Its probably not going to come as a surprise to readers given recent posts, but I’m rather fond of Fate/Stay Night, and as such I’m really, really looking forward to the TV adaption which starts airing in Japan next year. I’m not the only one, and recognising there is a quick buck to make from other rabid fans wanting their first glimpse of the all new Fate anime goodness, Geneon have taken the chance to release the shiney new trailer onto DVD. Its a rather nice trailer too.

For those who haven’t read all the fansites, Fate is set in a small Japanese city where a battle is about to break out between a selected group of Magi – users of Magecraft, a derivitive of magic (though nowhere near as spectacular) – for the Holy Grail, a magic McGuffin which will supposedly grant their wishes. Each of the seven Magi summon a Servant to assist them – a great hero from the past, present or future from one of seven classes – Saber (melee fighters with insane magic resistance, often considered the most powerful), Archer (Bowmen with awesome eyesight), Rider (expert in riding beasts), Berserker (insanely powerful, but also insane – their power comes at the extent of their sanity), Lancer (Spear user, duh), Caster and Assassin. These were, previously to becoming involved in the grail war, real people, and therefore have their their own skills and weapons true to their legends, but also are entirely secretive about who they really are as not to put themselves at a disadvantage to well-read opponents.

Fate/Stay Night kicks off at the beginning of a new Grail War, when student Emiya Shiro is saved from death at the hands of the servant Lancer by fellow student (and my favorite character) Tohsaka Rin, a somewhat confident Magi who is partaking in the war as the master of Archer, much to her annoyance (having gone to great lengths to try and summon Saber). Upon returning home, Shiro is once again assaulted by Lancer, only to be saved by beautiful armoured girl, who then utters the immortal words the trailer ends on…

“I ask you – Are you my Master?”

Its a pretty awesome trailer, at least for Fate fanboys. It pretty much hits all of the right notes, not only containing the classic lines from Rins first meeting with Archer, but it ends on pretty much the only sequence you can end a Fate trailer on – any other scene just wouldn’t be right. The character designs are extremely faithful to the original work, and look terrific. The animation is mostly excellent – its not quite up there with recent standard barers like Air, but it looks better than a lot of shows which have aired recently. Aside from the oh-so-trendy fisheye shots and subdued colour pallette there are a couple of things which particularly stand out about it animation wise. Aside from the magic circle around Rins summoning, there is a distinct lack of flashy digital effects, and it looks good for it. Check out the tracking shot when Archer fires of a salvo of arrows at Ilya in the graveyard – every frame of that has been drawn and coloured seperately, without using the CG scaling or modelling a lot of shows would use to make it easy, not to mention the fact that they didn’t skip on the tombstones to make it easier! For me, that kind of shot just impresses the heck out of me, and just looks so damn cool.

The other interesting thing is the character line work. The advent of anime drawn on computer has tended to result in a lot of shows with very crisp, clean even linework. It looks shiney, but to a certain degree it kind of lacks the character what a lot of the cel-based shows had. The Fate trailer, curiously, has some very rough line work. Lines aren’t straight, they aren’t an even width, some of the have been partially coloured over, some of them are even a little broken where they shouldn’t be. What I mean to say is, it kind of has the feel of a cel-based show. The section after the main part of the trailer with Sakura and Fuji-nee, which gets rid of the dark colouring in exchange for something rather more pastel, definately looks like a cel show. Just look at this headshot of Fuji-nee and see if you agree

Frankly, I think it looks much better for it, and I hope the final show looks like that (the fact that some of the sketches in the book clearly show where some lines have been made thicker on purpose, I’m optimistic).This isn’t to say the animation is perfect or anything – it comes as close as TV animation tends to come for the most part, until, that is, we see Rider. Alas, some of the shots of Rider herself look pretty rubbish. The character art looks a little off in places, and they use some cheap looking pans as well. Don’t get me wrong, that sequence as a whole looks cool (the exploding skeletons look terrific!), but I hope Rider comes out better in the show. Its just a shame given how fluid, well drawn and generally good looking the rest of the trailer is.

Music is by Kenji Kawai. His movie music is, frankly, pretty damn awesome. His TV work, however, is very mixed. I’m hopeful about this project though, as the main track played over this is a great piece of music (its an instrumental, but I kind of hope its the OP – it worked for Tsukihime, after all).

Onto the packaging – it came in a box which looked like this -

When I saw the pictures online, I had thought it was card. It turns out its actually plastic, and flips open across the top. I’d be worried about opening it too much, as I half expect the box to crack along the join at some point. The image on the cover, which I thought looked kind of plain when I saw it online, looks far better when you see it in person desite (or perhaps because) it looks kind of blurred due to being on plastic.Inside the box we have the following -

We get a Super Jewel Case containing our DVD, with a lovely image of Rin on it. The DVD is only seven minutes long, featuring just the long trailer and a shorter edit of it. We also get a book. The book contains a couple of colour illustrations, some line art for the main characters and locations, and the storyboards for the trailer. The fact that the book has the whole storyboards for the trail makes me somewhat curious as to whether any of this material will actually make the final show, or if it was all animated specifically for the trailer. It could well be that the final show doesn’t carry the wonderful aesthetic the trailer shows, or even worse may have entirely crappy animation. Given the popularity of the franchise (Fate/Hollow Ataraxia sold more in its first month on sale than Air sold in its whole first year!) I’d be disappointed and very surprised if it does, but I’m going to try and restrain myself from getting too excited about it until I see the actual broadcast version.Oh, who am I kidding, I can’t bloody wait!