Fate/Stay Night

Did You Know?

• The game requires minimal interaction; players read text and make choices at decision points, with an affection meter affecting endings.
• The original soundtrack was released in February 2004 through Geneon Entertainment, and an arranged soundtrack titled Avalon – Fate/Stay Night included English versions of the opening theme.

Plot

The story follows Shirou Emiya, a hardworking teenager who unknowingly enters the Fifth Holy Grail War, a to-the-death tournament between mages known as Masters and their summoned Servants—heroes from throughout history. Orphaned after a massive fire in Fuyuki City, Shirou was taken in by retired mage Kiritsugu Emiya, whose influence instilled in Shirou a strong desire for justice. One evening, after witnessing two powerful beings fighting at his school, Shirou is attacked by the spear-wielding Lancer. He is saved by Saber, a Servant of the Saber class, whose accidental summoning formalizes Shirou's entry as a Master. The first of three heroines, Saber keeps her identity secret and claims to be the strongest Servant. Shirou initially opposes Saber's aggressive tactics and seeks to ally with Rin. He abandons his pacifism when he learns that his former friend Shinji Matou, a Master with the Servant Rider, plans to sacrifice all students at their school to increase Rider's power.

Development

Author Kinoko Nasu began writing Fate/Stay Night in college, initially only completing what became the Fate route. He later conceived the idea of three distinct storylines. In early drafts, Saber was male and Shirou was a girl with glasses; this version was later realized in the OVA Fate/Prototype. After co-founding Type-Moon with artist Takashi Takeuchi and achieving success with Tsukihime in 2000, Nasu and Takeuchi decided to turn the old Fate story into a visual novel as Type-Moon's first commercial product. Takeuchi suggested swapping the protagonist's and Saber's genders to suit the bishōjo game market. Writer Futaro Yamada's novel Makai Tensho influenced Nasu to include famous heroic personalities from world history. The original prototype focused on a female master and a male King Arthur, containing 1980s romance elements and ideas of world transformation, while the final version emphasizes personal change. About a third of the Fate arc scenario was completed at that time, but Nasu could not continue writing for over ten years.

Adaptations

The first manga adaptation, illustrated by Datto Nishiwaki, was serialized in Shōnen Ace from February 2006 to December 2012, combining the Fate and Unlimited Blade Works scenarios with some Heaven's Feel elements. Twenty tankōbon volumes were released, and Tokyopop licensed it for English release in 2007; after Tokyopop's shutdown in 2011, Viz Media's Viz Select imprint re-released the first ten volumes digitally in 2014. A second manga, based on the Heaven's Feel route and illustrated by Taskohna, began serialization in Young Ace in May 2015. A third manga, based on Unlimited Blade Works and illustrated by Daisuke Moriyama, began in Dengeki Daioh in December 2021. Additionally, Himuro no Tenchi Fate/School Life, a comedy 4-koma manga by Eiichirou Mashin, was serialized in Manga 4-koma Kings Palette from November 2006 to January 2025.

Reception and sales

Fate/Stay Night was met with critical acclaim and quickly became one of the most well-known visual novels. It was the highest-selling visual novel on the adult game retailer Getchu.com in 2004 and the highest-selling computer game in the 2005 top 50 best-selling bishōjo games chart in Japan. In a 2007 Dengeki G's Magazine poll of 249 titles, it ranked second with 78 votes. The original PC version sold 400,000 copies; the PlayStation 2 version sold 184,558 in 2007 and 21,937 in 2009; the PlayStation Vita version sold 58,157 in 2013 and 86,836 in 2014, totaling 751,488 copies. In 2011, writers Chris Klug and Josiah Lebowitz cited it as a strong example of branching storylines. The Fate franchise took first place at Comiket 96 in 2019. The spin-off Fate/Grand Order grossed over $5 billion. The game is regarded as one of the most well-received visual novels ever published.