a similar token, different/interesting in a way as well. It's for this reason that I'm a little glad Caster stuck around for a while longer, though still meh on that overall.
Anyway. I realize those thoughts are mostly negative, but I did also say that that's probably how they'd turn out to be overall. I intended this to be half as long, maybe even less than that, so uh, my bad. I think F/Z is okay. But I guess that means I also think it's overrated, so. Yeah.
Firstly, a note about Gen Urobuchi that I feel the need to share: I (more or less...) respect him as a writer, I think, as far as his talents and such go. However, I feel that he has a tendency to think about themes/message/ideology first, and characters/plot second (or, hell, maybe even plot third). I find that his characters are -- usually -- less often characters, and more just vessels for him to portray various ideologies and/or human characteristics (example, the characters in Madoka Magica being two-dimensional to embody certain traits so that we can see how they suffer because of said traits). I also think he's got a habit of introducing themes/ideas for the sake of introducing them, but not necessarily doing anything meaningful with them -- or at least, not all the time. Anyway, I think this show suffers from a bit of that in general and I'll go into that slightly as I explain some details.
I do have positive things to say about the series, but that's a bit redundant as it's a very beloved show anyway. Overall, I think the show is an OK one, so it's not as though I hate it either, but I do have more gripes with it than other people I guess, which is why I find it worthwhile to make a thread on this show in the first place, instead of something like SAO which has a far more prominent hatewagon that's been ridden to death (not that I haven't indulged in that before). Anyway, this is just to get the obvious positive of nice looking visuals + music out of the way right now, along with some good fights. It's certainly a well-made show.
Spoilers ahoy!
One issue I have with the show is that it often feels like it's stalling for time. As an example from very early on, we have the Lancer/Saber fight wherein both warriors stop constantly after every sequence to engage in some rather verbose banter. Shortly after, when multiple servants are in one spot, all of them just sit around and watch as Archer and Berserker duke it out. I can only imagine that this was done to make things easier to follow, because it doesn't make any logical sense to me. This is a battle royale to the death.
The show tries to keep its characters alive for longer than I can suspend my disbelief for so that it can go on for a bit longer, and maybe have a chance to develop them more in episodes to come (although we'll get to that development later). I already mentioned the scene where several dudes just watch two other dudes fight -- an inconclusive batte, by the way. Soon after, Saber and Caster confront each other (the exact context escapes me at the moment) and Saber has the opportunity to execute a surprise attack, but she merely uses it as a scare tactic and threatens that "the next one will be real" if he doesn't run away. The explanation is that Caster would be a tough foe while she only has one arm, but...the element of surprise? If the implication is that she wouldn't have actually been able to finish him with a surprise attack, then I didn't buy it. Caster actually did run away to boot.
As far as plot/character go, I'm unsure as to what the Caster subplot even brought to the show that required him to stay alive past this point. Levity? I admit I'd have been a little down if Ryonosuke's partner croaked this early, I guess. A reason to show off Saber's final attack? Just find another reason.
Going in another direction entirely, I'd like to talk a little about Kiritsugu. Though it was cliche, I did find potential in his "ends justify the means, but actually wait that's wrong" character (since you could tell that's what his character arc was gonna be). He at least had something of an arc. But right now I just want to talk about his power and how it gets used. He is able to manipulate his own time for a little while, and despite the limitations of his ability there's a lot you could do with that, and I just think it gets poorly used in general. The fight with Archibald being the prime example. There's no way you don't just finish that guy when you meet him face to face with your ability imo. Moreover, he could get through Archibald's defenses and yet opted to shoot his shoulder at one point instead of head, heart, etc. It was a cool fight other than these moments though.
It's around this time in the series that Kiritsugu/Kirei get that weird rivalry dynamic going on despite the fact that they never met. I have mixed feelings on that. On one hand their reasoning makes sense, but part of that is just because we're the audience and we're fully aware of all the information at hand, naturally. I think a lot of it just gets eaten up for being cool, but I can't say it's completely uninteresting.
Now I'd like to take a moment to talk about one of my least favorite characters in this series -- probably my least favorite servant at least. Assassin. He's actually retarded. First off, he fakes his death. Fantastic. But he doesn't really do much with that. Certainly doesn't live up to his name. No, instead he just shows himself to Rider and Waver with like 4 clones, but just uses one of them to attack Waver who gets saved by Rider. Why didn't you have the other 3 attack Rider? And hell, you'd probably lose if you tried that anyway, so why are you attacking right now anyway? Why not wait for the battles to go on for some time...as people kill the others off...and then strike, you know, like an Assassin.
Not only has he already goofed up his advantage several times (for example he revealed himself to Irisviel previously, and by extension Kiritsugu -- at least, I don't see why she wouldn't tell him, don't remember whether that's on-screen or not), but it all comes to a head when he shows up after the banquet of kings against 3 dudes who outnumber him and are probably stronger than him individually with a retarded kage bunshin no jutsu onslaught. What the fuck. He rightfully gets his ass whooped. Headass. Rider doesn't earn his moment of badassery here because it's fucking Assassin.
Anyway. Plot-wise I went ahead a little, as I believe prior to the Assassin zerg rush, there were several fillers with flashbacks of Rin/Kiritsugu, right? I don't believe that these flashbacks should have taken up the time that they did. Certainly not entire episodes. They break up the pacing of the show in such a way that I find unnecessary for a single cour run. I'd rather they spend less time on these backstories as they're not particularly intriguing on their own, and instead hint at them with pieces as the series goes on as a way of slowly fleshing out the characters' backgrounds in a way that takes up less overall time, but conveys the same amount of information over a longer period of time which is more engaging.
Now, I'd like to take a moment to talk about my favorite part of the first season, which would be Kirei's development. I initially said that the show likes to stall a lot and one way of doing so is by having increasingly verbose conversations between the characters, but the best ones were the ones between Archer and Kirei as the philosophical mumbo jumbo there actually served the purpose of driving Kirei's character forward in a certain direction. They weren't the only conversations that were meaningful, but to me they were the most meaningful of them all by a longshot and as such, actually prompted me to look into them more to deduce some kind of hidden meaning, overarching message or theme, etc. Although Kirei concluding that he could use the grail to find his desires it kind of a predictable outcome, the way his character is given agency over time is good.
Another quick positive is Ryonosuke's character. He's not exactly a good character and his/Caster's subplot doesn't exactly go anywhere, but he brings some much-needed levity to the show in my opinion. Every character has an ideology/worldview and his is by far the most hilarious and, by a similar token, different/interesting in a way as well. It's for this reason that I'm a little glad Caster stuck around for a while longer, though still meh on that overall.
Anyway. I realize those thoughts are mostly negative, but I did also say that that's probably how they'd turn out to be overall. I intended this to be half as long, maybe even less than that, so uh, my bad. I think F/Z is okay. But I guess that means I also think it's overrated, so. Yeah.
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