That's it that's the post. I feel like I've basically run out of anime to watch that isn't either slice of life, isekai, or something that will emotionally break me. I watched one series of fate like maybe 15 years ago and can't remember anything about it. I just know there's a lot of it and that's basically it's only appeal to me right now. Something I can watch for a few months.
Is there something else that is long that I should go watch instead or is Fate worth watching.
Personally I'd say no.
You have to consider the highs and lows when deciding to embark on >20 hrs commitment to consume any particular media. I think the absolute high of the series is Carnival Phantasm, which is a joke slice of life OVA. It is legitimately fantastic.
But to enjoy Carnival Phantasm you have to understand Fate stories and Tsukihime. IMO, Fate never recovered from its origin of being a schlocky early 2000s visual novel with obligatory sex scenes. They awkwardly tied a critical in-story magic mechanic to sex, and the sex scenes are hilariously baaad and really out of place, until the 3rd timeline/storyline of Heaven Feel, where the themes are more mature, and even there it is still edgy. You generally have 3 options, 1. Just tank through the awkward and hilarious sex scenes. 2. Read the PG13 version, where they cuddle instead. But the cuddle version makes so much less sense in term or character relationship and growth compared to explicit sex version. 3. Just fast forward through the sex scene once you hear the sleazy porn music. You still suffer through the cons of (2) that you missed out on some genuine character development. And (4) skip the VN entirely, for anime adaptation, which is an adaptation of the PG13 VN, but there you still suffer the same caveats as some development in character relationship made less sense.
I'm not a prude or anything, but they never got around Fate's origin of being sleazy early 2000s VN. There's structural weakness around the storytelling, around the sex mechanic that they never patch up properly, and instead they build upwards onto spinoff games and multi-billion gacha game.
i think the vn is good, shirou is an all time dumb guy protagonist and i think nasu is good at doing all the big fantasy bullshit. but they asked about WATCHING fate and so they are locked in to 4 and don't have to worry about the sex, i guess minus the janky cg dragon during mana transfer rituals in the deen anime
i agree the sex is poorly done (though i'm willing to give the game the benefit of the doubt that at least a little of that is the translation being kinda stiff) and feels like an artifact of older styles of vn. like, i am not anti eroge, but fate is bad at the ero part