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This Week in Anime - Did Fate/Apocrypha's Great Holy Grail War End Well?


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Eddy564



Joined: 14 Sep 2008
Posts: 340
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:58 pm Reply with quote
I ended up enjoying Fate Apocrypha so much more than I thought I would. And even though the story wasn’t particularly character centric, I do think they handled various themes pretty well. This is a show where theme is more important than its characters and while everyone won’t agree with that, I thought it was refreshing from previous iterations of the Fate series that are very character-centered.

And I thought the ending was very suitable and quite frankly, beautiful. And I was surprised that it was considering the pacing to get to it wasn’t exactly great.
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Scion Drake



Joined: 25 Nov 2017
Posts: 959
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 2:00 pm Reply with quote
Eh this show was mediocre.

I like tuned out half-way through the show & just stopped watching.

I give it a thumbs down.
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Eddy564



Joined: 14 Sep 2008
Posts: 340
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 2:09 pm Reply with quote
Scion Drake wrote:
Eh this show was mediocre.

I like tuned out half-way through the show & just stopped watching.

I give it a thumbs down.


Then this topic clearly isn’t for you lol. It’s for those who got through the series and watched the finale. It’s regarding the second cour.

And to be completely honest the second half is much more satisfying than the first, although both have their fair share of weaknesses.
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Scion Drake



Joined: 25 Nov 2017
Posts: 959
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 2:14 pm Reply with quote
Eddy564 wrote:
Scion Drake wrote:
Eh this show was mediocre.

I like tuned out half-way through the show & just stopped watching.

I give it a thumbs down.


Then this topic clearly isn’t for you lol. It’s for those who got through the series and watched the finale. It’s regarding the second cour.

And to be completely honest the second half is much more satisfying than the first, although both have their fair share of weaknesses.


Honestly even then, the fact Sieg got Jeanne in the end completely just ruins it for me.

He does not deserve a real person. If he had to romance someone it should have been a completely fictional character.
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JacobC
ANN Contributor


Joined: 15 Jan 2008
Posts: 3728
Location: SoCal
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 2:18 pm Reply with quote
Scion Drake wrote:


Honestly even then, the fact Sieg got Jeanne in the end completely just ruins it for me.

He does not deserve a real person. If he had to romance someone it should have been a completely fictional character.


But...they're both fictional characters.

They're ALL fictional characters.

...what?! Anime dazed
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jr240483



Joined: 24 Dec 2005
Posts: 4448
Location: New York City,New York,USA
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 2:23 pm Reply with quote
Eddy564 wrote:

Then this topic clearly isn’t for you lol. It’s for those who got through the series and watched the finale. It’s regarding the second cour.

And to be completely honest the second half is much more satisfying than the first, although both have their fair share of weaknesses.


unfortunately the storyline will more or less mean nothing if they indeed to an anime adaptation of Grand Order since in the game, all of the servants have zero memories of the events of the other series. especially jean and servants from FSN like saber and archer!

Quote:
Anyway, I guess that's more or less my takeaway from Fate/Apocrypha. It's got plenty of problems, there's some pretty big failings at its core, but so much of it is just so darn entertaining that I can't hold anything against it too much. It's a mess, but it does go down smoother than UBW.



that's because after the DEEN version of FSN , every other ufotable anime adaptation of the fate series have been more or less 100% faithful towards their source materials and both apocrypha & UBW is no exception. its one of many reason why i like the deen version and their attempt on having all three routes in that series while having that series end with the fate/road to avalon route.
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DmonHiro





PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:37 pm Reply with quote
Scion Drake wrote:
He does not deserve a real person. If he had to romance someone it should have been a completely fictional character.

Uhm... what the heck do you even mean by that?
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Scion Drake



Joined: 25 Nov 2017
Posts: 959
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:45 pm Reply with quote
DmonHiro wrote:
Scion Drake wrote:
He does not deserve a real person. If he had to romance someone it should have been a completely fictional character.

Uhm... what the heck do you even mean by that?


Just being petty, don't mind it.

I really don't like the guy.
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Emdykay



Joined: 14 Nov 2017
Posts: 85
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 4:04 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Fate in general is a compelling mess, but it's exactly the kind of compelling mess that entices me to the weird corners of storytelling you so often found in anime, manga, and visual novels.


Yeah, that basically sums the Fate franchise up, with Zero straying from the rest maybe.
It always had some crazy and creative ideas and didn´t think too much about how all of it would fit together, it just did what it thought was fun and interesting to read, watch or play. And despite all the uncanny moments, clumsy writing or awful pacing it has produced along the way there is something strangely compelling about a story that is often just so unique, filled with great concepts and ideas, with both it´s great and undeniably bad moments.

Apocryphas greatest shortcoming sure was putting the least compelling characters at the center of the story, Sieg and Jeanne, while sidelining some extremly charming ones, like Moedred and Shishigou...
My second complaint would be the character depth and complexity, while quite a few are absolutely fun to watch, they stop there. Especially FSN showed some great understanding of characters myths and stories, going beyond the superficial knowledge and portrayals you usually see of them, and reinterpreting them to explore it´s themes in a creative way. Something that I felt was painfully absent for most of Apocrypha, with some characters that could have boundless potential like Atalante or Achilles remaining pretty pale throughout the show.
Also it just screwed out exposition, basically assuming the fans get the gist of what is going on and the newbies will be confused anyway and exposition would only waste time^^
On the plus side it was entertaining, simply put. A lot of the comedy did it´s job just fine and especially the last episodes are an action feast, coming from someone who is not a big fan of netgen animation, even without the thematical depth behind it I would want a Fate show to have.
Overall to me this is one of the weaker installments of the Fate franchise, but definetly not a bad one.

And by the way, please put someone who has actually played or is at least familiar with the original Fate/Extra on those reviews, because the way that one seems to be setup it might be deliberately screwing with the expectations one might have coming in with knowledge of the original Very Happy

jr240483 wrote:

unfortunately the storyline will more or less mean nothing if they indeed to an anime adaptation of Grand Order since in the game, all of the servants have zero memories of the events of the other series. especially jean and servants from FSN like saber and archer!


Well, they normally wouldn´t as the Throne of Heroes basically just has a blueprint of the character in storage and every time they are summoned a brand new copy is summoned without knowledge of what happened when summoned as heroic spirit previously. Saber was an exception cause she simply wasn´t technically dead yet when summoned in Zero and Stay Night and thus could remember the events of Zero.
On top of that basically every story branch in the Nasu(multi)verse is it´s own continuity and universe and not one continous timeline, if even considered canon.
If characters do remember previous summonings it´s mostly because the writers think it would make a fun joke Wink


Last edited by Emdykay on Thu Feb 15, 2018 4:11 pm; edited 2 times in total
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OtherSideofSky





PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 4:09 pm Reply with quote
I genuinely do not understand how anyone is supposed to even know what's happening in Apocrypha without having read the books. The anime cuts literally every single thing that was revealed through narration (even characters' internal monologues in a lot of cases) in addition to a lot of fairly significant establishing scenes (Darnic showing Fiore the grail under the castle, Jeanne meeting with Vlad prior to the first big battle, etc.), leaving characters' motivations tenuous at best in a lot of cases and totally removing the larger context of most events. The fights, while flashy and sometimes fun to watch, are pretty much equivalent to totally unexplained Stand battles for the same reason. There was a lot of fairly technical detail in how they play out that made them fun to follow on paper (Apocrypha has the best written fight scenes of the Fate novels, even if it's probably the worst overall), but in the anime they're just a lot of shouting and flashing lights.

Honestly, the whole show just feels like a greatest hits reel of a story that already had serious issues with a lack of focus and direction. They really needed to be more deliberate about what they cut, because having some arcs fully fleshed out and others totally sidelined would have been way better than getting rushed snippets of all of them.

I also really hate the way cuts for time and bland animation direction ruin the whole conflict with Jack. I remember it as standing out in the novels as a tense, tightly-paced cat and mouse game that made a really good contrast to the big, bombastic fights before and after it, but the anime really failed to deliver on the impact of that arc's best moments. Hopefully the infinitely superior Berserker Jack will get better treatment if Strange Fake ever gets an adaptation.
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getumbuck



Joined: 15 Feb 2008
Posts: 198
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 4:11 pm Reply with quote
This was easily one of the worst Fate series I've seen in recent years. I remember reading the first two books a few years ago and really liking it, but some of the animation was just so dam ugly in this anime; especially some of the final few battles. It felt like they couldn't make up their mind which style they wanted to use in some episodes and would just change it up randomly. I remember Vlad's transformation in the novel being terrifying, but on the show they animated him so stupidly I couldn't stand it. I almost laughed at what the show did to Vlad and several of the other characters.

The sad truth is this series was all style and no substance, especially the ending, which just comes out of nowhere. I also couldn't relate to any of the characters and as a result I never care when a character died. In fact this series only had one moment that made me smile and it was probably one that went over many peoples heads. It was when Waver reveals that he still has a piece of Ridder's coat and still remembers him.
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AksaraKishou



Joined: 16 May 2015
Posts: 1414
Location: End of the World
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 4:13 pm Reply with quote
jr240483 wrote:


unfortunately the storyline will more or less mean nothing if they indeed to an anime adaptation of Grand Order since in the game, all of the servants have zero memories of the events of the other series. especially jean and servants from FSN like saber and archer!


Nop, As it turns out, just about characters from certain franchises, like Semiramis, Shiki, Atalante, Shakespeare, all that jazz, all have memories of what happened, so varying degrees. Heck, during the JP Valentines event Semiramis has a few lines for Shakespeare, Atalante and event one or two for Shiro spoiler[where she more or less says she knows what happened in Apocrypha, even the kiss, and want is ready to !#!"# FGO's MC. Well, it's what is implied from that sentence at least]


Last edited by AksaraKishou on Thu Feb 15, 2018 8:41 pm; edited 1 time in total
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encrypted12345



Joined: 25 Jan 2012
Posts: 724
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 4:51 pm Reply with quote
Eddy564 wrote:
Scion Drake wrote:
Eh this show was mediocre.

I like tuned out half-way through the show & just stopped watching.

I give it a thumbs down.


Then this topic clearly isn’t for you lol. It’s for those who got through the series and watched the finale. It’s regarding the second cour.

And to be completely honest the second half is much more satisfying than the first, although both have their fair share of weaknesses.


I'm of the opinion that the first half was better overall, but the second half (while having a weak beginning and middle) had a really, really strong batch of last few episodes.
Emdykay wrote:

jr240483 wrote:

unfortunately the storyline will more or less mean nothing if they indeed to an anime adaptation of Grand Order since in the game, all of the servants have zero memories of the events of the other series. especially jean and servants from FSN like saber and archer!


Well, they normally wouldn´t as the Throne of Heroes basically just has a blueprint of the character in storage and every time they are summoned a brand new copy is summoned without knowledge of what happened when summoned as heroic spirit previously. Saber was an exception cause she simply wasn´t technically dead yet when summoned in Zero and Stay Night and thus could remember the events of Zero.
On top of that basically every story branch in the Nasu(multi)verse is it´s own continuity and universe and not one continous timeline, if even considered canon.
If characters do remember previous summonings it´s mostly because the writers think it would make a fun joke Wink


It's a bit complicated, but IIRC, the original Heroic spirit can learn about the antics of their summoned copies while inside the Throne of Heroes. The Servants don't know the future though because in the end, they are only imperfect copies of the original Heroic Spirit. It's why Heroic Spirit Jeanne met up with Sieg in the end of Fate/Apocrypha even though it's the Servant Jeanne that technically fell in love with him. ... I think. Like I said, it's complicated.
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switchgear1131



Joined: 14 Mar 2013
Posts: 219
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 7:06 pm Reply with quote
I am 1000% in agreement and on board for a show that is just Mordred and her Master as the main characters.
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FilthyCasual



Joined: 01 Jun 2015
Posts: 2370
PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 8:36 pm Reply with quote
Emdykay wrote:
And by the way, please put someone who has actually played or is at least familiar with the original Fate/Extra on those reviews, because the way that one seems to be setup it might be deliberately screwing with the expectations one might have coming in with knowledge of the original :D

That's going to be rough, given that wikihumping won't help for LE. Then again whoever reviews it has a solid six months at least to track down an LP or buy a PSP.
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