Fate Stay Night

[Mixairian]

I didn't spot a topic dedicated to this series, so I figured I'd might as well make one.

The following is a brief synopsis of the series taken from www.anidb.net:

Emiya Shirou is a highschool boy who lives in Fuyuki City. His parents died in a fire when he was young, after that he was adopted by an old man who refer himself as a sorcerer, but he died too.
What Shirou doesn`t knew, is that the underground of Fuyuki City is the place of a great war.
When the time is right, sorcerers from near and far gather with their Servants - the summoned spirits of heroes so mighty they exist outside of time - and fight a war for possession of the Holy Grail, a relic said to grant its owner a wish. The true names of the Servants reveal their weaknesses, and so they are usually referred to by a classification of type instead; Saber, Archer, Rider, Berserker, Lancer, Caster, and Assassin.

One day, Shirou saw a fight between two servants, Archer and Lancer.
To preserve the secrecy of the war, Lancer mortally wounds him; but a girl who up until now seemed a normal classmate of his, Tohsaka Rin, saves his life using a magical pendant.
On his way home, Lancer attacked him again. Just before he`s about to die for good, the servant Saber appears before him, greeting him with the words "Are you my master?"

The series is only 24 episodes long and is pretty bad ass. There are numerous references to historical and mythological figures, though the series puts their own twist on each history.

Upon watching the whole series I felt disappointed as I had a load of questions. I assumed what was missing would simply be present within the manga. Upon investigation I discovered the series was in fact based on a "computer visual novel" or video game. It appears that the Fate Stay Night series is an amalgamation of the storylines that can be found within the game. The game itself provides more depth and information to the characters in Fate Stay Night and answered many of my question.

The source of my research of course came from wikipedia. Though I warn anyone who may be tempted to do research, there will be many spoilers.

The first half of the series was translated by a group called AonE but I eventually switched to a different group called Eclipse.

Of the two I advise Eclipse as the series has both Japanes, English and Geman and AonE did a poor job of translating certain points.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fate_stay_night
http://anidb.info/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=3348

The topic is intended for those who have seen the series so the possibility for spoilers is very present.