Thoughts on the end of “Date A Live V”

©2023 橘公司・つなこ/KADOKAWA/「デート・ア・ライブⅤ」製作委員会

After 11 years, the Date A Live anime has finally reached it’s conclusion. When finishing the last episode, I honestly couldn’t really organize my thoughts.

It is true that the animation from GeekToys had it’s highs and lows, but they truly did go all out for the adaptation of the finale here.

While I think it would’ve been nice to have the final three volumes adapted as well, personally I think this is a good stopping point. Unfortunately some plot points are now left to be unresolved, I am grateful that seasons three, four and five happened at all, since the original plan was to stop after the movie.

I urge everyone who has not done it to give Date A Live a try. I know a lot of people are put off by the outside appearance of a simple ecchi-harem-comedy, but the story is truly incredible and you will not regret sticking with it until the end.

And if you have seen Date A Live, but haven’t read the Light Novel, give that a try as well. There are many details and entire story elements, the anime has omitted. For example, one of my favorite volumes (Volume 12 “Itsuka Disaster”) had it’s story entirely removed in the anime. This volume served as an important point of setting up the eventual appearance of The Spirit of Origin and was a truly enjoyable story. There are many other examples like it.

Lastly, I would like to thank everyone who has contributed anything to making this anime a reality. It has been a rocky 11 years, but thanks to you it is a reality. And because of you, this is truly my favorite anime of all time.

New in: Byleth (2023)

She finally came home…

In these little blog updates I have been lamenting over the fact that the Byleth figure for Good Smile Company and Nintendo’s Fire Emblem series I ordered hasn’t really made it here yet. After suffering multiple times, she finally made it here today on this fourth reshipment (yes, I had to pay the shipping fee four times).

I was able to get the issues resolved through sheer luck, as GSC reshipped the figure through UPS this time, where I was able to pay the customs fee online. The fee was more than 70 euros and it got more expensive with every reshipment. Not sure exactly how that works, but since I have the figure on my shelf now, I don’t really care to be honest.

Since Fire Emblem: Three Houses is my second favorite game of all-time, I knew I had to have this figure, as soon as I saw it on GSC’s newsletter.

I have two more figures already with me and will post pictures of them in the coming days.

New in: Super Sonico – White Swimsuit Style (2023)

Another order from Figuya that arrived today. Of course, every figure collection has to have Super Sonico at some point. I reserved this one shortly after the announcement, because when I saw it, I just had to get it.

Unfortunately, I actually had to re-order my shelf quite a bit, since she didn’t fit on the level I had for my figures so far. I ended up moving my PlayStation games up to my Switch games and the figures down. I also moved most of the boxes I still had on the shelf to my closet. I would like to get a class cabinet one day, but I don’t think that is an option in my current apartment.

I have another two figures from Figuya currently in transit and will post about them soon. I’m also still trying to get the Byleth figure from Good Smile Company. It was sent back to them a third time and I sent another request for re-shipment. I hope this time I will actually get it. I’ve already considered asking for a refund, which is something GSC offered, but it already looks like the Byleth figure is shaping up to be quite rare and I really want it.

New in: Nendoroid Mikasa Ackerman

Last month I went to the Japan-Tag event in Düsseldorf and came across the Figuya stand. While looking through the items, I saw that they still had one of the Mikasa Ackerman Nendoroids (#365) that released last year, so I decided to take it with me.

I was a bit short on time these past few weeks, so I only now had the chance to post the pictures for it. I currently have some more online orders from Figuya coming in and plan to post the pictures soon.

New in: Rental-Girlfriend Vol. 1 & 2 and Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei

I picked these up last month. Rental-Girlfriend Vol. 1 was an online order I got a bit before the rest. I was interested in it, since I just caught up with the anime and got really interested in.

Vol. 2 and Prisma Illya 2wei were purchases I made when I was in Essen for “The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie”. I checked the stores before watching the movie and went home with those two.

There were a lot of other anime on the shelf I was interested in, but I could realistically only take home one and this one was one of the few that was actually a Blu-ray, not a DVD.

Raw thoughts on Fate/Zero, from somebody who knows next-to-nothing about Fate

I’m not exactly great at writing coherent reviews, since I just end up rambling a lot, but I really want to give my thoughts on Fate/Zero, since I just finished watching it for the first time. I will talk spoilers in this, but try to mark them as much as possible. It will contain information about Fate/Zero as a whole, meaning it also includes the second season.

This show absolutely shattered my expectations about pretty much everything. I intend to watch all of the Fate series in release order (except for Prisma Illya, which I have already finished), so the only other series I have watched before this, was the original Fate/stay night from 2006. So maybe saying I know “nothing” about the series is a bit of an overstatement. It was not a bad series and I definitely enjoyed it. But I didn’t think of it as anything groundbreaking, other than being a good introduction to the series. That is probably why I didn’t expect much going into the prequel entry that aired five years later, Fate/Zero.

Characters

The characters are probably the anime’s biggest strength. A prequel is kind of tricky to do, when everybody already knows how it ends. Fate/Zero excels at being able to retain interest in the series through the exceptional cast of characters that star in it. In no particular order, here are some of my favorites:

  • Arturia/Saber is the Servant of Kiritsugu Emiya. She is as much of a stoic swordswoman as she was in Fate/stay night. However in this series, she gets more of a chance to shine on her own. We get to see Saber trying to reach for the Holy Grail for the first time and wanting to correct the mistakes of her past life. On her journey she is going to learn a lot about what exactly that entails.
  • Kiritsugu Emiya is Saber’s master and the adoptive father of Shirou Emiya, the protagonist of Fate/stay night. In this series, we get to find out more about him, something I have been looking forward to for a long time. He has not had much of a presence in all the series I have watched thus far, so I was looking forward to seeing for myself what he was like. However, he ended up being much different from what I expected.
  • Irisviel von Einzbern is the wife of Kiritsugu and the mother of Illyasviel von Einzbern. Irisviel has a great involvement in this Holy Grail War and we also get to see more of her personality. She is a very loving and kind person and wishes to support Kiritsugu in his quest for the Holy Grail.
  • Kirei Kotomine is a priest and the moderator of the Holy Grail War in Fate/stay night. In this prequel, he himself is a master with his servant Assassin. Spoiler for Fate/stay night:
    Spoiler
    In Fate/stay night, Kirei is revealed to be the main antagonist and survivor of the previous Holy Grail War. He took Rin in after the death of her father and in Fate/Zero we get to see how he went from his very calm and obedient manner, to becoming the death-loving monster that was defeated by Shirou in Fate/stay night.
  • Gilgamesh/Archer is the Servant of Tokiomi Tohsaka, although at times it is debatable who serves whom in that relationship. Gilgamesh is mostly concerned with his own interests, instead of those of his master and he can be seen constantly manipulating those around him, which is going to have dire consequences for everyone involved. Spoilers for Fate/stay night and minor spoilers for Fate/Zero:
    Spoiler
    In Fate/stay night, Gilgamesh is revealed to have survived the Holy Grail War of Fate/Zero and participates in the next Holy Grail War as the 8th Servant. He displayed a great interest in Saber, wanting to make her his trophy and wife. In Fate/stay night, he is also revealed to have been the Servant of Kirei Kotomine, meaning that we get to see how he was able to change Masters from Tohsaka to Kotomine.
  • Waver Velvet is a character I was not yet familiar with. He is a young student, who is dissatisfied with not being recognized for his talents by his peers and lecturers and manages to steal the artifact one of his teachers uses to summon his Servant and enter the Holy Grail War. He summons the Servant Rider.
  • Iskandar/Rider is the Servant of Waver and represents a great contrast to his master. Waver is a very small boy, while Iskandar is a giant conqueror with an intimidating appearance. However, one quickly realizes that he has a very big heart and often serves as the comedic-relief character. The relationship he builds with Waver over time is one of my favorite parts of the anime.
  • Ryuunosuke Uryuu is probably the biggest anomaly under all of the masters of Fate/Zero. Ryuunosuke is a serial killer who mostly prefers killing young women and children. He is first introduced during a scene where he murdered a family and using their blood to summon his Servant, Caster. He is not a magus, nor any person of significance, outside of his position as a Master in the Holy Grail War. As such, he has no interest in the Grail or the war surrounding it and merely enjoys watching Caster kill people to relieve his boredom.
  • Bluebeard/Caster is Ryuunosuke’s Servant. He is probably my most hated character of the series (in a good way). Caster is a madman who derives pleasure from giving his victims a moment of relief and hope, before killing them in very horrific and brutal manners. He is the source of a lot of very gruesome scenes of the anime, mostly involving children. He made for a very hateable villain.
  • Kariya Matou is a member of the Matou family, who has cut all ties with them ten years before the start of Fate/Zero. He is initially not interested in anything relating to the Holy Grail War, but makes a deal with the partiarch of the Matou family to free Sakura from them. He learns that the young girl, who he as grown very fond of in the past, is subjugated to daily physical and mental abuse in the Matou family. He joins the Holy Grail War for the Matou family to free Sakura from them. It is fairly hard explaining his motivations without some spoilers for Fate/stay night, so I will have to leave it at that. Of all the Masters, he is probably the one I was rooting for the most. His Servant is Berserker.

These are certainly not all of the characters, but some of my favorites out of the main cast. They are all very intersting in their own right and, in my opinion, could even serve as the protagonists of their own series. I believe this is a sign that your show is doing something right.

Story

As you are expected to have watched Fate/stay night before this, you probably already know how it is going to end. With this being a prequel, the journey is much more interesting than the conclusion. Fate/Zero details the events of the fourth Holy Grail War, taking place ten years prior to Fate/stay night. The story mostly focuses on Kiritsugu Emiya, who is hired by the Einzberns to win the Holy Grail for them. Kiritsugu is married to their only daughter, Irisviel, which serves as a binding contract. Kiritsugu’s intentions and attitude remain shrouded in mystery. He states that his wish is salvation for humanity through world peace. This proves to be ironic, as he himself is a mage assassin and has killed many people throughout his life.

Kirei displays a vast contrast to Kiritsugu. He is an empty and broken man with no purpose or goal in life. He follows orders and fails to find pleasure or entertainment in anything. He serves Tokiomi Tohsaka and plots with him to be able to win the Holy Grail War. Throughout the show, he also becomes closer with Tohsaka’s Servant, Gilgamesh, who ends up not being a very good influence on Kirei. Gilgamesh shows him the ways of pleasure and entertainment, leading Kirei to a much darker side of himself. Even though it takes quite a while for the two to actually meet, the rivalry between Kirei and Kiritsugu ends up being one of the most interesting plot points of the show.

The story of a battle royale has been done a lot of times by now throughout many different anime. However, I have not seen any single one of them nail it as much as Fate/Zero. The entire tone of the show is very dark and mature. When watching Fate/stay night, the Holy Grail War felt more like a squabble between a bunch of teenagers (no offense, Shirou). In Fate/Zero you can tell this is a war. The stakes are raised immediately, as you realize that all of these Servants are immensely powerful. Fate/stay night felt fairly lighthearted with its focus on characters in their teens and scenes taking place in schools etc. There is none of that here, and while I enjoyed those parts in Fate/stay night, I believe it works better without them.

Something I really want to put a focus on in this review is some of the more gruesome scenes. I touched upon this topic before with Ryuunosuke and Caster. Fate/Zero displays another vast contrast with its very graphic scenes, a lot of them involving children. It is probably good to know what this entails, if that is something you don’t think you can handle. I would like to give some examples about what I mean with these scenes.

In episode two,

Spoiler
Ryuunosuke and Caster are introduced. I explained the murder scene before, but what really made it for me was the way it ended. Ryuunosuke let a little boy live and offered to let Caster eat him. What Caster does instead is to let the boy flee through a door and upon looking to the exit of the home, he is grabbed by tentacles from behind and we hear the boy being murdered with gut wrenching screams. This entire scene was honestly sickening and just remembering it makes me angry. But this is exactly what Fate/Zero needed. I loved this scene, but I definitely didn’t enjoy it or ever want to watch it again. It made me hate Ryuunosuke and Caster immediately which is why I think they made for great villains. It is this level of maturity and horror, that sets Fate/Zero’s tone to something that really fits the whole story perfectly.

Another scene that I really can’t let go, even though it was probably not one of the most memorable ones for most people, was in Season 2 Episode 11, when

Spoiler
Kiritsugu is having a vision of the Grail and rejects it. In this vision he is at the the Einzbern castle in Germany with Irisviel and Illya. As he realizes the situation and rejects the Grail’s offer, he puts a gun to Illya’s chin and kills her. Immediately afterwards, Irisviel jumps up from the bed and screams in horror of her daughter being murdered by her husband. I recognize that this was not real (then again, none of this is, lol), but it was really hard to listen to it. The voice acting throughout the entire show was absolutely amazing and hearing Sayaka Oohara as Irisviel in this scene was very convincing. It really shocked me and even now, writing this about two hours after I watched it, I still have to process it.

Having scenes like this is really something that can turn an anime, video game or whatever else into one of my favorites. And no offense to English voice actors, but it is also why I will always prefer Japanese voice acting. The screams of horror you would hear in these scenes always felt so real, that it made me feel sick. This is peak acting and Fate/Zero excels at it.

Overall, the story of Fate/Zero is one of tragedy. Even once the War is over, nobody here is really a winner. Once all is said and done, the viewer is merely left with the sights of the survivors being broken, having achieved nothing. It is an amazingly told story of a war that claims its victims, one way or another.

Animation

I honestly couldn’t believe how good this anime looks. It was originally aired in 2011 and 2012 and honestly looks better than anything released in 2022. The animation is smooth and fight scenes are very satisfying to watch. Coming from Fate/stay night in 2006, it is a massive jump, despite being only a five year difference.

To be fair, some CGI is used and there are times where it is noticeable. However, I tend to be very forgiving with CGI and it seems to be used very sparingly throughout both seasons. Most of it that I noticed was in the beginning of season two.

Music

Absolutely amazing. The OST of Fate/Zero was filled with great music, especially during battle scenes. It never failed to hype me up for a great moment.

Likewise, the OPs and EDs of Fate/Zero are great. The first OP especially (“oath sign” by LiSA) was amazing. I knew this song already, but wasn’t aware it was the first OP to Fate/Zero. Visually, I also really enjoyed the OPs and EDs of Fate/Zero, especially those of the first season.

Final thoughts

When I finished watching the second season of Fate/Zero, the first thing I did was to add it to my list of favorite anime. Unfortunately, I don’t think I will ever be able to rewatch it. As another reviewer on AniList put it: “Fate/Zero will have you constantly itching to watch the next episode, constantly aching to know what’s going to happen next.” When you already know the story, most of the excitement will probably have vanished on your second run. If you plan to watch this show and feel like you will enjoy it, make sure to set it up in a way you enjoy watching anime the most. For me, it’s a sleepless night, watching all the way until morning, focusing on nothing else in the world. It is a beautiful masterpiece and you will only get one chance to enjoy it.

New in: Nendoroid Ryuko Matoi: Souvenir Jacket Ver.

Today, my first Nendoroid arrived. It’s Ryuko Matoi from Kill la Kill, with her outfit from the final/special episode of the anime.

I ordered this Nendoroid last year and due to the pandemic, the delivery really got dragged out. I’m glad it finally made it here, because I really like Ryuko and Kill la Kill in general.

A while ago, I decided I would be trying out Figuya more, which is a reseller based here in Germany, instead of Good Smile Company directly. This is mostly because then I won’t have to deal with customs fees and confusing international shipping. Figuya is a reputable seller so I don’t think I have anything to worry about there.

Regardless, I still have some more figurines coming in from Good Smile Company directly, including one which was already shipped and will probably arrive later this month. I will of course give an update on it when it arrives.

New in: NieR: Automata, Final Fantasy XIII, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster and Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz! (DE)

I’ve had most of these lying around for a few weeks now. NieR: Automata was a birthday gift at the end of October and I got Xenoblade 3 a little bit before that.

Final Fantasy XIII was an eBay purchase, as this copy which looks like it’s new and contains the manual only cost me 6 euros. I know most people don’t like this game, but still, that really surprised me. I got Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster from Amazon on the same day.

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz was an impulse purchase today. I went to the store to get Persona 5 Royal on Nintendo Switch originally, but then I saw this on the shelf and it was the last copy. I haven’t finished watching 2wei Herz yet, which is the second cour of the second season, so this was a good reminder for me to do that.