Well before I bought this I was aware that the last part of the season gets a bit ropey, I’ve watched 1 - 8 so far. Trouble is Zero will cost more than twice what I paid for Night so until I can get it on a special deal ( I don’t know why it’s in 2 parts rather than 1 like Night) or pre-owned…
Also I read the best order is Night / Unlimited Bladeworks (also very expensive in 2 parts) then Zero so 
VN readers usually say F/SN is the best introduction. Anime viewers usually say F/Z is the best introduction. Either way you’re going to be spoiled on one of them. Personally, F/SN isn’t anywhere near as good as F/Z, so I’d rather spoil F/SN by watching F/Z first than the opposite.
It’s worth noting that the anime ‘Unlimited Bladeworks’ was created as a sequel to F/Z, whereas F/Z was made as a prequel to the Visual Novel.
OK I’ve decided to follow advice and get Fate/Zero which I will watch before finishing Night. Who needs money anyway…with this and MLA coming out next week I have seriously blown my monthly entertainment budget!
Edit: Had a very quick delivery of the F/Z boxsets so I shall get stuck into these soon…
Any reason why you’re stopping to watch Zero before finishing Night? Fate/SN gives all the info regarding the grail and is generally considered the first in the order to watch. Zero should be watched second imo
I’m just going by the advice above from @Naoki_Saten and @Takafumi
But opinion seems to be very divided which one to start with, e.g https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1387017
Of course all advice says read the VN first but that’s not an option for me.
The basic reason for Zero first is that the F/SN UBW anime was made as a sequel to Zero. If you were reading the VN, do NOT watch Zero first. If you are sticking to anime however, Zero is the best choice, at least until HF comes out in entirety.
They are very different styles of stories, and no matter where you start you’re gonna be screwed by spoilers (as I said, Zero is a prequel for VN readers, but UBW is a sequel for Zero watchers) but Zero is a really good standalone anime, and is good for getting you hooked.
Obviously the die-hard fans disagree, but that’s because F/SN is their baby and they want to be as faithful to it as possible.
This is a purely subjective opinion, but the VN isn’t actually all THAT great. Sure, Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven’s Feel routes are great, but you’ll have to get through the Fate route first, which is meh and would spoil Fate/Zero for you, so it’s not worth the trouble. On the other hand, the Fate/UBW anime is relatively faithful to the original, so, while not as detailed, is an agreeable alternative.
What I like most about the Fate series is the setting, the mechanics of the holy grail war and magic as a whole. And surprisingly, Fate/Zero, despite being written by a different author, is actually more abiding by the laws and principles of that universe while Fate/Stay Night, after explaining the workings of the world, introduces countless “special snowflake” characters who somehow bypass those principles and standards. I also happen to find most characters in Fate/Zero exceptionally interesting, which is something I can only say about very few of the F/SN cast.
tl;dr: It’s totally fine to start with Fate/Zero and then following it up with the UBW anime as per @Takafumi’s advice.
Personally I thought F/SN was rubbish (except for the UBW anime which was pretty good) and most of the Fate franchise is completely awful, largely because Nasu is a contradictory hack who relies on making alternate universes for every new idea… But I adore the setting and F/Z was actually really good. None of the servants felt too out of character (except for maaaybe Iskander) and there was no ridiculous contrivance needed for the story to make sense.
In every title since (and including) Fate/Extra there’s the same slew of problems. They’re all just cash-ins. In these stories there are many new exceptions to the many convoluted rules, established fate history is rewritten, and the same lazy designs are used over and over to get some cheap twists.
With the Ufotable stuff you’re just getting some good action with some good moral conflicts and some fun SoL moments. It’s very enjoyable. Without Fate/Zero I wouldn’t have bothered with any of the side-stories in the Fate franchise… Just don’t expect any of them to be as good as Zero.
Thanks for your comments and suggestions. I wouldn’t have picked up the early F/SN anime had it been a new full price DVD. The trouble with the newer F/UBW is that is is really expensive here ( £60/€70 + delivery costs) for both parts so I won’t get that unless there is a serious special offer. I’ll start watching F/Z tonight and make any more comments about it in the Fate series discussion topic.
The OST was amazing… The rest of the show, it’s better if we all make as if it never happened.
Pretty much what you said. I don’t think trying to imitate Code Geass was the problem (I actually never looked at it that way), it’s just that the way the story evolved seemed either dumb or ridiculous. Also I still don’t get the ending. To be fair, I don’t really remember how it went, it’s been a good 2 years since I watched it. Something I discovered in that show is EGOIST.
But to be honest, the show never had a solid foundation or an interesting idea to create something interesting. Tokyo Ghoul, for instance, turned out to be pretty bad, but at least it had a decent foundation with quite a lot of potential, so there’s that.
First season of Tokyo Ghoul is good. Characters were interesting especially the main character Kaneki Ken and what he had to go through. Second season throws that out the window and to top it off, its ending makes absolutely no sense to me.
I recently wrote about Guilty Crown in a post about the value of enjoyment in watching Anime, so I’ll post it here in response to this hate train. In short, for someone who felt done with anime, Guilty Crown was a revitalization much in the way Haruhi and TTGL were.
I know, I know. Guilty Crown, the show people love to hate. Back in 2011, Guilty Crown was incredibly hyped up due to the staff involved, and when it released, anime fans were disappointed. Funnily enough Guilty Crown became popular, but not with the established audience. It was a prediction of shows such as Sword Art Online and Shingeki no Kyoujin.
But back then, when 2011 came around, I was done with anime. I’d been watching for years, and it seemed like the seasons were getting worse and worse. I had no hype for anything, and I had no idea what Guilty Crown would be. At the end of 2011, with Christmas on everyone’s minds, the anime world gave me a gift in Guilty Crown… And it drives me crazy to see people not understand why the show is enjoyable. People compare it to Code Geass or Evangelion a lot, but I think it’s best compared to TTGL, because Guilty Crown is unabashedly a love letter to everything anime. Everything good and everything bad. And boy does Guilty Crown do this well.
Shu, the protagonist, is a funny guy. He is almost entirely lacking in character, his only trait being his incredibly emotional outbursts. He is every Mecha protagonist ever. Through the power of magic, Shu gains the ability to pull weapons out of the hearts of people. These weapons symbolize the personality of the person they came from. This is the show’s first cop out, they don’t have to explore a character’s personality because you can just show it to the audience. It is so dumb. This also fits conveniently with Shu’s lacking personality… The guy can just take other people and use them to make himself look cool.
Shu is backed up by his weapon-in-arms Inori, an emotionless idol badass. She is every Mecha heroine ever. Inori’s personality trait is that, because she lacks emotions, she finds the emotive interesting. Shu, being the most willing to give up and cry character of the decade, is an Inori magnet. The two incredibly empty characters sponge off each other. Shu gets his flashyness from Inori, and Inori gets her motives from Shu.
To many people this is a bad thing, but I disagree. This is incredibly clever, because Guilty Crown isn’t about Shu or Inori or any of the characters. Guilty Crown is a show about looking cool and sounding cool. This is a hype-piece passion project of top-tier staff members, made entirely for the staff to enjoy themselves with. The quicker you can establish a character and get into the cool stuff, the better. Guilty Crown is one big lesson in shortcutting. Quickly skim through the anime tropes and then kill some stuff.
The show is constantly filled with jokes and references, though they are treated as serious parts of the show. Something to know about Guilty Crown is that it is serious about never being serious. Characters will speak wholeheartedly. Cataclysmic events will occur and people will react in full fledged terror… But the show isn’t serious. It’s having fun, and that’s the entire point! To be fun! Someone will say a one liner, not because it sounds cool, but because it’s a hilarious addition. Something will happen out of the left field because why not? It’s a hype thing to do. The creators basically got a list of anime and picked the parts they enjoyed from them. Evangelion, put that in. Macross? Sure. Cardcaptor Sakura? Why the hell wouldn’t we? We like post-apocalyptic settings, we like hot girls, we like edgy guys, we like comical depictions of power, we like Hiroyuki Sawano’s soundtracks, we like dumb anime science (speaking of which the logo even has that dumb English text that makes Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate so comical.)
If they want to suddenly insert a mysterious past, they’ll do it. They make a character who physically can’t walk without depending on the protagonist! SPOILER, the protagonist becomes Hitler! It’s AMAZING! If that isn’t enough to make someone realize a show isn’t serious, I don’t know what is… Whatever they liked, they found an excuse to include it.
And this is where the Code Geass comparisons make sense, because to some degree that show aimed to do the exact same thing. It had a higher focus on plot-coherence (though that isn’t saying much) but it ultimately existed to do the cool things that anime do.
The only mistake Guilty Crown made throughout its 22 episodes was the lack of a disclaimer at the start saying “nothing makes sense, everything looks cool, have fun.” Part of me thinks however that Guilty Crown’s point was to make an audience take it seriously. They take these tropes seriously in any other show, so to take it seriously in a show that effectively mocks those tropes is like falling for the bait. Maybe that was the intention…
So yeah, Guilty Crown is a bad show, and in most contexts I’ll rarely recommend it, let alone praise it… But that’s the point. It’s bad, it’s enjoyable, and it reminded me why I was an anime fan for so many years. Because sometimes you just want to have fun.
Everything that Guilty Crown represents, all of the good and all of the bad, all exist today in anime. They are still good, they are still bad, and they are still fun.
Also in response to
From what I remember, the answer is that there’s little you’ll understand as an anime-only viewer, because the anime didn’t really end the plot in any way other than getting Shu and gang out of the conflict. The main villain and the conflicts going on are still likely going on, and from what the main villain says it’s implied that they’re all doomed regardless.
While root A was a trash tier show, I actually thought the ending was better than most parts of the original Tokyo Ghoul. It was a really good bookend on Kaneki’s character and I couldn’t really see any other conclusion working in that scenario. It was also incredibly simple, so I don’t know what there is to not understand… If it was done without 10 episodes of rubbish before it, it’d have been good.
If that’s all it has it doesn’t cut it for me, but then it becomes a matter of personal taste.
This was actually one of the first shows I watched when I got started to anime, and I got exactly the opposite reaction, that’s interesting…
Can’t agree more, but even if the ending is still ok, it all stemmed from a horrible choice without any sense that Kaneki made at the beginning of this second season: joining Aogiri. Sincerely, the objectives he claims to have are never fulfilled. Not even a single bit. Also, it implies a 180º turn for his character way too quickly.
And it all boils down to this. While the ending itself does make sense the way things are before the last few episodes, due to very weird plot paths during the early second season, the ending is left at a point that makes many people wonder where the first season was left at. Let’s say that it’s an ending that salvages the second season (or tries to), but if it weren’t for the second season, the prospect of Tokyo Ghoul’s ending was actually decent.
The forum is looking happier and livelier again and that’s great!
So while looking at what movies, anime, manga…to watch or read next, long story short I haven’t watched a Studio Ghibli film in a long time. This is becoming a trend apparently…
I’ve only watched Ponyo and Arrietty to this point, but would anyone like to discuss them for a bit or share their thoughts on some of them? There is no way I would watch Grave of the Fireflies, but it might be nice to see a lot of the other films or to get some ideas about them. 
You’re in a KEY community and can’t bring yourself to watch Grave of the Fireflies?!
Anyway, I haven’t seen too much from Ghibli, just Grave of the Fireflies and Totoro. Totoro is nice, I guess I can recommend it to you, but to me, so far, Ghibli films are good, but they haven’t left any huge impression on me.
Lol I don’t watch Ghibli films so I haven’t seen it either
I think the best way to potentially describe this is that I’m the rare type of person that does not work well with incredibly depressing material, truly horror-oriented material, and “hospital” things. If you can imagine watching something that takes your natural flow of energy and quickly and completely drains it from your body and/or makes you feel light-headed even if you hate what you are watching, then it makes some suggestions harder is all.
I don’t know what Grave is, but some people have told me to never watch it.
I’m the guy that asked how much horror is in Dies Irae and MLA before agreeing to read it. That doesn’t even start with something like Umineko. If Totoro is a nice watch then I will try to look around and see if I can enjoy it at some point thank you! 
I don’t mind sad stories so long as there’s a happy ending, as is the case in Key novels.
That is why to this day, I have yet to watch Anohana. I haven’t watched Grave of the Fireflies yet either.
Horror material is right out.
When it comes to Key works and anime, there is a clear difference between what Key is trying to do and what a true horror/utsuge is trying to do. I actually love emotionally moving material, but the psychological difference can be night and day. Anohana I’m not as sure about as I haven’t watched it yet.
In a way, that’s what makes Ghibli’s catalog so interesting and rewarding. Looking back I used the wrong attitude earlier when describing Grave and that’s my fault, and maybe one day I could do it. It just sounds like Totoro or Princess Kaguya or Marnie Was There or Nausicaa would be a much better or happier experience now. >-<
