Fate/strange Fake

A new Holy Grail War is emerging in Snowfield, Nevada, where mages from around the world summon Servants, heroic spirits drawn from myth and history, to fight on their behalf. However, this war seems to differ from previous ones. The organization behind it appears to have used data from the Fuyuki Grail War for their ritual, resulting in strange happenings.

Unbeknownst to most participants, this budding conflict is actually a fake Grail War. There exists another set of seven true Servants who are summoned to fight in the genuine Holy Grail War. One of these Servants is a powerful Saber-class who saves the life of Ayaka Sajou, his apparent master, after being summoned.

With hidden agendas and unpredictable forces at play, the line between the fake and true Grail War becomes unclear, turning Snowfield into a dangerous battlefield.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Gilgamesh Main

Seki, Tomokazu Japanese

Enkidu Main

Kobayashi, Yuu Japanese

Saber Main

Ono, Yuuki Japanese

Sajou, Ayaka Main

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Saber Supporting

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Emiya, Kiritsugu Supporting

Koyama, Rikiya Japanese

Rider Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Kotomine, Kirei Supporting

Nakata, Jouji Japanese

Ishtar Supporting

Makino, Yui Japanese

Velvet, Waver Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Oowada, Tomoyuki Producer

Kurosaki, Shizuka Producer

Nagamine, Rieko Producer

Fujita, Sachio Producer

Reviews

Mar 28, 2026

Marinate1016

Recommended

Well-written

After what seemed like 100 years of delays and anticipation, Fate Strange Fake finally arrived and not only delivered on the high expectations I had for it, but exceeded them. Recency bias and all that, but idc, to me this is the best Fate series ever. It feels like a culmination of decades of world building and lore and a true love letter to type-moon and its fans. I’ll say right now, this is NOT for newcomers to Fate. I don’t care what any YouTuber or “influencer” on Twitter tries to say, you will not appreciate this series to the fullest extent if you’ve not ... at a minimum read both the original Stay Night and Hollow Ataraxia visual novels as well as seen or read Fate/Zero and to be honest, you’ll want to have seen at least a little of Kara no Kyoukai and player Tsukihime. Yea, it’s a lot, but there’s no rush on getting all of that done. Take your time, enjoy the journey and then come watch Strange Fake and experience one of the most well produced anime of all time.

Type-Moon is my favorite franchise of all time, so to get a series like Strange Fake that blends together so many different elements of the franchise from various series and has countless references to almost every corner of the TM universe just feels like a dream come true. Again, I can’t stress enough how important it is to come into this with prior knowledge of all the main series in TM because every single inch of this story is covered in references that will you have you pointing at the screen and jumping up and down like an idiot. If you’re at all familiar with Narita Ryōgo’s works, you know he’s a master of world building and character development with huge casts. Sometimes too much, actually. Fortunately, I feel like he nailed the balance in this one. It’s a massive cast with a wide range of personalities and motives, but they all feel memorable and distinct so you don’t forget characters like you can in some of his other works, *cough* dead mouth death play *cough* It also helps that the characters in Fate are usually historical figures so there’s some significant feat or trait to hold onto and that allows you to ingrain them into your memory. Not to mention the amazing and distinct character designs. It’s the largest holy grail war ever, but it’s not overwhelming. Combine that huge distinct cast with some of the best animation you’ve ever seen, and you got something special on your hands.

The production values are incredible here and I’ll get to that later, but outside of the general love letter to Type-Moon vibe Strange Fake has going on, what’s really amazing about this series is the sheer variety of characters and their complex motivations and relationships. Masters, servants, officiators, there’s someone in this series for everyone. I also think it’s really cool to have a Holy Grail War where you could genuinely root for multiple people to win it. Like in OG Fate everyone was obviously backing Emiya to come out on top. In Strange Fake, there’s not a set MC per se, so you could root for Ayaka and Saber, Flatt and his servant, if you like chaos you could go for Francesca or any of the other numerous contenders. It kind of reminds me of To be Hero X in that regard where every week a new character’s introduced, you get their backstory and then you fall in love. I think that makes things a lot more fun and interesting because it’s a more unpredictable story with a ton of likeable characters. So many people in this series have valid reasons for obtaining the Holy Grail and you don’t want to see any of them die, well, MOST of them anyway. I haven’t read the books yet, and at the pace they’re going here, I probably won’t need to(at least not right away) since we should get a full adaptation rather quickly, but I’m really interested in seeing how Narita ties everything together and resolves this in the end. It really doesn’t feel like a depressing sort of story where a lot of people would die, so I’m hoping for a rather optimistic ending here. I also HAVE to believe my Ayaka x Saber ship will sail because I love them so much. Romance isn’t anywhere near the main focus here, but it’s a very clear subtext to their dynamic that makes me want to root for them. They also have a lot of mutual trauma that they help each other through. I actually have this ship as right under Artoria and Emiya now. It’s just that good. I’m also a huge fan of Francesca, she’s basically had me in a chokehold for the last few months.

The ONE thing that gives me a little cause for concern with Strange Fake is that apparently they’ve adapted 6 books here in the first season which seems crazy to me. I mean on average, seasonal LN adaptations will do 3-4 books tops in a one cour series. If I’m not mistaken, there’s only 4 more books to go including the forthcoming final book in the series, so two seasons of the anime should just about wrap things up. On the surface, it seems like a lot of stuff would be cut, but from what I’ve heard from LN readers, there’s not much missing here so if that’s the case, hats off to the staff. As an anime only, I feel like everything’s been paced pretty well. Only thing I’d like to see is a little more screentime for a few characters, but that’s the nature of such a large ensemble cast.

I’m on record saying this numerous times and I don’t care, I’ll say it again. When given proper time and budget, A-1 pictures are the best animation studio outside of Kyoani. I fully believe they’re better than ufotable, I much prefer their more realistic highly expressive character animation to ufotable’s bright stylized stuff. That’s going to come down to personal preference, but to me, the way this show and sentenced to be a hero look is my ideal anime art style. The action sequences in Strange Fake are awe inspiring. There’s not a single fight in this show that won’t take your breath away and it’s made even better by the magisterial Sawano OST. My GOAT delivered some of his best ever work here and it elevated every single tense, emotional or high octane scene. Provant was on repeat for a solid month straight to the point I wore the song out. I can’t wait to do the same to every song in the OST once the full version drops.

Fate Strange Fake is the best the Fate series has ever been in my honest opinion and I couldn’t be happier with the job A-1 have done in bringing this to life. The story, direction, pacing, soundtrack and voice acting have all been top notch, I’ve had a blast watching the story gradually expand week after week and I cannot wait to see where it goes in the future.

Fate Strange Fake gets 10 out of 10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Mar 28, 2026

AlmightyLeek

Mixed Feelings

I'm just confused to be honest.

I guess this is my bad, I have only watched fate 0, stay night and unlimited blade works, so I'm probably missing a lot of context.

The anime does have a good production value, the VA, the animation et soundtrack are all A-Tier.

I have no idea what's happening though, so much info dumping with terms i've never heard before and I don't know if I'm missing important knowledge or if it's just the style of the anime to try and be "mysterious".

It's still very much watchable, despite its biggest flaw being a too bloated cast with some of the cringiest characters ... i've seen in anime (Jester or the Francisca-something twins are a pain to endure every time they have screen time) but some others are so greatly interesting it's not a big problem.

I just wish I understood more about why each character has this or that power and how it works

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 28, 2026

Supersonic_Pain

Not Recommended

Funny

tl;dr:
+ Good artstyle
+ Nice animation
+ Good music
~ Visually stimulating fights (even if it left me a little cold)
- Underbaked cast of characters, way too large
- Overreliance on previous Type-Moon works
- Feels like it's still building up the Holy Grail War for a lot of its runtime tbh

It's not the worst thing you can watch but the cast is way too large to give any character that much screentime or development and some just get absolutely NOTHING to work with. The fights are well-animated (as is the rest of the show), even if because of the lack of character development, it didn't do much for me. ... It's a well-produced show, I just didn't find the cast very grippable to latch onto and so once it finally DID get into full swing, it just left me kind of cold.
---
When I watched Whispers of Dawn to prepare for Fate/strange Fake, I was fairly optimistic. It looked good and it took the time to do a prologue to set up the pieces for the Holy Grail War, presumably so we could go relatively far into the War itself in the main season.

...boy, was I naive there.

There are just way too many characters to care about any of them. Hell, care about them? I don't even remember some of their names. If you told me at gunpoint to name all the Masters in this Holy Grail War, I could give you a summary of who they are but their names? Pssh.

Even the ones who get a bit more shine feel a little underbaked.

As some who are a bit more familiar with me may know, I may or may not have a fondness for girls with glasses. Ayaka kinda sucks here?

They spend the entire season trying to convince her to Get In The Robot and it's just not a very charming way to depict your protagonist. Maybe it'd work if she had a stronger cast around her (after all, I'm not the biggest fan of Shirou but at least Stay Night had Rin, Archer, Sakura, Shinji, Illya, etc.) but as the nominal protagonist of the show, I did not feel engaged or like her personality because she was just a giant wet blanket.

Honestly, she doesn't even have Protagonist Energy despite being Saber's Master. Sigma steals the show, not for being an entertaining character, but he just kind of comes in with a lot more Main Protagonist Energy.

I think the most notable, defined Master otherwise, for me, was Jester. As the de facto "villain" of the War, he does have cool powers and a cool relationship with his Servant but it's also kind of pathetic and his existence leads to one of my bigger issues with the show.

It loves to lean into any aspect of Type-Moon lore it can.

I think you could probably watch it without consooming any other Type-Moon mediacontent and you'd probably be fine (obviously, I've seen F/SN and I know the general gist of F/Zero, Tsukihime, etc. so I can't really say from an unbiased perspective) but Jester's mere existence is a giant nod to Tsukihime, they have an elongated reference to Zero in one scene, multiple characters are ripped straight from other Fate anime, Gilgamesh is there... it's literally just the Gilgamesh

Like do I think you'll be LOST if this is your first Fate anime? Probably not. I also don't know if you'll care much if you aren't a giant Type-Moonhead. Like I like F/SN but I'm here for Strange Fake and idk, man, don't need to see Waver Velvet every episode to know I'm watching Fate.

Anyway, even with the prologue, a lot of these characters are just totally forgettable by the sheer fact that they only get so little time amongst the lot of them that if you're not one of the chosen ones like Ayaka, Sigma, Francesca, etc, you might as well not even exist.

I said I didn't like Durarara all that much (which, like, I didn't hate it either) but even Durarara had a few characters I would actively say I liked and was a fan of. I liked Anri. I liked Shizuo. I liked Izaya. F/SF? Unless you're counting pre-existing attachments, to be honest, that number is 0.

Once the War gets in full swing, it kind of feels like a flaccid party popper. I was waiting for a while for the War to feel like it was finally picking up and then it does eventually get there and it just... I mean, yup, they sure are fighting, huh.

Are the fights good, at least?

I guess so, yeah. They are well-animated, didn't really do much for me. I'm not sure if it's because I don't care about the characters, the choreography is lacking, or both, but it just was Nice Animation to me, it's very visually stimulating, in any case.

To be honest, despite Ufotable's best efforts, I liked F/SN more for the characters than the hype and aura fights so Fate having kind of underwhelming fights despite being very visually stimulating is kind of par for the course.

It's not the worst show you could watch, I don't even think it's in the bottom 5 this season (that I saw, let alone the shit that I don't watch), it's just kind of forgettable.

No character was, like, actively annoying. The artstyle is nice. The music is nice. It had a couple of intriguing characters that could potentially be better characters if they had more screentime and focus. The fights were at least visually stimulating and fine enough.

I just... there's not really much here, at least for me, to enjoy.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	About the art style akiramado19 - Mar 29	1 replies	by KillerLovers »» 47 minutes ago
	Poll: Fate/strange Fake Episode 13 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Softhenic03 - Mar 28	110 replies	by magatetus »» 2 hours ago
	People who watched Strange Fake without prior Fate/Type Moon franchise knowledge have only themselves to blame Mavuika - Mar 28	21 replies	by magatetus »» 2 hours ago
	Poll: Fate/strange Fake Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) IzanaSolos - Jan 24	121 replies	by O_OSeeKing »» 4 hours ago
	Peak too soon - why the second half couldnt keep up AkshGintoki - Mar 29	8 replies	by Karnox001 »» 10 hours ago