Summary

Fate/strange Fake premiered early to celebrate the Fate Series' 20th anniversary, invoking a classic running joke.
The series' supernatural spectacle makes the prospect of keeping the events a secret laughable in a tongue-in-cheek way.
Fate/strange Fake takes a new twist on the classic gas leak excuse, reflecting a more unpredictable Holy Grail War.

Title	Fate/strange Fake
Directors	Shun Enokido, Takahito Sakazume
Studio	A-1 Pictures
Release Date	11/23/2024 (Preview)

Fate/strange Fake recently premiered its first episode early in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Fate Series, and to the surprise of no one, it was quite cool. Amid speculation and anticipation for what is to come in the full series, there was some amusement to be had at the return of what has become one of the longest-running jokes in the series’ history.

After all, Fate - like many of Type-Moon’s affiliated stories - is a modern fantasy tale about mages, vampires, and other occult happenings hidden behind the normalcy of everyday life. When the supernatural battles therein escalate to the point when they can’t be hidden, cover stories need to be made, but one particular cover story gets played more than any other. Namely, the classic “gas leak” excuse.

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By Laura Gassert

Fate’s Penchant for Spectacle Is a Double-Edged Sword

Fate stay Night Unlimited Blade Worksposter

Ever since the original Fate/Stay Night visual novel was released on Windows in 2004, the supernatural spectacle of its story hasn’t exactly been discrete. The logline of this story and its many spinoffs is - most often - that a group of mages, or Masters, each summon a Heroic Spirit, or Servant, to follow their commands and battle other Master/Servant pairs. When one Master remains, they are granted a wish from the Holy Grail.

As the series has been adapted over the decades, and as its cultural identity has been defined through the work of animation studios like Ufotable, there is a certain style associated with it. Subsequently, that style - both storytelling/animation-wise - has made the secrecy of this world’s supernatural elements somewhat laughable. The fights from Unlimited Blade Works alone are a smorgasbord of multicolored explosions, each more beautiful in their destruction than the last.

How Is Any of this Kept Secret?

Fate’s action most frequently takes place under the cover of night, with mages often creating barriers that keep people away by subconsciously directing their attention elsewhere. On its own, this mechanic works to excuse smaller-scale battles. However, it’s hard to imagine even the most elaborate of barriers distracting the subconscious from the equivalent of a ballistic missile decimating half the treeline of the town’s adjacent hillside.

The fact that these excuses work, even remotely, is due in large part to the context. The Holy Grail War is a chaotic ritual but one which would be even more so without the remarkable oversight that goes into organizing it, much of which is only inferred to the viewer. In the case of Fate/Stay Night at least, it is a collaboration between the Mage families that founded the Grail War and the Holy Church, all of whom collaborate to cover up the truth of what is happening.

The Birth of a Running Joke

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The Church can alter people’s memories with magecraft while the Mage’s Association pulls strings to manipulate the media’s coverage of, say, a mysterious crater in the hillside. Most often, the excuse is that a gas leak created whatever explosion lit up the night sky, no matter how big or small. Even when Caster silently started draining citizens of their mana during Stay Night and putting them in a comatose state, the media reported the cause as a gas leak.

There’s a self-aware charm to the proliferation of this cover story. Not only is it just plain funny, but it offers some indication to the viewer that the people running the Grail War have enough connections that keeping a lid on things is perfectly manageable, even if not quite easy. And the grander the spectacle, the funnier the joke gets, but the newest entry in the series puts a clever spin on this classic gag through its execution.

How Fate/strange Fake Gives the Joke a Punchline

Fate/strange Fake - written by Ryogho Narita of Durarara fame - is set in America, in the fictional city of Snowfield, Nevada. This story tells of a new Grail War organized by a rogue collective of mages who have broken off from the Mage’s Association to replicate the Holy Grail War system. For a multitude of reasons, things get out of hand very quickly, and chaos is a huge part of this story’s identity, probably more than any Fate story to date.

This is where the classic gas leak joke takes on a new significance. Within a minute of the first episode, a newscaster reports the aftermath of Whispers of Dawn’s climactic battle as a gas leak, as if to tell longtime fans that Fate is back. However, if the rest of the Fate series operates on the understanding that whatever happens can be covered up, then Strange Fake looks at what happens when the people running the Grail War have to wrestle for that control.

The Gas Leak Excuse Won’t Cut It

In just the premiere, the vibe of the Grail War and the public attention directed at it feels decidedly more unpredictable. The fact that it ends with a Servant being arrested by the police is certainly original, but it says something about the handling of other Grail Wars that such a thing never even occurred before. The Masters played it smarter and the organizers had information control down to a science, no matter how chaotic the Servants were.

The Fate Series’ gas leak joke is a classic and though it’s not that deep in isolation, the way it is used speaks to the quality of the franchise’s worldbuilding. The elaborate construction, the way it is conveyed to the audience, and how the rules can be subverted to keep the franchise fresh and exciting after 20 years. In a funny way, it’s a microcosm of Fate’s simplest charms.

Fate/strange Fake: Whispers of Dawn is available to stream on Crunchyroll. Fate/strange Fake, Episode 1, “The Heroic Spirit Incident”, will be released on December 31, 2024.