English Dub Review: Fate/strange Fake: Whispers of Dawn

Overview

In a Holy Grail War, Mages (Masters) and their Heroic Spirits (Servants) fight for the control of the Holy Grail—an omnipotent wish-granting device said to fulfill any desire. Years have passed since the end of the Fifth Holy Grail War in Japan. Now, signs portend the emergence of a new Holy Grail in the western American city of Snowfield. Sure enough, Masters and Servants begin to gather… A missing Servant class… Impossible Servant summonings… A nation shrouded in secrecy… And a city created as a battleground. In the face of such irregularities, the Holy Grail War is twisted and driven into the depth of madness. Let the curtain rise on a masquerade of humans and heroes, made to dance upon the stage of a false Holy Grail.



Our Take

In a nutshell, Fate/strange Fake -Whispers of Dawn- adapts the first volume of the Fate/strange Fake novels. The rest of the story will be adapted in the upcoming TV anime adaptation, which -Whispers of Dawn. Based on the Light Novel written by Ryohgo Narita of “Durarara” and “Baccano” fame, and illustrated by Shidzuki Mori. It essentially serves as a jumping-on point for the aforementioned series much in the same way the Noblesse prequel tried. The only difference? This is dubbed and the Nobeless Prequel story currently isn’t dubbed at the time of this review.

Upon research, the story behind Fate/Strange Fake’s creation sounds pretty damn comical. What began as an April Fool’s joke soon blossomed into this wonderfully original idea. Well, not exactly original but the introduction of the servants, their respective masters, and a general foundation of what is to come is one that I haven’t seen in the other stories, especially in the sense of it can go any direction because the typical rules just don’t seem to apply, at least from what we’re seeing so far…

I do have to say though, the details in this anime are amazing. There’s nothing that is badly drawn, and even the background characters look great. The voice acting within the Dub and the special effects seem competent and the music is pretty decent from what I’ve heard so far, nothing crazy yet, but it’s only the beginning so that’s to be expected. And the entire segment with Gilgamesh and Enkidu works as visual eye candy, and there are a bunch of other moments that were neatly packed in a 50-minute special.

Overall, this was one hell of a way to begin a new series,.It mostly works for longtime fans to connect the narrative dots. I’m saying this because I’m going into this franchise completely blind. I heard about the videogames, light novels, manga, and Anime by name, but didn’t know this show was as big as Jojo’s bizarre adventure in terms of scale and world-building or that each story/season takes place in different time periods. But at the very least the production as a whole felt very high quality as shown through the epic music and animation quality. Hopefully, the rest of this series keeps this momentum going.