Necromancing Ancient Heroes and Heroines in the Fate Anime Series

Abstract The Fate series is a collective of Japanese manga, video games, and anime centered on the fictional “Holy Grail Wars,” where mages summon “Heroic Spirits” from mythology and history to battle to the death. The anime has gained popularity in North America since it began appearing on Netflix in 2015, a surge partly owed to Fate’s incorporation of heroic figures from European premodernity. In this chapter we employ the characters of Alexander the Great, Atalante, and Nero as representative case studies in how Fate adapts “Classical” heroes to certain character tropes that pervade Japanese anime. These transformations are rooted in a command of the ancient sources such that the characters’ embodiment of modern, Japanese tropes appear as natural extensions from Greco-Roman traditions.