You need years of Fate lore to understand what's happening, then Sawano's score hits and you stop caring about the plot. This is a technical showcase disguised as a Holy Grail War, animation that moves like it costs money, fight choreography that uses weight and space, a soundtrack that makes standing still feel cinematic. The cast is too large to care about most of them as people, but watching servants collide in Snowfield is why you're here.

A new Holy Grail War takes shape in Snowfield, a city in Nevada, where mages from across the world summon Servants, heroic spirits of myth and history, to fight for an all-powerful wish-granting Grail. Years after the Fifth Holy Grail War in Japan, this contest is riddled with irregularities: one Servant class is missing, summonings occur that should be impossible, a nation keeps its secrets, and the city itself was made to serve as a battleground. The ritual appears to draw on data from the Fuyuki war, and most participants do not know it is a counterfeit. A separate set of seven true Servants is summoned for the genuine war, among them a mighty Saber who rescues Ayaka Sajou, apparently his master. Concealed motives and unpredictable forces surface, and the boundary between the false and true wars grows blurred, turning Snowfield into a place of lies and danger.