How Does the Fate Franchise Work in Anime? We Can Explain!

Summary:

• Many people try to get into the Fate franchise, which is known for being confusing — somewhat unfairly.
• You either start with Fate/Zero or Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works and work your way from there.
• Pretty much everything else is a spin-off set in an alternate universe.
• The entire Fate franchise is a subsection of Nasuverse, which covers things created by Kinoko Nasu.

The Fate franchise earned the reputation of being confusing and hard to get into. Despite that, more and more people want to get into it each year, and while the general recommendation is to start with Fate/Zero, they often get lost after that.

The reputation is somewhat unfair: the franchise is not that confusing. Most of the series are actually spin-offs set in alternate universes that only require the basic knowledge of the mechanics of the franchise to work. That said, some of them do have other prerequisites that require at least some explanation.

The basic premise is fairly simple: seven mages summon servants — historical figures from the past — to fight in a battle royale for the Holy Grail, which is supposed to grant wishes. Of course, it wouldn’t be Fate if at least half of these rules weren’t broken in any given entry.

Okay, so where do I start?

The “where to start?” question is actually fairly easy. The best way to start the Fate franchise is undoubtedly to read the Fate/stay night visual novel — however, it is extremely long and many fans don’t want to read VN anyway. Moreover, the VN has 3 routes that have to be played in the exact order, which, to many, seems like an odd way to do things.

The widely accepted best anime starting point is Fate/Zero, which is a prequel light novel and anime series to Fate/stay night. It explains the mechanics of the world fairly well and doesn’t require anything before it, although it does somewhat spoil all three routes of Fate/stay night.

A friendly reminder, though: if you watch it, don’t expect the other parts of the franchise to be this dark — most of them actually aren’t.

The other decent starting point is the ufotable TV anime adaptation of the second route of the visual novel, Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works.

The movie adaptation by DEEN compresses it way too much, and the DEEN Fate/stay night TV anime of 2006 is supposed to adapt the first route, but includes content from other ones as well, which makes many fans disregard it completely. Expectedly, though, Unlimited Blade Works spoils Fate/Zero a bit.

After watching one of these two, you usually watch the other — and then follow it up with the Fate/stay night: Heaven’s Feel trilogy of movies, which adapts the third route of the original VN.

These movies are pretty dark, but absolutely worth it. Outside of these and the aforementioned series by DEEN, pretty much everything else is a spin-off set in an alternate universe.

Fate/Grand Order

The biggest alternate universe to Fate/stay night is probably that of Fate/Grand Order (FGO), which is originally a gacha game. The game is somewhat infamous for having players donate large sums of money to it.

Despite that, it introduces many key lore concepts, explains the basics pretty well and has a good storyline — provided you get through the repetitive gameplay.

The game consists of two parts, as well as an optional part 1.5, but nothing past the first part is adapted. The first part itself has 8 arcs and a prologue — of which only 3 and said prologue are adapted.

The prologue, adapted into a long special called Fate/Grand Order: First Order, basically covers the start of the game 1:1. The other adaptations of FGO actually cover the last 3 arcs.

Divine Realm of the Round Table – Camelot consists of two movies that cover arc 6. Absolute Demonic Front – Babylonia is a TV anime adaptation of arc 7, which, if you watch from Episode 0, actually gives you just enough context to follow it as a standalone.

It is followed by the adaptation of the finale of the first part of the game, Final Singularity – Grand Temple of Time: Solomon.

Various spin-offs

As mentioned above, almost everything else is set in alternate universes. The exception is Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note, which follows Waver Velvet after the events of Fate/Zero — but the canon status of it is dubious at best.

Notable spin-offs include Fate/Apocrypha and Fate/strange Fake, which heavily modify the basic rules behind the Holy Grail War. The latter currently only has one TV special, but there’s a sequel series in the works, adapting the light novels by the same name.

There’s also Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya, which starts as a light-hearted, fanservice-filled magical girl spin-off and slowly proceeds towards being much more serious and dark than viewers initially expect. However, it is somewhat polarizing due to its nature.

Another curious case is Fate/Extra: Last Encore. Many fans were extremely confused about the anime: it is not an adaptation of the Fate/Extra series of games, but rather a sequel to a bad ending that wasn’t supposed to have a sequel — and it also introduces concepts that even game fans weren’t familiar with. The abstract visuals by studio Shaft certainly didn’t help.

Other things

Of course, the franchise has many light-hearted and outright comedic spin-offs as well. Today's Menu for the Emiya Family (Emiya-san Chi no Kyou no Gohan) is a slice-of-life cooking anime featuring the cast of the original Fate/stay night series. Many people enjoy it for its wholesomeness, some even without watching any other Fate content.

Carnival Phantasm is a much-beloved parody series that covers not just Fate content, but pretty much everything in the Nasuverse. Nasuverse is a global term that covers everything made by the creator of Fate, Kinoko Nasu — which includes the Fate franchise (yes, including the spin-offs, some of which we didn’t even mention).

Other notable anime in the Nasuverse include The Garden of Sinners (Kara no Kyoukai), Lunar Legend Tsukihime (Shingetsutan Tsukihime) — although this is such a bad adaptation of its visual novel that many fans pretend it doesn’t exist — and the upcoming Witch on the Holy Night (Mahoutsukai no Yoru) movie.