Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Bladeworks (2014) Route 1 Alternative – Should You Start Here?

The Age Old Question

As with any larger franchise, this question always seems to come up:  where should I start? It’s a seemingly simple question without an equally straightforward answer. If you have been following my Fate journey thus far you’d notice that each has a “route” in the article’s title and wondered why I bothered putting it there. In part this is to help you, the reader, navigate the articles in a sensible way as to have my thoughts presented more cohesively, but even more so it acts as a general watch order suggestion. That brings us back to this article which you may have noticed is labeled “route 1 alternative” much like the review of the 2006 and 2010 Deen adaptations, so what gives?

Fate/Apocrypha Extra Route 1 – Fate’s Battle Royale

Exceeding Expectations… (Mostly)

When I announced I’d be working my way through the Fate franchise, primarily the mainline stuff, K at the Movies suggested to me that I add Fate/Apocrypha to the list. After Zero, I thought I could use something to break things up and didn’t want to dive into Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya quite yet so this felt right. Lucky for me, this is actually a solid way to follow Zero, so for those of you wishing to dive in on the franchise in a similar fashion I can happily suggest this upfront for you. As for anyone else? Well, you’ll just have to read on to hear more.

Fate/Zero Route 0 – Where it all Began…

What I Wanted from Fate

When I previously watched and reviewed Fate/Stay Night (2006), I made no secret of the fact that I enjoyed it but found the series to have multiple issues. I had guessed that watching something like Fate/Zero would have made going backwards a lot harder for myself, and I suspect newer fans would be of no exception. Now that I’ve watched Fate/Zero, I can safely say that the order I chose to view these titles in was indeed the correct one as this was easily the better of the two experiences. To put things simply, Fate/Zero was everything I wanted out of the Fate franchise the first time around, a polished version of what was first attempted in 2006.

Fate/Stay Night (2006) & UBW Route 1 – My Fate Journey Begins…

A Great Place to Start?

For the past few years I’ve slowly been collecting all of the mainline Fate entries along with a few other editions in order to finally dive into the franchise in full. With both season 15 and 16 of #AniTwitWatches my chance to start finally came. During this period we watched both of Deen’s adaptations of Fate/Stay Night (2006) and the Unlimited Blade Works film. Rather than do a typical review, I’m electing to instead discuss my expectations with each and my general thoughts on the franchise moving forward as I prepare to continue this journey deeper into the fandom.

#Anitwitwatches Season 15 – Fate/Stay Night & Another Announcement!

Welcome to the Fifteenth #Anitwitwatches!

After a bit of a hiccup with RahXephon, it’s time to say goodbye and welcome in our newest watch:  Fate/Stay Night (2006)! Not only am I super excited to finally be diving into a long-beloved franchise but with this watch comes some exciting news as well. This will be the FIRST of many Fate related content streams coming your way here at Jon Spencer Reviews. You may remember my Hunter x Hunter and JoJo retrospectives, and if you do, then you have an idea of what to expect. The biggest difference is that for the first installment I’ll be joined with friends as we discuss the series LIVE via Twitter. After that, I’ll continue the journey with other seasons, which may just have a surprise or two of their own along the way!

Below you’ll find information on what the watch is as well as the schedule for the fifteenth season of #anitwitwatches. Thank you to everybody who has participated in the past and all of you who will be joining for the first time with this series!

What is #Anitwitwatches?

This is a weekly community event meant to bring folks together to revisit old favorites and discover new shows. It’s meant to be something you can get as involved in as you want, there is no pressure to participate every week or every watch, but we’d love to have you to share in the experience and discuss the shows we are watching all the same!

I was inspired to do this after seeing the “rewatches” that people do over at Reddit in the r/anime sub. Since I interact with a lot of you guys on Twitter, I thought it would be the perfect place to do something similar! That said, even if you do not have a Twitter you can still join in by posting any content via WordPress, YouTube, or whatever suits your fancy. If you do, be sure to send me an email at jonspencerreviews@gmail.com so I can share your wonderful creations!

For everyone else, simply watch the episodes for the week based on the schedule below. Make sure to use the hashtag, #anitwitwatches when you do, and that’s it! Discuss with the other folks participating, create content, and generally just have a fun time!

This next show was chosen based on YOUR votes, so let’s get to the watch schedule.

Fate/Stay Night Schedule

We will only be taking our usual one week break for this one, so meet back on the 22nd of November to get started. Be sure to save the schedule so you can stay up to date with all the conversation.

If you have not done so, you can see where you can watch Fate/Stay Night for free, and legally, by using justwatch.com. Unfortunately, I cannot realistically check all regions but I aimed to make this as accessible as possible. That said, I won’t stop you from doing what you need to in order to participate. The more the merrier!

Here are the dates (all Mondays) and the episodes for each, please keep in mind that Monday’s are the main days for discussion but you basically have the whole week to watch (if you need to miss a week or whatever, that’s all good too):

That’ll make this watch 10 weeks long. Note some weeks are three episode weeks, so feel free to spread out your watching or do some early viewing and post your discussion notes later. I hope you’re excited to watch this one and I look forward to all the excellent discussion!

The 30 Day Anime Challenge Day 5 – Anime That I’m Ashamed I Enjoyed?

It’s a Question Without an Answer

Real quick, here is the schedule so you can see what has been done and what is to come still. Today is day five and I’ll be tackling what many would consider the, “guilty pleasure” anime question. Well this is going to be really easy for me, I don’t have one. That being said, it would be boring to leave it at that, so let’s dive a little more deeply on this one.

What’s Jon Doing? June 2016

Hope Everybody Doing Well!

This is the second ‘What’s Jon Doing?’ article

I didn’t receive any feedback on last month’s ‘What’s Jon Doing?’ so if I don’t get any this month I’ll be scrapping the idea altogether. I don’t mind doing this and as you may have noticed, I updated last month’s article nearly every other day. I cannot stress enough how important it is to let me know if you enjoy this sort of thing or not. With that, let’s get this thing started!