Do NOT Miss Your Chance to Watch the New Fate Series Early

Key Takeaways

• Fate/strange Fake offers a bold new direction for the franchise with a chaotic and exciting storyline.
• Episode 1 focuses on Richard the Lionheart’s introduction and the increasingly Herculean feat of covering up the Grail War’s destructive effects.
• The performances, visual storytelling, and fresh spin on a familiar formula further build anticipation for the season to come.

Warning: The following contains minor spoilers for Fate/strange Fake, Episode 1, “The Heroic Spirit Incident”, temporarily available on Crunchyroll’s official YouTube channel. The episode will only be available until 11/30/2024.

Type-Moon’s Fate Series has seen numerous iterations, yet even with recurring characters, familiar narrative tropes, and the overarching Grail War concept, no entry has ever been quite alike. Never has that been more apparent than Fate/strange Fake, a bold new direction for the franchise that’s well-poised to be its next smash hit, having already proven itself just last year.

2023’s Fate/strange Fake: Whispers of Dawn was an hour-long special that adapted most of the first volume of the source material, a light novel series by Durarara author Ryohgo Narita. We gave it a 7 out of 10, praising its visual direction, action, and the overall hype generated through its storytelling, albeit finding some fault in the omissions from the source material. Now, over a year later, the first episode of the TV anime has been released early, and it did not disappoint.

The Dawn’s Cantankerous Aftermath

Episode 1 takes place immediately after the events of last year’s special. The sun has risen over Snowfield, Nevada, with the government scrambling to cover up after the unexpectedly bombastic reunion of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Within barely a minute of the runtime, the news reports the resulting crater as a gas explosion, continuing a franchise-long gag.

The opening minutes really let it sink in just how special this project is. It was 2019 when directors Enokido and Sakazume worked on an animated CM for Strange Fake‘s latest volume, with Hiroyuki Sawano’s “Belong” featuring Yosh Morita of Survive Said the Prophet blaring alongside it. Now, as if an answer to the prayers of every fan who watched it then, the same production team has reunited for a full adaptation. The opening notes of “Belong” at the episode’s start are the cherry on top.

Catching Up and Charging Ahead

“The Heroic Spirit Incident” doesn’t waste too much time recapping the special that preceded it. It was essential viewing, after all, and though it might warrant a rewatch after over a year since its release, the grand strokes are not easily forgotten. The False Servants have all been summoned, so the premiere decides to focus on the major arc from the first volume that Whispers of Dawn saved for later; the summoning of the Saber-Class Servant, and the arrival of their master.

Fate/strange Fake couldn’t be a more aptly named tale, as not only is every expectation of a Grail War subverted, but even accounting for its irregularity, there are surprises around every corner. A Saber-Class servant was thought to be absent from this Grail War, yet one is summoned anyway, and not Artoria Pendragon as some characters expected (I’m never calling her Altria). Instead, it is the Heroic Spirit, Richard the Lionheart, wielding a scarlet-colored spin on the sword Excalibur.

How Fate/strange Fake Embraces Chaos At Every Turn

Richard’s introduction is the payoff, but the buildup is centered around Ayaka Sajou, a mysterious girl who arrives in Snowfield to participate in the Grail War. Her memories are hazy, even regarding where she comes from, and though she ends up precisely where she was ordered to go, there is a sense that she wishes to resist the fate that’s been thrust upon her. She’s an anomalous protagonist for an equally anomalous story.

What’s amusing about Strange Fake‘s subversion of the status quo isn’t the subversion itself, but the pure extent of it. In my retrospective on 2017’s Fate/Apocrypha, I posited that this franchise is quite simple in its base elements, but that its charm is found in how each entry puts an inventive spin on the formula. Fate/strange Fake is simply the boldest and most exciting subversion yet, thanks largely to its setting, and equally to its overall directing.

Fate Throws Discretion Out the Window

Concealing a Holy Grail War Isn’t Exactly the Easiest Task

Truer words have never been spoken than those above, and the difficulty of concealing this franchise’s supernatural shenanigans has never been more apparent than when put front and center. Everywhere else in the Fate Series, it is naturally taken for granted how effectively such things can be hidden. The Church and the Mages Association pull strings and that’s that. This Grail War, however, doesn’t have such connections, and it doesn’t take long for the mage Faldeus to feel the weight of that absence.

America is a young country in the grand scheme of Earth’s history, and whatever splinter sect is running the Grail War, they are ill-equipped to keep such a violent conflict under wraps. It injects such a simple layer of tension into a conflict that typically carves a rough, jagged line between the ordinary world and the supernatural. This might end up being the most chaotic Fate story ever, and that alone is one of the strongest hooks this series has going for it.

A Bold New Direction For Fate

Ryohgo Narita’s skill at writing stories with large casts of characters need not be reiterated, and his reported close involvement with this adaptation is a relief, to say the least. The directing and its ability to capture Narita’s character prowess only grow on the viewer with time. In our review of Whispers of Dawn, certain omissions from the novel might have stuck out as a negative, but it’s impressive what Enokido and Sakazume have managed to convey through visual storytelling.

It’s safe to say my criticism of those aforementioned omissions has softened. Episode 1, like the special before it, has great momentum, slowly integrating new players, moving them around the game board, and impressing upon the viewer each player’s significance with flair. The post-credits scene in itself was an exciting tease of the ever-expanding roster of colorful characters, making the large cast of Fate/Apocrypha look tame by comparison.

Strong Performances Seal the Deal

It’s fascinating how much Aniplex has seemed to push the English version of Fate/strange Fake in the West. Much like with the initial release of Whispers of Dawn, only the English dub is available as of the time of writing. This might upset some who prefer the original Japanese, but perhaps it put extra pressure on the team producing the dub to succeed, because, to its credit, it did.

Frank Todaro as False Caster delivers a show-stealer of a performance that never fails to amuse and Ben Balmaceda has an immediately infectious charisma as Richard. Some performances may vary, such as Micah Solusod’s Faldeus, whose deeper affectation in his line delivery betrays the ruthlessness inherent to the character. Altogether, though, the cast is pleasant on the ears and the dub is well-directed, much like the main series itself.

Fate/strange Fake is set to premiere on December 31, ringing in the new year with one of the most anticipated additions to this franchise in years. It’s been a long time coming, and some have feared that the delays and the long wait were signs of a troubled production, but if there has been hardship, it certainly hasn’t shown on screen to a troubling degree. Good things take time, and there’s ample reason to suspect that this will be a very good series indeed.