My Love-hate Relationship with Fate/Stay Night

LOVE:

• FSN's strength is characterizations: Each character has a unique design and unique abilities.

• Interesting magical abilities.

• Some really interesting characters that should have got more screen times (eg, Cu, EMIYA, Iskandar)

• A carefully thought-out plot showing how "fates" intertwine from events in Fate/Zero to UBW.

• Ufotable's unbeatable artwork + animation!


HATE:

Trying *too hard* to appeal to viewers, and that consists of:

• Gender-bending, fanservice (especially F/GO and F/Prillya)

• The typical harem trope with 3 types of girls: the flat chested, the medium-sized chest and the E-cups. The flat- or medium-chested girl tends to be assertive and the big-chested girl tends to be shy.

• Making Illya a loli, because the story really needs her to be a loli  /sarcasm.

• All of the main girls go for the MC. No girl ever goes for the grown men in FSN, not even in Hollow Ataraxia because god forbids a potential waifu to show interest in anyone else.

• Japanese "morality": 'Listen, although you're 17 years old, you shall not bring a girl home' without the female in the house getting jealous/territorial and proceeding to give you a lecture on morality.

• Saber and Shirou are given too much spotlight. Ok, I know they are the main characters of FSN, but is it necessary that 4 of the 6 fights in HF part 1 be given to Saber? UBW is not her route but you see her in most of the scenes nonetheless. Shirou is always given the final fights in all routes - like how Sailor Moon is always the one to save the day in every final battle in SM anime. I'd prefer the Servants playing a more active part.

• Romance in general is not very well done. There's either something missing or not right in all 3 romances in FSN. I think this can be overlooked when romance isn't the main focus in a particular route.

• The soap drama that is most of Heaven's Feel what tries too hard to guilt-trip viewers into liking the heroine. While I enjoy the dark plot and the fights in HF, the romance consists romantic tropes such as asking your love interest cheesy questions like, "Am I dirty?", "If I become a bad person, will you forgive me?", and the infamous, "I'll kill you [Shirou], then you'll be with me forever" (an extreme version of the failure in thinking that many people seem to have that they find killing your lover to seek "eternity" to be romantic).

• the damsel-in-distress proceeding to hatefuck the world trope.