Review of Fate/Zero

This review will be on both Fate/Zero and Fate/Zero Season 2, which I am counting as a single entity. My apologies for any confusion. The main problem most people seem to have with this anime is the historical "inaccuracies". I put that in quotation marks because there's really no way to be 100% certain about the traits of the historical figures in the anime anyway. For example, (and no this is not in the anime so it's not a spoiler) many people think Napoléon Bonaparte was short, when in reality this was a misconception due to the difference between English feet and French feet. He was actuallyaverage height for his time. Well, Napoléon was around less than 300 years ago. The historical figures in this anime are WAAAAAY older than that. So before you complain about a fantasy anime getting historical facts wrong, why don't you complain about SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS getting historical facts wrong?

Now that that's out of the way, this anime is filled with lots of great action, suspense, thrills, etc. It's also got some nice moral ambiguity built in. Not to mention it's chock full of quotes that sound like they should be actual famous quotes. To name a few without spoiling too much:

"The world's laws do not apply to us, so we must carefully obey the laws we set for ourselves."

"Using a simple method to accomplish something impressive far outshines
using a complex method to achieve the same thing."

"They call certain methods of fighting good and others evil, acting as if there were some nobility to the battlefield. Such illusions, perpetrated by heroes throughout history, have led countless young men to their bloody deaths, all for the sake of this valor and glory."

I also have great respect for this anime in the lack of fan service provided. There's lots of great anime with lots of unnecessary cleavage and/or panty shots; this is not one of them. The only romance included is essential to the plot, and even that doesn't have much emphasis.

I'm not saying I'm totally against anime that have, say, a scene where a girl realizes a boy is looking somewhere he probably shouldn't be looking and slaps him in the face. That kind of comedy can be valuable to a story in its own way. But it's nice to have an anime with little-to-no focus on sexual themes.

I highly recommend this as a great action/adventure/fantasy anime with some good moral dilemmas thrown in.