The Ghost and the Lady (黒博物館 スプリンガルド) by Kazuhiro Fujita

 I have generally made it a rule not to randomly attend industry panels anymore. For the longest time, you can see almost any announcements instantly thanks to Crunchyroll News and Anime News Network when they cover conventions. On top of that between fans, bloggers, journalist, and industry reps I have found that Twitter covers all of your other bases. You can even often ask the people running the panel a question over Twitter. But I recently realized I might have spoken a little too soon. What I should have said is that anime panels are not that big a priority but there are some unexpected benefits to going to manga panels.

I say that because I realized that streaming makes people aware of 95% of what is playing in Japan at any time. Other than kids shows and some odd exceptions you can watch almost every major TV show and most of the minor ones. Therefore I feel most hardcore fans have a decent awareness of what is available and what anime is out there. On the other hand, manga is still mostly an ocean of undiscovered country. You need to be able to read Japanese and have access to manga magazines and manga apps to even have a decent overview of what comes out every week in manga.

This problem is only compounded by the fact that I always feel the manga localization companies are mediocre at making people aware of anything but their most prominent titles. Vertical is probably the best about advertising their whole catalog but at most I can only name the big titles from most companies unless I have a personal investment in some of their other series. I am regularly shocked when I see half of  VIZ’s catalog because I was totally unaware that many of their titles exist let alone they were licensed.  I don’t claim to be an advertising wizard that has the solution to this lack of penetration but it is clearly a case where most fans who care have to put in the work otherwise they can easily miss some gems.

One of those diamonds in the rough is The Ghost and the Lady. I had been trying to see as much anime and manga content at NYCC in 2016 one of the panels I attended was the Kodansha Comics panel. There I saw several titles I was totally unaware of. The one that interested me the most was a historical supernatural tale that teamed up Florence Nightingale with Man in Grey of Drury Lane. It has secret histories, magic, dueling, and mystery. SOLD!

If I had not gone to that panel I would have never known this existed. That would distinctly be a shame because this is all up my alley. (I also might have gotten Florence Nightingale as a Servant in Fate/Grand Order so I am doubly interested in various interpretations of her now. That is sort of silly but it is true none the less.)

The Curator of Scotland Yard’s Black Museum receives a very unusual visitor wishing to tell the story of one of the items in their care. It turns out the older gentleman is possessed by a spirit who can explain the mysterious bullet in their position. It is a tale of the resolute Florence Nightingale, her mysterious ghostly companion, and the horrors of the Crimean War. The story begins with Nightingale going to the Drury Lane Theater asking its ghostly inhabitant to kill her.

Before I go any further I would just like to mention that Kazuhiro Fujita is also the author of Ushio & Tora. Much like Osamu Akimoto going from Kochikame to a manga about Post-Civil War manga, this is a fairly interesting change from what they are known for. Parts of The Ghost and the Lady hint that both series could be by the same author but these are not series you would automatically assume had a common origin. The strange mixture of friendship and antagonism that is a hallmark of Ushio & Tora is also present in The Ghost and the Lady but Ushio and Tora are 100% different on most other levels than Florence and Grey. You would never mistake one manga for another in any way shape or form. I always admire when a creator can pivot from one project to another and not feel like they are redoing the same work but still be entertaining.

I have always really enjoyed historical fiction. It combines what I like about straight history with the unlimited realms of fantasy and imagination. That is why I still recommend people watch Le Chevalier D’Eon as an anime. Florence Nightingale is an interesting subject because she is a is someone most people can recognize while still not knowing that much about her. Most everyone knows that she was influential on modern nursing but unless you have an interest in details of the lives of famous 19th-century English women that is probably all you know. While this is a highly fictional account of her life it still examines much of how she reformed nursing and became the angelic hero of the Crimean War despite many obstacles.

But this is far more than a dry text like the worse of the historical comics. One of the main conceits of the series is that there are Eidolons that hover over people and represent their darkest emotions and desires. As a ghost, Grey can see this as they exist on the same ethereal plane. Florence also seems to have a spiritual awareness that allows her to see both ghosts and Eidolons. Whenever people are in conflict these Eidolon clash with the victor being the person who wins the engagement. This allows what would otherwise dry arguments about propriety, procedure, and politics into supernatural battles. Florence still has to win the argument verbally. It just allows the struggle to have a vibrant visual flair.

While Grey continually claims to be waiting to kill Florence he is clearly her guardian and companion. But since he is so standoffish it makes sure that Florence must always be the proactive agent in her own life. Grey never chooses which challenge she will pick next, how she will tackle that problem, and often even tries to deter her from risky or difficult tasks. In the end, he mostly just acts as support when she finally puts her nose to the grindstone. This makes Florence the heroine and protagonist of the series and Grey acts as her companion and not the other way around.

I can’t guarantee that everyone who loves Ushio & Tora is going to find what they loved in that series here. These are two very different stories with wildly different appeals. At the same time if you are lukewarm on Ushio & Tora and/or shonen fighting then this series still has a good deal of potential to appeal to you. The Ghost and the Lady is a series for anyone who likes historical settings with an exciting dash of the fantastical.

If you were unaware of this series before now I understand. So was I. Now that you know about the manga you need to go out and see what it is all about.

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To Your Eternity by Yoshitoki Oima

In both a A Silent Voice and To Your Eternity, Yoshitoki Oima explores emotion, and holds the readers’ emotions in her hands. She takes a deep look into the human soul. In her new series, To Your Eternity she brings to life a fantasy landscape rife with danger, sacrifice, and beauty.

A mysterious all-powerful being sends an orb known simply as “It” into the world to observe. It can take the form of anything first inhabiting a rock, then a dog, then a boy, then . . . so on. It is immortal and can heal any damage done to it though it may take a little time. As it moves through the world It begins to learn more about human language, emotion, and motivations.

March, a happy child who dreams of being a mother one day, and Parona, an ostracized young woman warrior, have become close in their village. But Parona is wary of the tribe’s beliefs. Things come to a head when March is carted off as the latest child sacrifice to their god. March, then Parona, encounter It while in the midst of trying to escape this fate.

In a brutal world of superstition, gods, and miracles It, March, and Parona become bound together. To Your Eternity explores what it means to truly be alive and to live.

“They way you live isn’t something given to you! It’s something you win for yourself!”

At only eleven chapters in, To Your Eternity is absolutely compelling. However, I’m finding it hard to predict what this story’s goal will be. Will It, March, and Parona be the story? Will everyone die and It move on to some here-to-unknown scenario? Will It continuously meet people, observe their stories, then travel onward? Any of these scenarios feel possible.

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~ kate

 I feel it is best to start with a brief introduction of what Anime Tamago is. If you’re a longtime reader of the blog you will have seen our previous reviews of the Young Animator Training Project films. Since 2010 four short animated films are funded by the project in hopes of encouraging new talent in the anime industry. If you have ever heard about the project it was most probably because of either Little Witch Academia or Death Billiards. They were the biggest titles that the project has produced. Both of them have their own TV series and developed a dedicated fan following. Since then due to a number of factors, nothing else has really taken off like those two shows from 2013. For the last four years the entries for the year were known as the Anime Mirai shorts but this year they were re-branded as the Anime Tamago shorts.

While these shorts have fallen off the radar of a sizable amount of the fandom we still think they are worth examining. Most of these titles either come from either relatively fresh-faced crews or people who have been in the industry for a while but have been promoted to higher positions than they might normally have. Not all of these are spectacular or even good. Actually, some of them have been downright awful. But these titles are a good way of seeing who might very well be an up and comer in the anime industry. Today’s random Anime Tamago director or animator might be tomorrow’s superstar.  

One of the major downsides of this project that keeps it from being well-known in the English-speaking world is that fansubbers have an extremely varied interest in the titles. Some shorts from Young Animator Training Project get subbed near instantly. On the other hand, I only recently discovered that someone got around to subbing Parol’s Future Island despite the fact it came out in 2014. It really all depends on the tastes of whoever is still out there doing fansubs. None of these are guaranteed to ever get subbed. Therefore we watched two of the films without subtitles. We had no subtitles for Colorful Ninja Iromaki and Kacchikenee! and were forced to watch them raw.

So far we have yet to have any Young Animator Training Project films that had a super dense narrative and at the same time was not subtitled. I can’t guarantee we caught all the nuance of the shows we watched raw but I am fairly confident we understood the broad strokes thanks to anime being a visual medium and the stories being fairly simple. I do wonder when we will collide with a show like Kuro no Sumika: Chronus where we would miss major parts of the story without the translated dialog. But I suppose we will figure out how to cross that bridge when we get to it.

This project is always full of surprises and that’s what holds my interest year after year. While these shorts aren’t indie projects, they are still a little off the beaten path most of the time. What I really enjoyed from this time around was that three out of four were more in the children and family category. And even the fourth one wasn’t especially far from that.

Colorful Ninja Iromaki by Signal. MD

Himeno’s family has just moved into a fixer-upper mansion in the country. As she tries to settle into her new home she discovers three ninja spirits also inhabit her home. These little shinobi pledge to protect her as the princess of their castle. While her parents are thrilled to have magical helpers with the power of fire, water, and DIY it seems that Himeno is less thrilled with their presence. When the area is threatened by a storm, the family and ninjas band together to protect their home.

A family finds that their house is haunted by butt-faced ninjas (yeah, that’s what I said!) who want to protect their “princess.” Really, they are sticking around because they failed in their mission long ago.

Part ghost story, part family comedy, this story has a quick pace that keeps the silly antics of the ninjas going. I definitely missed some of the jokes though since we only saw it raw, but luckily there were also plenty of slap-stick moments that needed little explanation.

The simple art style heightened the humor of the short and was mostly welcome except in the ending drama where it distorted the tornado oddly.

 One of the nicer elements of the Young Animator Training Project is they usually have at least one title that is clearly supposed to be the entry for all audiences. These are usually the most solid titles. Like a good Pixar or Dinsey movie, they are enjoyable family fare with heart and warmth. These types of movies tend to then divide themselves into comedic movies with some counterbalancing heartwarming moments or emotional pieces with some humor to even out the mood. Colorful Ninja Iromaki chooses the comedic path.

I would watch this film again with subtitles if for no other reasons just get the full experience of the story. It is a bright and colorful little film that tells its story well enough that I understood the story without knowing a lick of Japanese. You pretty much instantly understand Himeno disappointment with her new home and frustration with her unwanted protectors. There are a good amount of visual gags like the red ninja using his fire powers as a makeshift gas stove, the blue ninja using his water bending to wash the family car, or just the fact that the yellow ninja’s power is DIY home repair.  I’m sure I missed some of the jokes and little plot points but the animation informs you of 90% of what you need to know without having to say a word.

Utopa by Studio 4°C

After the earth was devastated by various man-made disasters humanity moved the remaining living creatures to floating cities in the sky. After countless years in the clouds, humanity crossbred animals to have sentience, language, and the ability to use tools. One day a seed from the forgotten world below flies up to one of the cities. Three evolved animal children venture to the world below to see where this seed came from. Down below they discover a rejuvenated Earth filled with wonder and danger.

 This felt less like an original film and more like the pilot for a TV series. This does not even feel like a backdoor pilot that pretends to be a stand alone story but an outright pitch for a longer story. It really felt like the first episode of something like a 13 or 26 episode TV series. They introduce the characters and the world with a fair amount of detailing while still leaving a good amount of room for growth. They even set up what could easily be a reoccurring structure for the series. They can go to a new area trying to find which plant created the seed they found. They run into some person in need or sticky situation. They resolve that conflict. They then ask if anyone involved knows where the seed comes from. They move on. Lather, rinse, repeat until the finale where they find the home of the seed. They even mention that they will never go home after this trip. That either means that they die on the surface or make a new home on the surface but either way that line really wants to be the hook for a longer story.

That said it feels like a premise that would make a fine longer TV series. The little trio of kids are fun and have a strong dynamic. Since the world below has been abandoned by humanity for so long it has developed into a lush world. Everything has grown to the point where the children seem so small in comparison to the world around them. Since I don’t remember seeing one of the kids in size comparison to a regular human it can be a little hard to tell how tall they are supposed to be but I get the feeling that everything in nature is supposed to be huge in compassion to today. It sort of gives off a Lost World vibe where nature has become this dominant force once again. This also allows for some exotic looking flora and fauna throughout the film.

Also, has it become a rule that one entry in the Young Animator Training Project has to have anthropomorphic animals?

From the world resources becoming depleted to cities in the sky to animals being crossbred (in a lab!) with humans to our three adventurous kids who want to see the outside world, Utopa painted a big picture at the beginning.

Once the kids are out in the world, things became a little less macro in scope. They befriend an insect that is quickly scooped up as a meal by a predator bird. The bet they make with the bird in hopes of having their friend returned allows them to explore the world.

The kids are a rambunctious bunch who bicker, laugh, and get scared together. They are cute and charming in their interactions with each other and the world. However, I found this short a bit unsatisfying because it became more of a series pitch than a full story. And the story it told here was really so minor compared to the complex explanation of the world that kicked things off.

Kacchikenee! by Tezuka Productions

Aiko is a mediocre art student living with her parents in a shrine run by her grandfather. At the shrine, there is a sliding door with an unfinished picture that fascinates her. One night when she examining the painting a strange young man named Souji from the past appears out of the well in her backyard. While Aiko is extremely skeptical of his story she tries to introduce him to the modern world while he lives at the shrine. While he is a far more accomplished artist than her he still has a major weakness in his style. What lessons can these two artists teach each other despite being from different eras?

Art, time-travel, and love intersect in this short that gets better as it goes along. The beginning’s attempts at comedy felt rather tired, but once art became a greater focus, a more tender feeling came through.

I enjoyed the depictions of finding inspiration for art. The short also did a great job of contrasting Aiko’s amateur style with Souji’s deft calligraphic aptitude, and both obviously standout against the animation. I also liked how it ended in regards to them as artists.

 When I saw the promo art of this last year I thought it was a horror film. It has a hand with a brush rising out of a well with a ghostly light. It looks like a tale of a frightful literary demon getting ready to hunt the living. As it turns out it Kacchikenee! is Inu-Yasha without the demon fights. Actually, it is more Kate & Leopold than feudal fairy tale but you get my point.

Beyond that, this is probably the weakest of the four titles. I think it is summed up by the simple fact that despite the fact that this was raw we basically understood plot without needing any subtitles. Previous titles have done this with the simple fact their visuals are so expressive that you can follow the plot just by the animation. Now that is not to say that there was a lack of direction or storytelling just through the visuals. The reason we were able to understand what was happening is because Kacchikenee! stuck excessively close the time travel romance playbook. They introduce something from the past linked to the time traveler. He then comes to the present. Him and the girl clash exacerbated by the fact that he is a fish out of water. She introduces him to the modern world and they start to have feelings for each other. Something happens to bring him back to the past. The item from the past changes thanks to his interaction with the girl. The major question is usually he finds a way back to present or not. The show follows all of these steps exactly.

Now there have been plenty of stories that have followed this formula and been amazing. Also, it might seem like this is me tearing this show to pieces. In all actuality it is fine. The visuals are distinctly in the vein of other modern Tezuka Productions anime. While the story is an old saw they execute it competently. I rolled by eyes a little bit with the accidental pervert stuff but beyond that, there was nothing really bad about Kacchikenee!. The main problem is that it did nothing to stick out of the pack. The animation is fine but it is distinctly no more than that. The story was serviceable but unremarkable. What I’m basically saying is that it is no The Girl Who Leapt Through Time nor it is the The Ambition of Oda Nobuna. You won’t hate this but you also won’t remember it off the top of your head a year from now.

I do have to mention that the grandpa who runs the shrine has a mohawk. That seems like a very odd choice. It was probably the one point where having the subtitles might have explained something about why that was. It was probably something that was explained in a throwaway line or two but I could not figure it out. I assume he used to be a delinquent or something before taking over the shrine but I can’t be sure.

Kaze no Matasaburou by Buemon

In Kaze no Matasaburou animals and humans go to school and work side by side. Beyond that Kouichi’s elementary school class in the country is normal as normal can be. When a new girl transfers into his class, rumor starts that she is some sort of wind god which isolates this already closed off transfer student. But Kouichi is determined to find out about her and bring her into his group of friends.

 This is probably the story that feels the closest to a Studio Ghibli work. Now that can be an awfully weighty comparison to make. I’m mostly using the comparison as shorthand for a very good all ages anime as opposed to trying to determine where it ranks in comparison to My Neighbor Totoro. Much like Kacchikenee! the base story is extremely familiar. The major difference is Kaze no Matasaburou takes a well-worn story and makes it feel vibrant and engaging. It is all about the execution and the execution here is wonderful.

The is a very simple magic of having this world where human and animals live, work, and learn side by side. It gives the story a pleasant storybook or fairy tale vibe. It is a short but simple tale of a new girl trying to settle into a new school and the boy who tries to get to know her. There is also a wind dragon and a magical feather but that is more window dressing than anything else.

This is the only story I really wish was longer. If this was 90 minutes it easily could have a dub and be a great little kids movie that I would hope would to well over here as well as in Japan. That would require a little expansion of the plot but I think there is enough there to allow that. I don’t mind the length of Kaze no Matasaburou as it stands. Right now it pops in tells a complete story and gets out well before it wears out its welcome. It even still takes a few moments to just soak in the atmosphere when needed without ever feeling stretched out. It is just if it were a theatrical length film it would have a better chance of leaving Japan. As it stands now it is only a hint of the good things that might come from the people who worked on this in the future.

And maybe that is enough but I can still dream.

Beautiful storybook style art depicts a small countryside town where animals talk and go to school alongside the humans. When a new human girl arrives in town, she is understandably shocked by the situation.

This was a very sweet story of friendship between humans (and animals!) that touches on the youthful magic of new connections. And the very real magic of talking animals, which the story smartly never tries to explain. The friendships are humorous and simple and feel perfectly suited to the ages of the characters.

The story also has that classic fleeting feeling as the friendships are short in how long they last but not how deeply they can affect you.

This was definitely my favorite of the bunch.

 I was generally disappointed with the selection last year. The only title I really liked was Aki no Kanade and everything else was either mediocre or outright bad. The 2016 batch was considerably more solid. I don’t think anything wowed me but it was all good. Even Kacchikenee! was worth watching even if it was the weakest of the bunch. Just nothing here was mindblowing like Little Witch Academia or Death Parade. All of the animation was consistent and enjoyable but none of it was sakuga levels of amazing. All the titles this year did their job admirably. That is not the worst thing that could happen. In many ways, this is supposed to be the next step for some animators before they hopefully make the title that will make them a well-known name. I think all the titles here were great next steps and I look forward to seeing the next years selections as well as more works from the artists involved with the project this year.

If this interested you might want to keep your eye out for this year’s titles.

Reading the Boy Detectives (or the Detective Boys) by Edogawa Rampo (or Ranpo) is like picking up the American classics Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. Various people might have different reactions to hearing the name Nancy Drew, but we can probably all agree it conjures the idea of a bygone era. And yet these stories endure and are still childhood classics; the same is true of the Boy Detectives. Well-worn copies of the Boy Detectives books will always be found in Japanese libraries.

The Fiend with Twenty Faces is the first of the Boy Detectives stories and became a mega hit. The story cements not only the Boy Detectives, but also phantom thief Twenty Faces, and even the already known Detective Kogoro, as characters that would remain popular for generations.

“This time I have them for sure.” says the detective. This time will be different. Each time this thief has made law enforcement a laughing-stock by boldly send a letter to the victim in advance as if daring anyone to stop them. The phantom thief has gotten past the police several times but now they think they understand their criminal mind. The thief is part spy, part magician, and part strategist all blended together in a villainous package. Every precaution has been taken. The museum has been swept for surprises that may have been planted there. Every staff member and officer are known to the detective so no flimsy disguises can be used. And this time there is an unexpected trap in place to catch the thief unawares. Tonight will be different. Tonight justice will triumph.

If you have been reading manga and watching anime for more than a few years that story should be very familiar to you.  The great battle between the phantom thief and the great detective has played out many times over the years in Japan media. The Lupin Gang vs. Inspector Zenigata. Detective Conan vs. the Kaito Kid. Cat’s Eye vs. Toshio Utsumi. Saint Tail vs. Asuka Jr. The list goes on but you see a pattern there. Each of those rivalries is a little different. One might add a romantic angle while another might sprinkle in a magical girl twist. How evil or benevolent the thief is can vary from story to story. Sometimes the thief and the detective are even forced to work together. But no matter the iteration they all have a common ancestor. They all trace their conflict back to the battle of Detective Kogoro and his Boy Detectives vs. the dastardly Twenty Faces.

The Fiend with Twenty Faces has become part of the very DNA of Japanese storytelling. While the concept of the Phantom Thief is older than the book it is clearly the story that took an idea that was somewhat popular in Japan and made it a part of the cultural lexicon. Any book that influential to detective fiction in Japan seems necessary reading to us on the Reverse Thieves so with decided to give this book a long overdue look.

The introduction in the book is nearly as interesting as the actual story. In it we learn much including how Edogawa Rampo gained mainstream success through these stories, how the stories changed due to censors, and how the series endured even through WWII.

Despite the Boy Detectives being such a cultural institution, I felt going in they were the ones I knew the least about when compared to Detective Kogoro and Twenty Faces. But I was wrong! Kobayashi, the leader of the boys, is an absolute blueprint for Detective Conan. He is quite capable, ingenious, and even carries a set of gadgets around. Kobayashi takes on the cases of his mentor while he is out of town, and foils Twenty Faces. He does get himself kidnapped, but gets himself out handily. The other boys don’t play a huge role in this book, so it remains to be seen how the other kids in Detective Conan stack up.

While Twenty Faces is obviously inspired by Arsène Lupin, Twenty Faces possesses less of an image of a charming gentleman thief. He is a master of disguise, one of such caliber that it is basically magic, and a great actor who even takes on the role of detective Kogoro at one point. He adheres to a code of non-killing. But the “fiend” part of this book title comes from his penchant of kidnapping children with nary a thought. And from reading the introduction, this comes back in even greater force later.

As Kate mentioned the Kurodahan Press translation of the story starts off with an extremely useful preface that does a great deal to put the book in a better historical context. The first ten pages already got the gears in my head turning about this novel before I had read the opening paragraph of the story itself.

The first thought that popped into my head was how much censorship had shaped this book. Edogawa Rampo started his career as the author of shocking and perverse sexual stories. Some but not all of these were also detective stories. While they were popular and groundbreaking the winds of change in Japan had put him in a bit of a slump. Interestingly enough it was the far stricter conditions of writing a children’s novel that reinvigorated his muse.

All of this makes me reexamine the classic theory of why American comics became so dominated by superheroes for the longest time while Japanese comics have had so many flourishing genres over the years. The simple answer was that the Comics Code Authority in America created an environment that restricted all other genres but Japan dodged that bullet letting its range of storytelling be far broader for far longer. In the end, it is not that was utterly untrue it was more that was a simplification. Japan and America have both had its periods where children’s content was censored and repressed. The key difference is more what the reaction of the creators and consumers were to such restrictions.

There is a much longer conversation that would require much more research. But that is beyond this post. It was more something I wanted to point out jumping at me from the preface.

This preface also explains Rampo Kitan: Game of Laplace. I wondered why they added so much odd and seemingly unnecessary perversion to the mystery stories of Edogawa Rampo. As it turns out they were merely trying to update the shocking and scandalous elements of his original stories while adapting his entire body of work for a modern age. The series is not any better for this but at least it put into context what they show was attempting. It also still does not explain why so many other series can’t adapt the stories of Edogawa Rampo into anything entertaining but one mystery at a time.

As for the story itself, the first thing I noticed was the narrator. It is a third-person omniscient narrator but not the mechanically detached version you’re used to. This narrator asks questions and provides commentary to the reader as if they were an audience. It seems much more like a stage performer or a street entertainer telling the story of the Boy Detectives and Twenty Faces than the more standard voiceless method of delivery.

The narrative the broken up into two distinct halves. The first half introduces the Fiend with Twenty Faces and has him face off against the boy detective Kobayashi while his mentor is overseas. The second half has Detective Kogoro finally face off against the master criminal who is attempting to steal a treasure trove of artwork from several sources to create his own personal museum.

Kobayashi is the origins of so many later boy detectives in Japanese fiction. At first, he is underestimated by the people who hire him but he quickly proves his worth with a mixture of disarming charm and raw genius. He also has a Batman-like toolkit of gadgets to help him be on even footing with older opponents. The influences of Kobayashi on Detective Conan are unmistakable. I also cracked up by the clear need to make the character as adult friendly as possible. The fact that all the Boy Detectives vow only to fight crime in ways that won’t interfere with their homework is almost delightfully hokey. It felt like how they forced PSA into 80’s cartoons.

When Detective Kogoro faces off against Twenty Faces the more traditional detective vs. phantom thief narrative takes hold. The fact that Twenty Face pretends to be Kogoro when he robs the fortified mansion is a trick that would be used by countless stories afterward. It makes a great middle of the story twist. It would feel a bit cheap as the final solution for anything other than a short story as it clearly breaks several rules of Knox’s Decalogue but it works in the middle of the story. It shows the skill of the thief before the final caper which can then have a more traditional finale.

I was very pleased to add this story to my knowledge bank. It feels like a big piece of a larger puzzle. I’m glad to have a better handle on where characters and tropes come from.

Even though this is a book introducing the Boy Detectives, the biggest star is certainly Twenty Faces. Seeing the origin of Twenty Faces was a fascinating look into what people have taken away from the character. Anime and manga definitely enjoy the character of Twenty Faces and many times have brought a lot more charm to him than the original story possesses.

There is something undeniably charming to me about these old mystery serials. Just as I love Nancy Drew, I can happily put the Boy Detectives on the shelf next to her.

In many ways, the later iterations of Twenty Faces is the character Edogawa Rampo wanted to write. The later versions of the character like in Man of Many Faces, The Daughter of Twenty Faces, the Kaitou Kid follow that love rouge archetype set by Arsène Lupin. You can even argue Lupin the Third is exactly the type of Twenty Faces Rampo would have written with no restraints on him. Lupin the Third is a dashing and lovable rouge with just enough perversion to be within Rampo’s wheelhouse.

I think it is also telling that so many of the later versions of Twenty Faces have gone onto to be the heroes of their own works. Much like Sherlock Holmes, it seems that Detective Kogoro’s DNA is very diffuse but direct in the characters he influences whereas Twenty Faces’ has become prevalent in an inverted fashion. The descendants of Twenty Faces refuse to play second fiddle to their detective rivals and steal the stage for themselves as the protagonist.

But perhaps this was for the best. This far more sanitized version of the character was able to connect with a younger audience and insert himself into the imagination of a generation that would go on to reuse, reinterpret, and reinvent the character in countless different ways. In a fashion, each of these characters has become a new mask of the original which is all too fitting a legacy of such a devious mastermind of disguise.

Paradise Residence (パラダイスレジデンス) by Kosuke Fujishima

 I want to do something a little different with this Manga of the Month. Normally we use this spot to bring a little attention to a series that we think is very good but maybe is not getting the attention it deserves. Or maybe we just want to gush about a series that we love. With the large amount of manga that comes out, it can be a very valuable to have someone to curate a manga library for you and we try to make some important sections. But that can be a very passive presentation. I wanted to try to try to engage everyone’s critical brain this month but also adding a bit of a project alongside my pick.

This month’s pick is Paradise Residence by the author of Oh My Goddess!. 

Hatsune Takanashi lives in the dorms at the all girls Kikka Academy. This goofadoof tries her best to get through the school day and eat some curry but life has other plans. With a rival residence gunning for her,  a dorm mother who is an elementary school student, and classmates who love to tease her it is going to be tough.

Is Paradise Residence the best manga I have ever spotlighted here? Nope. It is a fine manga. Definitely entertaining.  Very well drawn and some scenes are downright gorgeous. It is drawn by Kosuke Fujishima so when mechanical designs come up they are amazingly detailed. Quite often the story is very funny and even occasionally touching. There is some yuri subtext for any fans of fans of stories with light sapphic elements but they are never overwhelming. Overall a good bit of light reading.

I mention that because it does have some flaws as well. There are some gratuitous pieces of fan service. Since the story is set in a dorm people will be often be changing, bathing, and wearing next to nothing in many scenes. They have an English girl who seems to shed her clothing at the mere suggestion of the drop of a hat let alone an actual chapeau falling to the ground. There is also a girl who is a total masochist who often leads to some slightly uncomfortable jokes. Also, all of the yuri subtext is clearly more fan service than anything substantial. To top it all off there is nothing resembling an overarching plot. This is 100% slice of life.

Strangely they put the volume 0 at the end of volume 1. In many ways, it feels like volume 0 should have been first but that was most probably the choice of the Japanese publisher. The story starts in the 0th volume and it even sets up a lot of jokes and relationships that make much more sense if they are read first. It is just an odd choice.

None of these are deal killers but I wanted to mention these are part of my little project. I’m going to ask you to do some reading beyond this series. It is fairly short. It is only 3 volumes. Since the first volume is actually the first volume and the prolog volume you could consider it 4 volumes but overall it is a series you can knock out in a single night if you wanted. Once you have done that go and read some Oh My Goddess!. At most 2 volumes. Preferably one volume from the first ten and then one from the last ten. I’m not asking anyone to read 48 volumes of any series as a side project. Just read enough to get a sense of his revelation as a manga-ka. Then try to answer a few questions.

• How has Kosuke Fujishima style changed over the years? Where has his art gotten more simplified or detailed over the years? Has his storytelling grown or changed?
• Why did Oh My Goddess! last for 26 years but Paradise Residence never catch on the same way?
• What are the strengths of Paradise Residence over Oh My Goddess and vice versa?
• What about each series is characteristically Kosuke Fujishima?

As a bonus you could also try to read some You’re Under Arrest and use that to add to previous questions but that seems a bit above and beyond. Also almost every library I have ever encountered has at least one volume of Oh My Goddess! It seems to be the backbone of the inventory of any library like Bleach and Naruto. So you can do this without having to spend any money.

I’m not going to do this on a regular basis. In two months I should be back to my format but I wanted to see how much anyone was interested in something a little outside of the regular format.

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 Makoto Shinkai is a fairly well-known anime director. He has enough name recognition that people outside of the anime community actually know his name. His films regularly appear at film festivals and win a good deal of awards. He even gets the always sort of awkward next Miyazaki title along with Mamoru Hosoda. Overall a fairly enviable career. That said I think his films have always been a hair’s breadth away from being super successful. As I have mentioned they win awards and critical praise but they always seem more art house darlings than blockbusters. But all of that changed last year. Your Name was the fourth highest-grossing film of all time in Japan and the highest-grossing anime film worldwide. In fact, this little joke from the recent Fate/Grand Order short pretty much says it all:

To sum up the scene Your Name is just the go-to reference when you want to talk about financially and critically successful anime.

So with several other anime and manga making reference to the movie, and it generally just getting praise left and right, I really felt a NEED to see this movie. When I was able to see it at the New York International Children’s Film Festival I knew I had to go. Would this be the next 5 Centimeters Per Second or more like the new Children Who Chase Lost Voices?

Mitsuha is a young woman living in the countryside who dreams of moving to the big city so her life can begin. Taki is a young hot head from the city who has a crush on one of his coworkers. As the Tiamat Comet approaches the earth they begin switching bodies. Each time they switch bodies they do so for a day but return to their own bodies the next morning with only a hazy recollection of their experiences in the other person’s body. After several swaps, the two try to communicate via text in hopes of minimizing the damage the other one does while in their body. Will these two ever meet and see who this mysterious stranger linked to their life really is?

I have not seen The Garden of Words. It seems like an odd oversight in Makoto Shinkai’s catalog but then I remembered Children Who Chase Lost Voices. Then it all came flooding back to me. Children Who Chase really felt like him trying to chase Hayao Miyazaki and the Studio Ghibli formula. The film missed the bulls-eye but still hit the target. It was not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination. He went outside of his comfort zone and it showed for better and for worse. It was his movie that felt the least like his other films. It still carried a lot of his style and themes but it at the same time it feels it was desperately trying to be someone else more than breaking away from old formulas. I remember enjoying the movie but also feeling it felt extremely flawed.

So when Garden of Words came out I was interested in seeing it but I think Children Who Chase Lost Voices made it so I was not ravenous to see the movie either. So before I knew it the movie had slipped off my radar into the valley of the damned known as the back catalog. I keep remembering Animated Ink’s very positive review of the movie but I have yet to see it.

And so I dived into Your Name which in many ways seems to be a return to form for Makoto Shinkai. At the same time, it could be viewed as a retreat into him doing what he knows well and nothing more. But I wonder if that is fully the case. In fact, it is the crux of my feelings about the film. But to talk about that in-depth is to put my feet into spoiler country. So I’m going to talk about the film without digging into that and then I will give a spoiler warning and talk about the key point of where my analysis lies. If you simply want an At the Movies style opinion I gave it two thumbs up. It is a movie with a rich blend of visual brilliance, rich characterization, and a dash of whimsy that then builds into to some rich emotional impact. There is a solid reason it has been winning awards and breaking records.But for everyone else here is a little deeper analysis.

The first thing I wonder if how long it is going to take for everyone to grok the story. After establishing the two protagonists they have the first body swap. After that initial set up the story immediately jumps to the next day and the consequences of that body swap. There is no text on-screen to telegraph the change. I picked up what it was laying down after a few seconds but I easily saw how this might confuse people for a bit. It seemed like one of those scenes designed to mess with anyone only paying half attention. It also seems like the point where a person who always asking questions to their companions watching the movie with them is really going to start with a barrage of inquiries. There are a few more transitions like this but after the first one, I was 100% prepared for it so I rolled with them easily.

They are not random or a case of bad storytelling. These are very deliberate choices with thematic and narrative purpose but they do put a little more faith in the viewer than I might normally have expected. I wonder if that it a case of  Makoto Shinkai having a good deal of trust in his audience, me being overly cynical about people’s ability to pick up what is going on, or a combination of the two.

It is also worth noting that there a distinct difference between what the characters know and what the audience knows. When Mitsuha and Taki switch bodies they only have a half-remembered dream-like memory of what they did in the other person’s body. So while we as the audience have a perfect knowledge of people, places, and other details Mitsuha and Taki only have a vague sense of these things when they are not communicated as written or electronic messages. The character mentions it several times but the audience never experiences that mental fog. By the end of the movie, it should be plainly obvious but it can make you wonder why they don’t do more to directly contact each other before then. Once again there is a faith that the audience will let the story unfold with an equal amount of reciprocal faith in the storyteller.

Beyond that, once you’re in the groove Mitsuha and Taki have a cute dynamic with each other. As they slowly realize that they are switching bodies with another person and that they can indirectly leave them messages it leads to a wonderfully compelling relationship. At first, their partner is this strange almost alien presence in their life. Then as they realize there is a strange person influencing their life and they become an annoyance. But as they settle into being a part of each other’s life they slowly become good friends and even more than that as their intimacy grows. It feels like a metaphor for romantic awakening in general.

The visuals are extremely impressive. At this point, it almost seems silly to point that out in a Makoto Shinkai movie. It mostly seems to be important to mention if it is better or worse than usual. It is worth noting that he has not kept his more unusual shading from Garden of Words. If that stylistic deviation was your jam then you’re going to be disappointed but if you thought it looked odd then he heard you loud and clear.

Before I get to spoilers which also dovetails wonderfully into my conclusion I wanted to mention one little note. There is a bit of imbalance between Mitsuha and Taki’s circumstances. I feel overall Mitsuha has many more challenges on her path. She is the one who dreams of moving to the big city for more social and economic choices. She can take over the family business or get married at home but in the city, she can move back home and do that if she wants but also has a million other choices. She also has a conflict with her father who has turned his back on their traditions after becoming a politician. She is the one with the major connections to all the supernatural elements. She also draws more negative attention by having another person in her body. Taki’s main conflict is he wants senpai to notice him. While having a crush on the beautiful girl at work is a legitimate story line it has far lower stakes.

In fact, even when Taki gets more serious story lines it also springs from Mitsuha’s circumstances. As much as they begin to effect Taki and raise the stakes for him they do the same to her infinitely more. This is neither praise or criticism. I can’t say it enhanced or ruined the experience for me. It was a choice that was made and I wanted to draw attention to it. It seems like an excellent avenue of discussion. I’m a bit too neutral on the fact to start that conversation but I am curious to hear other people’s opinion on it.

Past this point is where I discuss what I consider a potential spoiler. I’m not going to actually spoil anything but I’m worried that my discussion might inadvertently bloom into a spoiler for anyone watching for the first time so better safe than sorry. 

OK. This movie did REALLY well. I think I have made that pretty clear. It is not like Makoto Shinkai has been director a string of stinkers like he was M. Night Shyamalan but this has taken him to a different level. And It has gotten me wondering why that is. And I have a theory. It might just be because he broke one of his biggest pieces of formula. For all that I said that he has gone back to basics, there is one change that is different from normal. He is diving into romantic partners being separated and their desperate need to communicate with the tools they have. That is his MO to a T. But this time the ending is totally definitive.

One of the first thing that jumps to mind when I think of a Makoto Shinkai story is an ambiguous ending. They are not exactly Star Driver or Inception but there is a distinct decision not to put a bow on the conclusion of the story. This is one of the defining parts of  Voices of a Distant Star and 5 Centimeters Per Second. Your Name on the other hand distinctly has and THE END ending. Unless you go into off the wall fan theory territory there is little room for discussion of what exactly happened at the end. You could argue “Your Name is actually the dream of Squall From Final Fantasy VIII at the end of Disk Two” but then I don’t really want to be your friend. The thing is, I wonder if that is a factor that contributed to the runaway success of the film.

Now I’m not claiming this is the only reason. That seems to be a bit too bold of a claim and one I don’t believe. Good timing, a growing fanbase, cultural resonance, luck, and just an overall well-made product all contributed to the film’s success. I just have to wonder if ditching the ambiguous ending (alongside a bunch of other factors) helped the film connect better with a mainstream audience.

I’m not totally sold on this idea. I myself could present a half a dozen reasons why this theory may be utter bupkis and then turn around and counter all of them. I’m not accusing him of trying to just pander to the lowest common denominator. As I mentioned several times the film is generally structured in a way that trusts the audience’s ability to have patience and pay attention to detail. It is not an attempt to feed pabulum to babies. I just wonder if he inadvertently (or deliberately) stumbled on a more mainstream structure without utterly changing how he makes films.

And that leads into my final thoughts. I loved this film. I think he wisely saw what he did wrong with Children Who Chase Lost Voices and went back to familiar country and has been rewarded for that. But I wonder if I have punished Children Who Chase Lost Voices unfairly. In retrospect, I wonder if put far less effort into seeing Garden of Words because of Children Who Chase Lost Voices which is sort of silly since I was merely slightly disappointed by his previous work more than disgusted. When so many people complain that they get more of the same from creators it seems counterproductive to punish them for experimenting.

What I’m saying is that I really hope that Makoto Shinkai tries something a few steps off of what he has done before next time. I would argue that the problem with Children Who Chase Lost Voices is it probably could have been more accurately called Directors Who Chase Lost Miyazaki. It was a movie trying to be an imitation of what it thought it should be. Your Name is much more a Makoto Shinkai trying to see what else a Makoto Shinkai film can be. It was a slight but important twist on his formula. If his next film can be a little bolder with its departure but still be true to its author I think it could be amazing. Your Name was quite exceptional and is a wonderful portent of what is to come next.

From the perspective of a translator, the first Fate/Complete Material Artbook was easy mode. It had the most artwork and the least amount of text out of all the Type-Moon artbooks. While it was still a decent challenge for a translator it is a cake walk compared to the later books. The first book was mostly just the CG from the game with some extra material. In many ways, it works perfectly as a test of the viability of the licensing of the series for the English market. Start off with the easiest book to adapt before diving into the more complicated morass of the later books. Character Materials has interviews and long boxes of text. There is still a lot of artwork but this book has meat. Since Type-Moon fandom is such a lore based fandom it makes the book much more valuable since this is where the real insights and revelations are held. The true Dark Souls starts here.

The first part is without a doubt the heart and soul of this volume. The book goes through all the cast who have fully drawn sprites. So that means everyone from Saber all the way down to Leysritt and Sella. A few extremely minor characters like Otoko Hotaruzuka don’t get their own section but those are some deep cut characters who often only really show up in Fate/Hollow Ataraxia in any real capacity. I mean they have whole individual pages for each of the Fate/school life trio so they are not casually cutting of characters.

Each profile has a brief bio, some stats, a relationship chart for that character, and then some but not all of their character sprites. It is mostly what you probably already know about the character (especially if you read their extra material in the visual novel) with a few original insights. The real revelations come with the interviews with Nasu and Takeuchi. There is no set pattern for the questions they answer. I’m guessing they tried to answer a universal set of questions and then just printed the ones that actually led to interesting answers or conversations. Almost all the characters start with their origins and then go out from there. Past that point, it mostly comes down to how much the story focused on the character. Clearly, the three heroines get the queen’s share of pages leaving everyone else in the dust. Illya as the girl who was almost the 4th heroine she gets almost as much as the main trio.

Past that point, it mostly comes down to how much the story focused on the character.  All the other characters get anywhere from four pages to a single page . Clearly, Gilgamesh and Shiro get more attention than Kojirou and Zouken. Depending on your thought process you might be surprised how many pages Taiga gets but for everyone else, this should come as no surprise. I was a little surprised that Berserker got short-changed. For his prominence, he gets far fewer pages that I expected. I was not expecting him to get Rin’s number of pages but it seems a little odd he gets the same treatment True Assassin does. Also, there are no pictures of Caster with her hood down in the front half of the book.

After that, there is a weapon’s section. It is probably the least interesting part as it is just a reprinting of the weapons section from the visual novel. After that is the draft section. It has a lot of concept sketches and rough drafts for the game. Takeuchi does all the commentary on the character designs and event CG, Koyama Hirokazu talks about the weapons, and Chihiro Aikura talks about the class tarot cards. Takeuchi sheepishly admits that his comments in this section reiterate a lot of what was said in the first part but there are some interesting original insights. The rejected versions of characters give you some real perspective on the development of faces you know and love. Lastly there is a short section of more promotional materials for Fate/Stay Night that were not included in the first book. These also have much more commentary than promo art in the first book.

The most important takeaway from this book was the insight into why Saber could not name Mordred as her successor. Takeuchi mentioned that Saber’s ahoge became known as the Mark of the King around the office. Mordred does not have her mother’s ahoge. Therefore she cannot be King. Mordred is such a silly girl. If she has just groomed herself a cowlick she could have inherited the throne.

I do have one major piece of criticism for Udon’s release of this book. Far more than the first book the spine on this one seems far flimsier. I’m guessing they are using the same type of spine but since this book has 18 extra pages I think the limits of the spine are a little more exposed. I already have a little crease in the spine which never formed with the first book.

I was surprised how much I got out of this book. If you have read the Type-Moon wiki you probably already know about 70% of what is written in this book. The thing is that information is really piecemeal bits of information scattered around various character’s pages. Here is flows in a much richer fashion because it comes off as a natural piece of a conversation as opposed to aside into a longer write-up. It is one thing to know that Rider was originally going to be Perseus but it is another thing to hear how the character was instead slowly turned into Medusa and why.

Overall it is exactly what I wanted out of the next book in the series. After this is probably the richest book when it comes to pure information. The World Material is the “Rin Tohsaka Explains Magic Systems” dial turned up to 11. The sort of stuff I love but I assume any translator dreads. Bring it on!

 I would have normally titled this Only Happy When It Rains but you can’t understand the deep dark journey we went on for a bit after this movie. I needed to use the title to provide a warning for those who might otherwise inadvertently follow in our footsteps after reading this post. Just know that the Internet is rich with veins of content for those who wish to mix their love of Japanese cartoons and tootsies. Unless that is your preference merely know that it exists and then move on.

As I was writing the Your Name review I realized that The Garden of Words was still a major oversight the filmography of Makoto Shinkai. It is in an interesting position in his repertoire. It is shorter than his full-length films but longer than his short works. It is distinctly longer than his Voices of a Distant Star debut short film but also far shorter than 5 Centimeters Per Second which is his shortest full-length film. It does seem to be in an unusual position between short and full-length film. I discovered that Shinkai did not originally plan to have this play in theaters. It was originally just supposed to be distributed on the Internet but then got upgraded to run in theaters. That explains its more unusual 46 minutes run time.

That made me wonder if The Garden of Words would feel more like a short that got fluffed up to its current run time, a theatrical piece that was cut to 46 minutes, or would it be written to fit that time frame.

I always enjoy Makoto Shinkai’s stories, so when Al brought to my attention that we still hadn’t watched The Garden of Words I was shocked by the oversight. I was excited to return to Mr. Shinkai’s short stories with a loving attention to detail.

 In the middle of a gazebo in a park in Tokyo, a high school student and a working woman meet as they take shelter from the rain. While their initial conversation is a bit awkward they eventually connect and their meeting ends with the woman reciting a poem. From then on whenever it rains they meet and begin to look forward to their rendezvous during the precipitation. This is a tale of two lonely souls learning to walk again in the rain.

 As I’ve come to expect from Makoto Shinkai, this movie was a series of beautifully put together sequences. There was a big focus on the beauty of rain, the rainy season in Japan, and the calming effect of idling during a rainy day. (As someone who hates the rainy, it took me a couple of beats to sink into the mindsets of the characters.)

There wasn’t a whole lot of dialogue in this film, instead it relied on images to do the talking. This is particularly well done in showing Akizuki and Yukino becoming more comfortable together; sitting closer and closer, turning towards each other more, then eventually they began talking and laughing.

Their connection was an interesting one which I puzzled over at first. Yukino was older than Akizuki and her life was more cryptic in what we saw. There was a bit of manipulation on her part which was unfair, however it was easy to understand why she did it. As to what she saw in Akizuki, that was clear as day, someone who had a big dream and a destination. These were things she either felt she had lost or never had in the first place.

The standout story moment in my eyes was the sequence of Akizuki being honest then being batted away by Yukino essentially treating him like a child. The reactions stemming from that moment are beautifully done and resolved in a perfectly romantic moment. And of course, it involves the rain.

 Much like Kate, I’m hardly a fan of the rain. I mostly associate it with wet shoes and cold feet. But the rain can also bring on a very contemplative period where you sit and stare out the window alone with your thoughts. It is that essence that The Garden of Words tries to capture. When Akizuki and Yukino first meet it is very clear that they are both isolated in their own little dimensions of contemplation as they both feel like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders. As the repeatedly meet under the gazebo they slowly come to realize the unique circumstances of their situation. Their little oasis from the rain in the park makes it that they are isolated in their own little world but they are isolated together. This gives them a rare chance to share their burdens in a way they would not be allowed to elsewhere. In fact, Yukino comments that when she comes to the park when it is not raining it is a very different place. It is as if the rain casts a spell that transforms the gazebo into a magical island but is disappears as soon as the showers dissipate.

The other main theme is the idea of learning to walk. This makes Akizuki’s passion for shoe making a little more understandable even if it still comes off like a passion for Jai Alai or Morris dancing. It is not that people don’t have an interest in such things. Dreaming of becoming a cordwainer is nowhere as common as say working to be a musician or a soccer star. (I’m sorry Sergio Rossi. It’s true. )

It is clear that Akizuki’s life has stalled out. While she is understandably not readily forthcoming on why she is in a pit of gloom it is even apparent to a teenager like Akizuki even if she does not spell it out. At the same time, Akizuki is clearly an awkward young man who has not really found himself. As Kate mentioned the difference is that while Akizuki does not fully have a plan he has a goal. Whatever passion or dreams Akizuki had are now as muted as her taste buds. Both of them bond over a lethargic melancholy when it rains but only one of them moves during the bright days.

So feet. This movie was obsessed with our heroine’s feet. Now granted Akizuki was an aspiring shoemaker, which was the first I’ve seen in anime I think, but the movie didn’t focus on everyone’s feet, just Yukino’s. There was enough focus on them to make note and to find it just a bit weird.

There was even a scene that portrays such physical hesitancy in regards to her feet that added a lot of intimacy which wouldn’t have been present otherwise.

 The foot measuring scene reminded me of the part in Pulp Fiction where they are talking about why Marsellus Wallace defenestrated Antoine. The whole scene talks about how Marsellus treated Antoine giving his wife a foot message as serious as a conventional act of infidelity. The sensual nature of Akizuki measuring Yukino’s feet is clearly an indicator of a level of intimacy and inhibition at least equal to a passionate kiss if not more. As Vincent in Pulp Fiction says it is something that can be played off as innocuous despite the fact that it is clearly not the case in the hearts of everyone involved.

 There are two main criticisms of the movie that I have seen. The first is the fact that The Garden of Words uses a different shading than what his movies usually use. It does oddly remind me a little more of the sort of cell shading you see in video game cut scenes but that it is more of a minor shift than a complete sea change. The movie is up to Makoto Shinkai’s normal gorgeous visual excellence. The backgrounds are still luscious, the characters are still fluid and expressive, and direction is subtle and powerful. While the movie does have a different look than his normal movies it still looks like what you expect from his work. Also, it suits the mood of the movie so I can’t really fault it.

The second is what I hinted it at the beginning. I have seen that people dislike the movie it usually because they felt the film just ends. Maybe it is just because I have grown accustomed to Makoto Shinkai’s style but I accept that he is not really concerned about long and detailed sections of falling action. He introduces a conflict, develops the situation, and then has a suitable climax. It asks a question and then answers it. I realize there is an audience that wants a more definitive “they live happily ever after” or “they find a new love after a losing another” but Makoto Shinkai has never been interested in that. He cares more for the highs and lows of emotion than the emotional paperwork and reconciliation that comes afterward. While understandably that is not everyone’s cup of tea there is value for that sort of economical storytelling.

In retrospect, I regret passing over The Garden of Words when it was released. It is clear after Children Who Chase Lost Voices Makoto Shinkai decided to recenter himself and go back to the more familiar territory.  If seems as if he might have to relearn how to walk but this film helped him get back on his feet. That let him get back on the path towards Your Name so that is a very good thing.

  I agree with Al, The Garden of Words felt like Makoto Shinkai refocusing himself. The Garden of Words was him doing what he does best: tell a thoughtful, sometimes painful, love story with exquisite attention to the human heart. I love how large a story he can convey in short amounts of time and with few words.

So using few words: I loved it.

 As I have mentioned several times on the blog and podcast we have been getting anime movies in English far sooner than we have in the past. In the age of streaming in English, an hour after a TV show comes out in Japan movies and OVA are much easier to forget. When a movie comes out a year after the fanfare has died out in Japan it can be easy for it to get lost in the shuffle. Now titles that are part of big franchises or are from certainly noted directors are remembered but everything else depends on marketing. I mean how many people remember that Harmony existed or that The Empire of Corpses got an English release? Now let’s be honest. Not every film would be memorable if it got a simultaneous release. Some mediocre and rotten films were made to be forgotten. But there has been a distinct move with the help of new distribution methods like Fathom Events that make it much simpler to help the great films that would find a wider audience if they come here sooner.

That said the release of Ancien and the Magic Tablet is sort of crazy. It played at the New York International Children’s Film Festival the day after it was released in Japan. When we got Your Name as quickly as we did I was impressed. The fact that Kenji Kamiyama was doing the Q&A in New York not long after the Japanese debut is impressive if somewhat masochistic. I hardly expect such an amazing turns around on a regular basis but it is amazing when it happens. (If they want to do such things with the Heaven’s Feels movies I won’t complain.)

One of the major benefits of the near simultaneous screenings is that I went into Ancien and the Magic Tablet with almost no expectations or preconceived notions. I only really saw the little picture on the NYICFF website and nothing else. I knew it was directed by Kenji Kamiyama but I did not even read the synopsis. I wanted to experience it as pure as possible. Considering how bombarded you can be with trailers, previews, spoilers, and interviews you often have to take a very conscious effort to go into a movie fresh so I decided that I would take the opportunity when it was presented to me on a silver platter.

If Kokone Morikawa has one defining ability it is the fact that she can fall asleep almost anywhere at anytime. More than anything she wants to leave her sleepy little town and study in Tokyo. But her quiet life is soon interrupted when her waking life and dreaming life begin to center around a certain tablet. In the dream world, she is a princess on a quest to destroy a great monster with the power inside the tablet. In the waking world corporate goons and a shady VP want her father’s tablet. Kokone must decipher why the two stories are related while protecting the tablet in both worlds.

Just a quick note: The movie is called Ancien and the Magic Tablet and the manga is called Napping Princess in English. They are the same story they just have different names. Apparently, a lot of people seem to think that Ancien looks like someone accidently misspelled Ancient. (My spell certainly feels that way.) I feel like without someone telling you that they are the same there would be no reason to assume by name alone that they are in any way related.

As I mentioned when I went into this cold so when the movie started in the dream world at first I was a little surprised by the fantasy setting. But as the pace of the intro continued I quickly realized this was not the whole story. I knew there was some sort of narrative curve ball coming but I was not exactly sure what it was going to be. So when Kokone wakes up it was more of a confirmation of my suspicions than a shock.

Past that point, one of the big mysteries of the movie is what exactly is the relationship between the two stories. Since this movie just came out it would be criminal for me to spoil what the answer to that question is. That said I wanted to talk about the execution a bit since it is such a major element of the movie. I was a little surprised how much the movie leaves for the audience to figure out. The major and important revelation is clearly laid out so the overall point is not obfuscated in any way but the rest of the connective tissue is up to the audience to decipher. This is not anything even close to Kunihiko Ikuhara levels of “put this pieces of the puzzle together” but it is more than I expected. I’m still not sure how one or two pieces fit together but overall most of it can be picked up by context.

The major point of technological examination self-driving cars. Kenji Kamiyama usually has two elements in his works: Politics and Technology. (Well most of this works that are not Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit.) Interestingly enough he lays off the politics and is rather soft on the technology. It being more of a kids show that makes sense but I expected a little more of a dig into the concept of self-driving cars.

Kokone and her Father are fairly strong characters. Momotaro is clearly a former delinquent who eventually settled down and became respectable after having a kid but still retains a bit of his edge. His daughter is clearly a response to having a single father like that. In many ways, she is both a reflection and a counterbalance of the former Yankee. In contrast, Morio is rather bland as a sidekick character. While they mainly avoid making him a love interest it also robs him of any extra dimensions. It mostly makes him a bit of a sounding board and not much more. With a second rewrite, he could easily be taken out of the story with almost no consequence. Even when he pops up in the dream world he is mostly there as a bland sidekick. He is less a bad character and more of a pointless one.

I think my biggest criticism of the film comes from the antagonist. Watanabe is a mustache twirling villain right from the start. There is even a scene where Kokone’s dad warns her about him which is clearly and nakedly on the nose. I know this is a kids film but they did not need him to be THAT blatant. There is a happy medium between subtle gray anti-hero and scenery-chewing ham. He can just be a greedy backstabbing corporate climber without me expecting a pause so the audience can boo him every time he appears on the screen.

I think I’m a little more forgiving Japanese CG than a lot of my friends. So far I have not seen anything from Japan on the level of a Pixar film but I have faith that it is more a matter of if than when. If you have ever seen the better examples of Precure CG you see it has potential Japanese CG is just not fully there. So while I note when the CG is underwhelming I’m some who usually gives it more of pass unless it is really horrible. The problem is when the CG is bad in this movie it is pretty bad but that stands outs like a sore thumb since everything else is so beautiful. Not all of the CG is horrible. There is a good deal of CG is the type that inconspicuously blends into scenes. Some of it is better than other bits but most of the time it is only there if you’re looking for it.

The problem is there are two scenes that pop to mind when the CG is just awful during decently long scenes. One is when Kokone is in the dream world and flying on a motorcycle under a bridge and the other is her running on a bridge near the climax. Both of them just look plain undercooked. I don’t think either of them ruins the film and overall they are a very small percentage of the entire film but they last just long enough that you also can’t ignore or forget them. They are two black marks on what is otherwise a gorgeous piece of animated cinema.

Random note: Rie Kugimiya plays Kokone’s stuffed animal companion in the dream world. Has Rie Kugimiya decided to stop voicing humans and now only does mascot characters? ēlDLIVE , Granblue Fantasy The Animation, and now this seems to be an odd trend.

(I’m mostly kidding because I know she is in Ninja Girl & Samurai Master, Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya, and Rinne since I’m watching all three of those but it is still an odd trend.)

On reflection, I think I’m a little harder on this movie than it deserves. It is a solid family friendly adventure film. The dream world/real world dynamic really helps punch up what might have otherwise been a much blander tale of corporate politics surrounding a story about an estranged family. Scenes that might have otherwise dragged have a strong spice thanks to the dream sequences. It also leads to a reveal that is a nice and simple surprise. It has a little heart, a little fantastic adventure, and it mostly looks gorgeous. It was better than Oblivion Island but not as good as Wolf Children if you need a barometer.

Especially after watching Your Name I feel Kenji Kamiyama and Makoto Shinkai have in some respects followed a similar trajectory in their careers. They both started out with some minor successes that then bloomed into critical darlings. Makoto Shinkai had The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Kenji Kamiyama had Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It seemed for a time they were these untouchable golden boys who were as the cliche goes “going to save anime.” Makoto Shinkai was going to be “The New Miyazaki” and Kenji Kamiyama was the second coming of Mamoru Oshii. Then they both had works that tarnished their reputation. They both released projects that showed they were merely human. Children Who Chase Lost Voices was Makoto Shinkai’s less than 5-star work and while Eden of the East started off amazingly strong and then opinions are very divided on the ending. The less that is said about 009 Re: Cyborg the better. They both recently released films after being a star and then crashing down.

In a way, I feel bad because I think I’m being hard because it is from Kenji Kamiyama. I was spoiled by Stand Alone Complex and Moribito. It made me hold everything he does up to that high standard. I have a feeling if this was by another director I would have probably given it much more slack. If anyone asked if they should see the movie I would say yes. If someone asked if they should run out and see it I would be less enthusiastic. It is solid if flawed. Above a workman family film but below a masterpiece. Worth renting but only worth buying when it’s on sale. It gives me faith that Kenji Kamiyama is not in an eternal slump but still not back to the heights of his previous works. Hopefully, his next film will be the Your Name and I know he can make.

Giant Killing by Masaya Tsunamoto and Tsujitomo

Ah, to return to Giant Killing is quite a thrill! And one I never expected to have for a long (43 books and counting) serious soccer manga.

I say serious not because the manga is terribly gritty but because Giant Killing is about more than just the players vying for a championship. The story tackles characters in every facet of the sport: coach, player, manager, owner, PR coordinator, reporter, fans young and old. This panoramic view of the soccer scene is what makes the series so intriguing.

Giant Killing’s basic plot sounds like a classic: washed-up team is revitalized by new unconventional coach who previously betrayed the team many years before when he was their star player. Coach Tatsumi brings a lot of baggage and drama into the lives he upends by returning to his former team. But he is good at what he does, is smart, and has enough charm to make it work.

Shifting the focus to the coach already makes Giant Killing feeling a little bit different from many other sports manga we’ve had the chance to experience in English. Then the series does one better and spreads the focus to so many other characters which makes it a standout.

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~ kate

 This post is four reviews for the price of one. You can’t beat value like that. Mind you this site is free but I still think the economical nature of this post is undeniable.

I decided that I would review all three Kizumonogatari movies as well as the original novel in one post. While I was given a copy of the Kizumonogatari novel right after I saw the first movie I decided that I would wait to read it until after I watched all three movies. It is a well-known phenomenon that visual adaptations tend to get much harsher reviews if the critic has read the source material first. I wanted to give both versions as fair as shake as I can so that is why I am bundling all four reviews into one review.

As this is a Nisio Isin series that focuses on vampires there is absolutely no chance of Kate participating in this review. Much like crosses and vampires, I’m fairly certain that Kizumonogatari actually acts as a ward against Kate and possibly does 2d6 damage under the right circumstances.

I also wanted to mention that these Kizumonogatari movies have been in a bit of limbo for a while. The films were originally announced all the way back in July 2010. After several delays and the release of later books as TV series, the release of Kizumonogatari became a bit of a running joke among fans of the series as it was trapped in development hell. In fact, Shaft released 2 multi-part seasons of different parts of the Monogatari series before they released these three movies. More and more points of the anime referenced the plot in Kizumonogatari with the assumption that people had read the book so anyone who only watched the anime just had to piece what happened in the third book by inference. That too became a bit of a running joke with English-speaking fans.

I don’t really know why the movies got delayed as long as they did. It is certainly not a Duke Nukem Forever train wreck despite being delayed so long. In fact, it is on par with everything else that has come before it with a bit more theatrical polish. I mostly wanted to mention that as a bit of history especially if anyone reads this post years after the movies come out it would be very easy to not ever realize how much later these movies came out then it was originally scheduled.

Koyomi Araragi is deliberately a loner but a chance encounter with a compromised Tsubasa Hanekawa leads to a strange friendship. Before Koyomi takes off Tsubasa mentions the rumor of a vampire roaming in the area. As the rules of such story dictate Koyomi runs into said vampire near death later that night. Koyomi reluctantly saves Kiss-shot Acerola-Orion Heart-under-blade and becomes her vampiric minion. It seems that three vampire hunters teamed up to defeat the ancient fiend stealing her limbs. If Koyomi can get back Kiss-shot’s extremities than she will make him a human again. Can a fledgling undead hope to defeat the experienced night hunters even with the help of a shady negotiator and the class president of all class presidents?

In both iterations, Kizumonogatari feels hyper-symbolic of the medium and creative team behind the project. Both versions tell almost the same story. The anime changes some details but overall the major beats of the story nearly identical.

The novel is Nisio Isin as all get out. It is filled with wordplay, genre subversion, manga references, perversion, and twisted logic.  Also, the books love to use repetition. Did I mention the book likes to use repetition? I feel like the comedy rule of threes demands that I answer that question by saying that the book affectionately uses repetition quite often. When Kate and I started reading the few light novels that got translated we wondered if we were reading some hackneyed authors because they seemed to love to copy and paste text. While they might very well have been stale writers it is also just part of the genre. For whatever reason, it seems that repetition is just part of the form. You will see this in almost every character having some sort of catchphrase, verbal tic, or sobriquet that comes up every time they appear.  Light novels really like to reinforce points through almost hypnotic repetition and Kizumonogatari is no exception. It does it with a bit of tongue in cheek awareness but it does it none the less.

After 87 episodes of the Monogatari series, it would almost be odd for Shaft not to have a general style for the title. I’m sure animation experts can break down the major differences between Tatsuya Oishi and Tomoyuki Itamura versions of the show but at this point, the general house style is so strongly integrated into the production that it would take an extreme attention to detail to notice the variations. The movie generally has what most people have come to expect in both the Shaft style and the Monogatari mold. There is lots of head tilting as if the movies bought a Costco jumbo industrial sized box of head tilting a year ago and then realized it was going to expire in a week and tried to use it all before it went bad. There are surreal sets filled with oddities in an often seemingly sparsely inhabited universe. There are frequent cuts to blank scenes or walls of text that can only be read if you have the ability to freeze the screen. Since it is a movie there a few scenes that are more ambitious or lengthy than they might have otherwise been but it is mostly the known quantity of Koyomi’s supernatural adventures.

Actually what I noticed was more how much of the Monogatari series style in the TV series was from the book and how much was anime original. For one thing, the novel is almost entirely expressed through dialog. It might be nearly impossible to believe but the book is actually wordier than the TV series. This actually means that often the location of where anything takes places usually only gets a passing description and is often little more to give the bare amount of information to set a scene or inform the reader that the characters have changed locations. In fact, any window dressing of a scene usually has to share time with some other bit of dialog. This means that often Shaft has free rein to do what they want with the setting and as the anime has proven they take a very liberal license with that freedom. The best example is Koyomi meeting Kissshot. In the novel, he just finds her under a nondescript street lamp. In the movie, it is an elaborate scene in a stylish subway that pretty much plays out the same but is far more visually striking.

When I was discussing the films with Carl from Ogiue Maniax we both noticed something about both iterations of Kizumonogatari. Kizumonogatari is actually the third book in the Monogatari series. The first two books are the five stories that would make up the original Bakemonogatari series. While Kizumonogatari chronologically comes before the events of Bakemonogatari is was written after the first two books. Bakemonogatari makes several references to events that happen in Kizumonogatari so it’s clear that the book was not invented out of whole cloth as a way to extend a popular book that was originally meant to be a stand-alone story but it still feels a bit incongruous.

The thing that stood out the most is Tsubasa Hanekawa. For this book, and really this book alone, she feels like the heroine of the Monogatari universe even above Shinobu. In many ways, it makes her more supporting character role in the rest of the series seem a bit odd. In the first book, Senjōgahara is far more the center of the universe with the rest of the cast rising and falling in prominence in regards to the focus of the story. Since the rest of the cast has not been introduced Hanekawa seems an incredibly vital part of Koyomi’s life to the point where it almost seems odd that she falls to such a supporting role.

Also, her character seems at bit different from her later iterations. It seems like for just this book she feels like the main character whereas she always seems a supporting character even in a story like Tsubasa Cat. There is no real major retcon. It is more that she just seems more like a tool of the plot or a sidekick in other sections. A later story like Tsubasa Sleeping might adjust that back more towards her original feeling I can’t read more than a summary of those stories and they have not been animated. Until that point, this story seems more an abnormality than anything else. 

I also notice a bit of a disconnect from the rest of the series with the tone. Bakemonogatari is a supernatural wordplay adventure with some heavy fan service scenes. Nisemonogatari is an infamously raunchy set of stories with a dash of narrative to the point where it almost felt more like doujinshi. The later books blend these extremes a little better so that they have aspects of both. As the book between the two extremes, Kizumonogatari is a bit more of an awkward mixture of Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari. Unlike the later books that strike a better balance between the supernatural parts and the fan service parts of Kizumonogatari feel like separate sections written by two authors as part of a round-robin exercise. When Koyomi is fighting vampires it feels like a standard action story but the parts with Tsubasa often felt like watching soft-core porn in a group. This is not totally unheard of especially with light novels but here it felt much less homogeneous.

Now that I feel I have framed the book and the movies it is time to get down to the brass tacks. I’m a little embarrassed but I totally forgot that I reviewed the first movie. In the end, I said that everything came down to the last two movies. The first movie is all set up but the execution of the middle and the conclusion is what people will remember.

The second movie is distinctly the densest part. It has all of the big fights. The battle against the three vampire hunters has a nice flow. None of them run exactly the same way. Dramaturgy was a good chance for the audience to get a real idea of how the battles will work. It is also more of a slugfest than anything else. Episode’s battle is more of a puzzle where Koyomi has to figure out how to defeat someone he can’t just rush down. The battle against Guillotine Cutter is more of a character development moment than anything else. The second movie is also the part where the dynamic of Koyomi, Tsubasa, Meme, and Kiss-shot get fleshed out and really set up the finale. If anything the second movie seems to mostly wrap things up.

With that in mind, it is clear that the third movie has to contain several twists otherwise this would be one long movie of nothing but falling action. Nisio Isin really likes to set up a standard anime scenario, examines it in otaku levels of detail, and then subvert those ideas in the end. In that respect, the whole last movie is nothing but twisting all the ideas that came up in the first two movies. There is still a big elaborate fight scene but it is much more of a vehicle for the character dialog and final reveal of the twists. The fact that there is some comically gory combat is almost window dressing. In the end, the finale is also a twist on the standard ending you would expect from such a story while still falling within the boundaries of the genre. Consider it more of a playful tweak than an utter subversion.

Interestingly enough this is probably a great place to start the Monogatari series. This is generally the starting point of the series chronologically so if you have never experienced any Monogatari it puts a strong first foot forward and generally sets the mood for the rest of the series. It also does not require any knowledge of the previous material. If anything the previous material is actually usually referencing this story. It also is a great meter sick for the weaknesses and distinct peculiarities of the series that could easily turn people off. If the constant dialog or gratuitous fan service would turn you away they are not as strong as they get in later parts but they are powerful enough that you have a good gauge of if this will be poisonous for you. That said, it also highlights the strengths of the series visuals and storytelling but I have a feeling it is a case of whether or not you can handle the series indulgences more than if you can appreciate its strengths.

As to the question if you should try the book or the movies that depend on your tastes. The book if unfiltered Nisio Isin. So it his writing uncut. For better and for worse. That means if the dialog heavy banter of his style of light novel is to your liking then it is a smorgasbord of wonderful text. Also, the more lascivious sections can be moderated a bit better in text form. On the other hand, the series can often feel like solid walls of text. That is already a criticism of the anime and it only is exponentially exasperated by the novel.

The anime’s strength is undoubtedly its visuals. It adds visual spectacle that justifies the transition to the medium. The problem is it being SHAFT that can sometimes be excessive and polarizing with their distinctive studio style. Also, the awkward scenes can be even more awkward thanks to the visuals.

And if you already on this ride from the TV series you already know if you need to see this. In fact, this vital story has gone untouched by the anime long enough that it is sort of glaring hole in the overall series. If you have not seen this I’m more than a little surprised.

Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer (パ惑星のさみだれ) by Satoshi Mizukami

 The title of manga is often the series first foot forward. Much like a beautiful cover or a striking character design the title has the ability to catch a reader’s imagination in an instant. Most titles are functional with maybe a little hook. Just looking at the top manga on My Anime List you find titles like Berserk,  Fullmetal Alchemist,  Monster, One Piece, Slam Dunk that are all slightly descriptive and mildly intriguing but rely much more on their art work and plot description to draw people in. None of those titles hurt their respective series but they also don’t do any sort of heavy lifting. Then you have the infamous super lengthy light novel title that spells out the premise in almost press release levels of detail. I just linked to an article about some of the longer ones because body has time for a list of four of them. Those titles are the very essence of does exactly what is on the tin.

 In contrast Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure almost demands that you pick up the series just to see what it is about. It only gives you the vaguest idea what the series is about and piques all but the dullest curiosity. Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer is one of those titles as well. You have a Judeo-Christian fallen angel and a device for making mochi. Not two things you normally associate with each other. It is a title that invites anyone who see a volume at least a reason to give it a second glance. You probably want to at least know the general plot if nothing else.

I had actually heard about Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer several years back. It was generally one of those titles that had a small but vocal fanbase that usually would throw it out as a series that needed to get licensed. The passion of the fans mixed with the memorable title definitely kept it as something I should remember. When I saw that my local library had the complete series I felt it was finally time to see what everyone had been talking about. I truly think that if the title has been less memorable I might have not had anywhere as strong an inclination to read this series which would have been quite the shame.

Amamiya Yuuhi has reluctantly embraced his newfound powers and talking animal sidekick in the service of the magical princess Asahina Samidare. They wish to gather a band of heroic magical warriors to defeat an evil wizard who is threatening to destroy the planet with a giant biscuit hammer. These destined warriors must defeat the wizard’s deadly golems in increasingly desperate battles. The twist is Amamiya and Asahina have a secret. They plan to betray their fellow warriors and destroy the planet themselves after they save the world.

At first glance Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer has a very standard shonen action formula. There is a villain who has increasingly powerful lieutenants opposed by a team of warriors. The main character is similar to the team but clearly also a step beyond them. At the same time the manga goes out of its way to subvert and toy with the formula with Amamiya and Asahina. Amamiya’s backstory and surprisingly pure devotion to Asahina twisted ideals give the series an unusual feel. It is not full on Bokurano but in my humble opinion you never want to go full Bokurano.

Beyond that the foundational story is solid. Amamiya and Asahina have a strong dynamic and the rest of the cast holds their own. The other Beast Knights are interesting twists on the standard archetypes you finds in fight based adventures stories. The golems and fairly unsettling and the fights against them have a nice power curve. They also go from simply getting more powerful to actually having some more complex gimmicks. The wizard and his motivations add a good layer of mystery to the story as well. There are also some powerful emotional moments in the series that will stand out as very well done.

The only criticism is the series is 10 books and it feels like it was originally planned to be 20. The first books have a darkness and complexity that some of the middle books are lacking. In the middle a lot of the more complex ideas seem to move to the background and the series feels like it get a little more standard shonen fighting to drive itself to the ending. It feels like an editor pushed the series to speed up some parts where the darker twists would have taken much more time. Also some of the later Beast Knights feel like they might have had originally had longer story lines that were truncated.

In my opinion it seems that the beginning and the opening were always supposed to be the way they were. This was a series that had an ending that was planned out from the beginning. The middle just was just sped up and made a little more conventional. There is nothing missing from the middle it just feels a little more streamlined. In the end it finishes well which is always the most important thing.

I’m mostly recommending this series because it is a great look at how to spice in some original twists on a very well worn formula to make something that feels very different from the genre it comes from while stilling retaining the structures and strengths of its template. If you want to really understand that dynamic just compare the begging and the end to the middle. It is a series worth reading not only for entertainment value but it also has distinct value as examination of narrative form.

Plus that title really just demands you find out what the hack it is all about.

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 The stars have aligned and so it is finally time for me to write a review for Fate/Grand Order. First of all, Kate is on vacation so I decided to try to fill the holes for the Monday slot. I usually treat myself to one utterly decadent post whenever I have full control of the blog. The second reason is the fact that this summer the English version of the game should be out and I’m sure a good number of people will be looking for reviews. I’m only too happy to accommodate that desire. The last reason is that the second anniversary is also coming up soon. The game initially came out in a rather prototype version so it has changed a lot since it first came out. I will get more into it in the meat of the review but these games are built with a long tail model development model in mind. This means the current game is a little closer to definitive review as one can get with something like a MMORPG that is constantly evolving. This is not the game’s final form but it has enough of its main concepts fleshed out that until a major expansion either sinks or elevates the game to new heights at this point the general rhythms of the game have been established.

As a free to play game you can sink a good deal of time (and amusingly enough money) into the game so it better be good. How has the game shaped up after two years of developments?

Humanity is doomed. The Chaldea Security Organization has discovered that humanity will go extinct in 2016. They planned to send a team of Masters and Servants into the past to prevent this apocalypse but after sabotage, only one magus is left capable of making the trip to the past. After diffusing a time-space anomaly in 2004’s Fuyuki City it is discovered that seven other singularities must be extinguished to save humanity. So the protagonist must work with Servants throughout history in order to ensure humanity can live past 2016.

Type-Moon made its name with Visual Novels but they have always been all too happy to branch out into other mediums. Therefore it only makes sense that they would eventually dip their toes into the lucrative free to play market. The Fate series has proven to be remarkably modular letting it be re-imagined several times to fit everything from anime to novels. It took only the smallest tweaks to create a new version that fit the free to play game mold. In fact, it allowed characters from all the previous Fate series to come together while adding a ton of new Servants. In that regard, it was an amazingly obvious idea to make something like Fate/Grand Order.

There are two main points of appeal for Fate/Grand Order which also happen to be the two main things that are alluring for most Type-Moon titles.

The first is the story. I have played quite a bit of a few free to play games. Terra Battle and Fire Emblem Heroes were the main ones I played and I sampled a bit of Rage of Bahamut. One of the things that stand out about all three games is that the story can only be called serviceable at best. There is mostly the minimum amount of story to move the game forward. Terra Battle and Rage of Bahamut have a decent amount of side lore that can you piece together into the semblance of a greater story but it is very much in the background and only there if you dig for it. The main story is usually very simple almost to the point of being around the plot of something like the original Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy.

Fate/Grand Order, on the other hand, is full-on visual novel levels of text and complexity. It feels like a full story and not just a perfunctory breadcrumb trail because the game needs some sort of narrative. There is also a good deal of side quests and special events that build up the characters and the world. On top of that, there is all the details and lore gained from the flavor text like in the other games I mentioned. The seasonal events often feel like full chapters of the main story. Many of the events are silly but they still have the robustness of a normal plot chapter. The Christmas events have been about Saber Alter being an evil Santa Claus or the Christmas journey of Jeanne d’Arc Alter Santa Lily but still, have full stories. It is above and beyond. In fact, the stories are robust enough that is regularly gets complaints from the fandom that it is stealing resources away from the Tsukihime remake. I can’t say how it stacks up to something like Granblue Fantasy but it is leaps and bounds beyond anything else I have played.

The second real draw is the catalog of characters. If you have played any free to play RPG you will know that the large character selection is usually part of the appeal. They usually get a whole slew of well-known character designers in to create a wide variety of characters in hopes of getting a pretty broad base of appeal. Because of that RPGs based on established properties are extra valuable because they already have characters people will play to get in the game. That is why Fire Emblem Heroes has done so well. Since the Fate characters are so iconic they already have over a dozen hooks without even adding a single new Servant. Saber fandom alone could launch a game so adding in characters from seriees like Fate/Apocrypha and Extra only adds their fandom on top of the already rather fierce general Type-Moon fandom. They have already stated that any official Servant will eventually make their way into the game and so far with only a few exceptions they have kept that promise and it seems all of the stragglers will make their way into the game.

On top of that, there are also a whole bunch of new Servants. In a clever move, most of the new Servants are linked to old popular Servants. They added Darius III who is a classic enemy of Iskandar, Cu Chulainn’s teacher Scáthach, and Knights of the Round Table like Tristan and Agravain. This gives a lot of the new characters a bit of inherited good will. Of course, they also have added new versions of beloved characters as well. At this point, it is an established goal for the game to have a version of Artoria for each class. They also have added some Servants that are totally original like Nikola Tesla, Florence Nightingale, and Kiyohime. This allows some cool new historical characters to get their foot in the door. I’m sure some of them will appear in other main titles. If one or two of the new characters don’t pop up into the next Fate/Extella I will be shocked. It is a super vibrant pool of characters to play. All of the stars from previous games alongside new characters and even some stars from Type-Moon properties. It has numerous hooks on that front and can continually make more.

Beyond those obvious hooks, the hidden third hook is that the game is fairly good at making all the tiers of Servants fairly playable. Obviously, the rarer the character the better their stats but the Grand Order is surprisingly generous to the common Servants. All too often in a game with a gatcha the lower tier characters quickly become nothing more than junk as they become utterly useless as the game goes on. In the worst free to play games the only way to progress is to get the newest rare Servants. Servants like Hans Christian Andersen, Cursed Arm Hassan, and Leonidas are all considered still viable despite only being common rarity. And the ability to use Grails to increase the abilities of lower ranked Servants helps them remain solid team members. Also the game is fairly generous with 4-star Servants. Over half the events will give the player who participates a free gold Servant. While they are not the highest tier 5 stars servants they help round out the Servant pools for players who don’t want to spend huge amounts of money on the game. Some of the better free Servants like Sakata Kintoki (Rider) and Ryougi Shiki (Assassin) even rival or outclass low tier 5 star servants.

On top of that, every time you enter a mission to can add a Servant from people on your friends list to your party. This lets you borrow some heavy hitting Servants from big spenders on your friends list even if you don’t spend any money on the game. All of this means that it is not that hard to get through the game without spending a fortune or being incredibly lucky. It is clear that Type-Moon wants people to experience the story no matter what sort of player they are. Without a doubt, people who spend money will have a much easier time but free players are possible.

Now with all that praise, this might seem like a wonderful game but now it is time to dig into the less stellar parts of the game. The first problem that stands out like a sore thumb is undoubtedly the gatcha. It is somewhat compensated by the fact that the lower tiers are solid but makes no mistake the Fate/Grand Order gatcha is often considered one of the harsher in terms of payouts. The chance of getting a 5-star character is only 1%. On top of that items are mixed in with characters which only adds to the saltiness.

Believe it or not, the gatcha was originally worse because there were no guarantees when making a 10 pull roll so there were long threads of people just posting utter garbage rolls. Since the game started the gatcha was made a little cheaper and some better guarantees were put on 10 rolls but it is still harsh. Also, there are a lot of limited Servants that are only put out for short periods of time in order to promote reckless spending. If you are familiar with such games you know most of the techniques they use to temp money out of people. It can easily sour you on the game when you don’t get the Servant you really want or drain your bank account. Sometimes it does both at the same time. As kind as the free material is the paid portions are utterly unforgiving. If you have any sort of gambling issues or are not good at managing your discretionary income you probably want to stay FAR away from this game.

Beyond that, the mechanics are solid but unimpressive. It is a well-done turn-based RPG. You run a team of six characters through several waves of enemies. Only three Servants will be one any one team at a time with reserve units taking the place of any that die in a wave. If you have ever played an older JRPG or any other free to play turn-based RPG you already have 80% of the gameplay in your head. It is all strategy based with no skill or timing based components. So if you like sitting back and making a plan it provides that challenge but there is no skilled based way to improve your strategies like in Terra Battle or a Paper Mario game. Nothing to write home about but also nothing to complain about either.

Like any free to play game there is a good deal of grind. Expect to do the same missions very often. Farming for experience, items, or stats is sort of the rule of the day. Even the events which are fairly innovative eventually become grinding loops. It can be either a relaxing little diversion or a crippling commitment. It is largely a matter of perspective. Thankfully at this point in the game it can over 8 hours for your stamina meter to refill so you’re not tied to your phone but it can be a little rough at the start. Keep that in mind if this is your first time at the free to play game rodeo.

If you’re reading this in preparation for the English release I will mention that when the game first came out it was in a far rougher version than it is now. A great number of quality of life improvements have been made to the game since its initial release. When the game first came out leveling up and upgrading characters was infinity harder. The quests to get experience were far more stingy and the items needed to upgrade characters to their highest levels were few and far between. People used to make a huge fuss whenever they got a Servant to their max level as even the cheapest servant was often an ordeal to enhance. Now thanks to more place to farm materials, generous events and quests, and just an overall softening of the curve the grind is far kinder.

There are also dozens of little UI tweaks and mechanics upgrades that have made life far easier. Also as the game upgraded the art on Servants with more generic animations to be more distinct and/or flashy. Some of the lower levels characters are still a bit generic but new animations are always being added. I’m not sure how many of these changes will be implemented with the release of the US version but the more the game plays like its current version the better. It was a very rough start. Delight Works has listened to players are is always tweaking the game in accordance with their complaints and requests but it was a long journey.

I’m not going to pretend like Fate/Grand Order is not a mixed bag. It has some of the best parts of Type-Moon properties mixed with some of the worst parts of free to play games. It has the great characters, storytelling, humor, and lore of the universe with some of the more insidious parts of the free to play model. I think it plays better than a lot of other free to play games but there are still some of the traps that can make those games dangerous. Is it worth following. Definitely. If you’re a Fate fan it is as important a part of the series as something like Fate/Apocrypha or Fate/Prototype as it is quickly becoming a huge part of the lore. At the same time I have mentioned on the blog before there are dangers to the free to play model. You don’t become one of the most profitable apps casually. So pay attention to it but know what you’re getting into if you play it anything more than casually.

– Alain

Discotek is trying a little streaming experiment. They’ve subtitled the first episode of a 1986 anime version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and put it up for free on YouTube. If enough interest is shown, they will subtitle and release more episodes streaming. The previously dubbed international version will be released on BD/DVD in August.

My knowledge, and many of you may be the same, of The Wizard of Oz story begins and ends with the classic 1939 film. Which got me pondering how many kids haven’t seen The Wizard of Oz MGM movie and how much or little familiarity anyone going into this series would be.

World Masterpiece Theater is an interesting case where you can clearly see the difference between American and Japanese anime fandom. In Japan these are classic anime remembered fondly as entertainment for the whole family along the lines of the most beloved Disney and Pixar films. They were worked on by titans of the anime industry, have influenced many animators in Japan, and continue to have a lasting impact on the industry. In America, there are several fans who have taken an interest in individuals shows or sometimes even the whole series but they are hardly the norm. I would wager that more people know of Rocky Chuck the Mountain Rat as that show “Andes Hedgehog Mountain Chucky from Shirobako is based on” than as a show of the classic World Masterpiece Theater series. I admit both groups are fairly small but the first is larger than the second.

Now The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is not a part of the World Masterpiece Theater series but it is very clearly a show that was made to capture that same feeling. In fact, the producers of the anime had Junichi Seki, who was a veteran of the World Masterpiece Theater, do the character designs on this show. That means if you were unaware there was a Wizard of Oz anime you would hardly be alone. Since Discotek does have a penchant for selecting titles that have some sort of fan following the series did get an English release back in the day from HBO. I never knew this existed but I’m sure it made some amount of a fanbase that would like to see the original thanks to a bit of nostalgia.

So we have a series that has flown under the radar for quite a while but has a fairly impressive pedigree. Wizard of Oz is a beloved children’s series of books and it was adapted during a golden age of children’s anime. I was very curious to see how this dream team worked together.

Dorothy Gale recently moved to live on a farm Kansas with her aunt and uncle. While she is having the normal problems of adapting to a new lifestyle, a twister comes and takes her and her pet dog, Toto, to a strange land called Oz. Can she find a way home from the land of evil witches, tiny Munchkins, and flying monkeys?

I’m pretty sure like 90 percent of you already know the plot. If anything it is more worth noting that this anime seems to be a very faithful version of the original books as opposed to something like the Wonderful Galaxy of Oz. That also means there will be some noticeable differences between this series and the classic 1939 film. There is no Almira Gulch or farmhands in the first episode as they were characters only added to the movie. If you love the books or you just want to see something slightly different from the iconic move this a solid choice.

The opening’s imagery is the most familiar with the iconic characters dancing along the yellow brick road to a charming and catchy tune. It is youthful and fun and made me look forward to seeing these characters again.

Then we enter the actual show which starts on a Kansas farm. It is an overly idyllic version of the simple country life, it is even free of the drama of the 1939 film, that somehow felt longer than its mere fifteen minutes. But I get it, it’s there to remind us why Dorothy would want to come back. Having a home is not something to be disregarded after all.

The depiction of Oz in its color, shapes, and designs felt a bit Alice in Wonderland-trippy. The role which was played by the noble and ethereal Glinda in the 1939 film, is more of a comedic witch in this first episode. And undoubtedly the differences won’t stop there.

The first episode is solid if a bit leisurely when it comes to the setup. The episode clearly wants to let the details of Dorothy’s life in Kansas sink in before throwing her into the strange world of Oz. It establishes a strong baseline of normalcy for Dorothy before the fantastical hits.  Thankfully the Tornado, the Munchkins, the death of the Wicked Witch of the East, the silver shoes, and the Good Witch of the North all pop their head in during the last third of the story. It could be augured that the first two-thirds of this episode are slow but when you have to set up 52 episode of fantastical journeys a little time to let the mundane breath, in contrast, is probably beneficial.

One thing I had to point out about the animation is how I feel it has small flourishes of trippy 60s and 70s animation influences. It is hardly a main influence of the series. In fact, the first two-thirds of the episode when Dorothy is still in Kansas does not have any of it. It only really kicks in when the tornado whisks the house away. It does not go full on Yellow Submarine or Belladonna of Sadness. If is just that some of the small pieces of the animation in Oz have that vibe.

I might be the only person who notices this at all but I was always slightly thrown off by Dorothy’s stockings. She is wearing stockings with garters. On its own, her stockings are mostly just an unusual bit of an unusual accouterment to her character design and nothing more. But it seems an overly complex bit of design for an otherwise cute but rather simple outfit and overall character design. Since there is nothing else in the first episode that screams this is for fetishistic reasons I’m just going to assume it was an insight into someone’s preferences on staff more than anything else.

This anime version of the Oz story is different but not unrecognizable from the 1939 movie. And it has its own charm. Knowing that it adheres more closely to the books is actually what most draws me to wanting to see more.

 Back catalog titles are always a bit of a risk when it comes up anime licensing. Streaming numbers, online conversation, and merchandise sales can all be indicators if a show is viable for licensing. None of them is a perfect metric but they are all valuable statistics. The problem is older titles can be a bit more problematic if you’re trying to predict how well they will do. Services like Anime Sols and various anime Kickstarters tried to create systems that would help judge if older anime was worth licensing with far more managed amounts of risk. The problem is Anime Sols is gone and the anime Kickstarters boom period has tapered off quite significantly.

At this point, the question is what else can be done to gauge an interest in classic series. What Discotek is doing here is hardly a silver bullet for the problem. This is a bit of an interesting corner case.  Discotek already licensed and is releasing the English dub of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz due to it having an existing fan base due to its previous release. This is more of an experiment to see if it is worth also releasing the original Japanese audio in its own release as well. That said it is still an interesting experiment that if successful could point to a useful system for other such titles in the same position not named Kyatto Ninden Teyandee.

Overall it seemed like a smart title to show this way. The Wizard of Oz is about as established a story as you can get and the title is about a safe an adaptation as you can get. I look forward to Discotek releasing more of the series and how this works as an experiment in general.

Cells at Work! by Akane Shimizu

If someone told me that my new favorite manga would be about the internal workings of the cells in the human body, I wouldn’t have believed it. But here we are!

In Cells at Work!, Akane Shimizu takes the many cells that keep our bodies running and imagines them as humanoid characters working in complex company systems. For example, the red blood cells are depicted as a shipping company ala Fedex with hundreds of workers running here and there with carts of packages to be delivered.

Our leads are Red Blood Cell  (RBC from here on) and White Blood Cell (WBC from here on), you have to know them by sight since there are hundreds of other red and white cells running around the series. WBC is a no-nonsense, precise, doer who goes to any length to protect and eradicate any threat to the body. RBC a hard-working, bright newbie to the delivery company and often runs into WBC on her errands around the body. RBC is often the point-of-view character to what all is happening.

The stories are episodic with a chapter, sometimes two, taking on various illnesses or other happenings in the human body. I’ve thus far learned about allergies, the creation of cancer cells, what happens when the body gets a scrape, and more! Each chapter has some asides which are no intrusive to explain terminology or give more information about a given subject.

Learning is great! But the thing that makes Cells at Work!, well . . . work, is the comedy. Each character has an over-the-top personality and everyone takes their jobs very seriously. Bickering, side comments, rivalries, mishaps, and everything in between pepper this series with a big dose of humor.

Cells at Work! is a delightful, laugh-out-loud way to learn about the mysterious inner workings of the human body.

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~ kate

The Promised Neverland by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demiz

 Sometimes you finish all your work for the day but you will have 20 minutes before you can go home. As anyone who has ever worked in an office will tell you that is YouTube time. It is not enough time to start working on anything you need to do but it is also not enough time to waste doing nothing. Finding myself in that sweet spot I loaded up a video that caught my eye about The Current State of Shonen Jump. It was an examination of the magazine since the conclusion of Bleach and Naruto. It is a solid emanation of the state of the magazine after they lost two of the recent Big Three titles. The thing that caught my attention the most was mostly just a footnote in the greater context of the video. One of the most popular titles in the magazine was currently The Promised Neverland. Other than Hinomaru-Zumou I was fairly familiar with all the other titles on the list. Hinomaru-Zumou is a sports manga about sumo without an anime so it is essentially invisible to the English-speaking fandom. I was far more surprised that I had never of heard of The Promised Neverland. That made me immediately buckle down and do some research.

The more I looked into The Promised Neverland the more I was surprised I had not heard at least a bit of buzz about it. Now it started in the middle of the pack rankings wise in Japan s really jumped up in popularity as the series has gone on. Carl from Ogiue Maniax described it has Death Note with tiny orphans. While it is hardly a perfect description it works perfectly as an elevator pitch. Demonic Seraph of the End or a cat and mouse version of Attack on Titan also work as broad overviews that sort of hint at what the series is about. Sufficed to say much like Death Note it feels a little different from the normal fare found in Shonen Jump. If you find that intriguing like I did then you definitely want to read the rest of this.

The Grace Field House seems like the only happy orphanage in manga. Outwardly it is neither a hellish prison filled with sadistic wardens or a kindly home of the brink of bankruptcy. The children are all well-fed, well-educated, and loved. In fact, their schooling is almost scarily top-notch. But because this is not a healing manga that means there is a sinister angle to all of this. The Grace Field House is secretly a farm for demons who wish to eat the tastiest artisanal free-range organic children. And what they want most of all are children with delicious big brains. When three of the orphans learn what is going on they have to find a way to escape the Grace Field House and see what lies beyond the walls of their enchantingly pampered prison.

I’m actually a little surprised that this series is not in Jump Square. It has the level of darkness that I expect from something from the slightly older targeted monthly anthology. While it is generally not that bloody for a series about people being farm animals there is a disturbing amount of children being murdered for it to be in the mainline magazine. Part of me wonders if the success of Death Note plus the possible want to have something to compete with the Juggernaut that Attack on Titan has become in the shonen world. It wisely feels very different from Titan so it does not feel like a mockbuster also-ran of a much more popular title that came first while still filling a hole that the magazine has.

But you can hit all of the prime demographics for naught if the title itself is bland. Carl’s assessment of Death Note with little orphans hits on a key appeal of the series which is the mental games of the children against the people who wish to ship them off to be demon chow. Since the children are at such a tremendous disadvantage they have to be twice as clever as the people against them. Their opponents have some serious shackles as well (otherwise the series would just be tragedy porn) but they always have the high ground in their confrontations. In a way that makes it almost the reverse Death Note as Light always had the advantage and it was a question of if anyone could actually catch him. Here the main trio must constantly overcome the odds stacked against them.

There is an interesting dynamic of the main characters. Emma is distinctly lawful good (and thankfully mostly skipping the tropes of lawful stupid), Norman is mostly true neutral with some leaning toward lawful good because of Emma, and Ray is lawful evil to balance the other two out. This means that while the trio works well together they are also often pulling in slightly but vitally important different directions at the same time. It gives the cast a little extra spice that might not be present if the three of them were all on the same page.

Right now the series is fairly new and moving at a decent pace. In many ways what I have read so far distinctly feels like merely the first act of a longer story. So I am very curious what happens when part two really kicks in. Where the manga goes from there could easily make or break the series. I still feel the opening premise is interesting enough to warrant reading the first part of the manga no matter what happens next but I did want to give this disclaimer here just in case the series soon goes off the deep end. (I’m looking at you Death Note.)

As I write this conclusion Shonen Jump just had its circulation dip below 2 million. Now that has a lot to do with a general downturn in the manga market but it is clear that it might also be time for a little change in the magazine as well. I love series like One Piece or My Hero Academia but they follow a very stratified if satisfying formula so I am curious to see how something a little outside the norm shakes up their lineup. The Promised Neverland might just be what Shonen Jump needs now and it also might be what you need now when it comes to manga.

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-Alain

In just a few days Reverse Thieves will officially be a decade old.  I swear sometime in those ten years I made a Murray Head’s Chess reference on the blog but I could not find it with a casual search of our posts so I think I can use it and declare no harm, no foul. I just ask for a bit of forgiveness if I say name a post “One Night in Mariejois and the World’s Your Oyster” within the next decade.

Fate/Apocrypha is an odd beast. It began life in back in the day before mobile games were a thing and the game everyone wanted to be was World of Warcraft. If nothing else Type-Moon has been pretty good at adapting their properties to different mediums in order to seize on what is popular. If you have ever seen Fate/Complete Material Volume IV you will see that they had a whole slew of Servants by different artists for the initial release of the game. For various reasons the game was canceled and the designs for the characters and the general premise of a two team Holy Grail War mostly became a bit of trivia for hardcore fans. A few of the Servants from Fate/Apocrypha found their way into other Type-Moon titles like Fate/Extra but overall it was more a case of what could have been.

As time went on light novels became the popular trend swept the otaku markets and Type-Moon has never been a company to ignore such opportunities. In 2011 they took the overall concept of the Great Holy Grail War and with Yuichiro Higashide made some tweaks to the story so it would work as a series of novels. This led to some changes to the background and the Servants involved but the general framework of the plot was adapted fairly straight.

If nothing else each of the Servants who were dropped from the original concept of Fate/Apocrypha have made their way into Fate/Grand Order. At the same time, all but a few notable exception from Fate/Apocrypha have made their way into Fate/Grand Order. With a Fate/Apocrypha event on the horizon, all of them should be in the game by the end of the year. In fact, if they don’t add Semiramis soon there maybe been some riots in the street of Akihabara.

The novels have been popular enough to get a manga and anime adaptation so here we are today. Unlike most of the other Type-Moon anime, I have written about I only know the broad strokes of the plot. I know most of the characters involved, some major plot points, and some big spoilers but details on anything and some major chunks of the plot will be as much of a surprise to me as they are to a good deal of the audience. So this time I will be as much of a tourist as many of the people reading these post. Sometimes even more so if any of you can read Japanese.

So let’s begin our journey together and see where it leads us.

The streets of Trifas are a powderkeg. After the third Holy Grail War goes very differently than it does in the original Fate/Stay Night timeline the next Holy Grail War starts in Romania. Now two teams of Servants each with one of each of the seven classes of Servants face off. The Black Faction is made up of members of the Yggdmillennia clan who have broken away from the Mage’s Association and the Red Faction made of mages from the Mage’s Association and the Church. Both sides begin to place their pieces on the chess board in hopes of being the one to seize the prize of the biggest Holy Grail War yet.

The episode begins with two scenes that will clearly make much more sense in retrospect.There is a woman who I assume is Jeanne d’Arc speaking to a dragon who also seems to have a human male from. No one greets each other by name so I could be wrong about it being Jeanne but considering she is one of the most important blonds in the story so there is little doubt it is anyone else. By the context of what little they say I will also assume it is a flash forward to the end of the story but it could be a flashback. I’m guessing it is also a flash forward because it would let this scene bookend the story and then let you learn what the woman said when she was muted at the end of the scene. If it is a flashback then it will probably just be more of a mid-story reveal or something that is shown near the climax. Either way, this along with the next scene is more of a teaser of things to come than anything else.

The next scene is definitely a flash forward. It is a battle from later in the story. There seems to be an army of golems and Yggdmillennia homunculi fighting an army of Dragon Tooth Warriors. While Medea is not participating in this battle Dragon Tooth Warriors are fairly low-level summoned minions and basically, any decent level Caster or Summoner can whip up an army of them. The real battles are between the other four participants. For all the flash and polish this larger battle is nothing more than the generic troops going against each other in a Dynasty Warriors game. What will decide the winners and losers are the three Servants and the Monster on the field.

It is a battle of Saber vs Saber as Modred faces off against Siegfried in what is clearly one of the signature battles of Fate/Apocrypha since it is always the fight they bring up in any promotional material. Since Mordred is the Saberface of this story it only makes sense for them to play up her role as a combatant. While there is some actual clashing of swords it seems the big battle comes down to whose magical beam is more powerful. The red energy blast of the blue one? Balmung vs. Clarent. If this was Grand Order I would have all my money on Mordred but that is mostly because Siegfried is criminally underpowered in the game. The anime is a different story.

The other big fight is Jeanne d’Arc vs a giant golem. I assume this is the super golem that Avicebron will mention he is working on later in the episode. While the other golems seem only a level or two above cannon fodder this one can go toe to toe with a servant. Unless of course, this is just a warm up golem and the real masterpiece it yet to come. The fight does not go on long enough to get a full idea if either of them is outmatched. All we really know is that the golem is not a complete pushover.

I feel one of the most common complaints about Fate/Zero is that the first episode was a lot of exposition and setting the stage. With two sets of Servants Fate/Apocrypha clearly, cannot avoid at least 2 episodes of setup. Therefore they put in these scenes as a bit of a promise that crazy battles and major myth are coming up but you have to eat your vegetables before you can get your dessert. I actually like the “vegetables” in this case but this is here for everyone who needs a bit of a reassurance of the existence of upcoming action to keep going.

Fate/Zero moved away from the focus on a single character like the original Fate/Stay Night. While Emiya Kiritsugu is undoubtedly the main character of the story there are large parts that are about Waver Velvet and other masters and are solely from their perspective. The shift away from a very fixed protagonist like Shirou is even greater in Fate/Apocrypha. While Sieg and Jeanne d’Arc are usually listed as the protagonists of the books this scene makes it clear that Kairi Sisigo is also a major perspective character. In fact, most people would assume from this episode that this is the story of Kairi and Mordred and everyone else are just the alternate perspective characters. You have Kairi who gets the lion share of development in this episode and is Darnic seemingly set up as Kairi’s major foil with Shirou Kotomine as a secondary antagonist. Heck Kairi’s partner is a Saberface. In the Type-Moon universe that is THE ticket to main character status.

But overall Kairi will just be an important figure in far more of a Waver Velvet role as far as I can tell. Much like Waver Velvet, I assume many people will follow the exploits of Kairi and Mordred as their main story and everything else is window dressing despite the fact that it is the bulk of the story. But that is what happens when you make a character who is a scarred shotgun wielding necromancer with a leather jacket and then team him up with sukeban Saber with some awesome armor. You have a pair that might make your actual protagonists seem a bit more milquetoast than you would like. Having them be the major focus of the first episode does not help matters. 

What I’m saying is expect a lot of salt when Sieg and Jeanne d’Arc are the focus of episodes down the road.

It would not be a Type-Moon series without an extended scene of exposition where characters discuss magical systems and politics. I’m fairly certain Nasu rejects any manuscript by other authors until at least one scene like this has been added.

The main point here is to get the viewer up to speed on how this universe is different from the standard Fate/Stay Night universe. The main difference is that the oddball servant that the Einzbern family snuck in was a Ruler and not an Avenger. This corrupted the ceremony in a very different fashion and this time Darnic was able to steal the Greater Grail which was not tainted by the summoning of Angra Mainyu. This means that all the events of Fate/Zero and beyond did not happen. That then results in Darnic biding his time and waiting 60 years to set up his own version of the Grail War but only when he is completely ready to break away the Mage’s Association. This explains why Darnic is so prepared while the  Mage’s Association and the Church seem to have been caught with their pants around their ankles.

Kairi much like Kiritsugu is not only an experienced combat mage but neck-deep in the seedy side of the magical world. Actually, this being Type-Moon universe so the more accurate statement would be the EXTRA seedy side of the magical world. The basic details of the standard Holy Grail War can be skipped over. Since Kairi is well versed in the general mechanics of a Holy Grail War he only needs to be filled the particulars of this aberrant version and the players in it.

By the way, they have that lingering shot on Kairi’s cigarettes is there mostly because they are a famous brand in the Type-Moon universe called Dragon Smoke. Apparently, Touko Aozaki and Natalia Kaminski also smoke them despite being horrifically rare. They are mostly there as a nod and a wink to the super fans who would understand such a refrence.

Since the events of Fate/Zero never happened they had to make up these minor broken Grail Wars to explain how Waver Velvet still becomes Lord El-Melloi II plus still met Iskandar. That seems like a WHOLE LOT of effort for Lord El-Melloi II to make what seems to add up to little more than a casual cameo. I’m not exactly sure why they needed Lord El-Melloi II to give this extra layer of exposition that could have easily been done by Rocco Belfaban. The other odd part is that the person Lord El-Melloi II is talking to is Flat Escardos. While Flat Escardos is an established student of  Lord El-Melloi II he is much more significantly known as one of the Masters in Fate/strange fake.

If I had to venture a theory it would be that this is mostly here to cement the idea that Fate/strange fake is in the same timeline as Fate/Apocrypha. At this point especially after Fate/Extella, it would be easy to assume any new Holy Grail War story takes place within its own separate timeline unless something explicitly says otherwise. This scene would be a strong point to explicitly connect the two stories. Otherwise, this just is a big piece of fan service beyond just a background cameo or a single line of dialog.

Say hello to the jobber Masters. The Fate series distinctly have the sort of fantasy series structure that engenders a large cast. Any full Holy Grail War has a minimum of seven Servants and seven Masters alongside a plentiful cast of support characters. The Great Holy Grail War instantly doubles that base number. While people who read series like A Song of Ice and Fire and The Wheel of Time are super used to having to learn about large casts very quickly for most people it can be a hard skill to learn. I know the cast of Fate/Zero bucked off some viewers with its size alone. So some concessions have to be made for an even larger cast. These quickly mentioned Masters are that concession.

If you found it odd that they seemingly shotgun five masters at you with little more than a screenshot and a quick line of dialog it should be a big clue that this quintet is not going to be the most important characters in the story. There are not just instantly dispatched as if they were the first point of view characters in a Song of Ice and Fire book but they also are going to be written out fairly efficiently.  If you can’t tell Rottweil Berzinsky apart from Feend vor Sembren don’t worry. Unless they make some major changes from the novels they are collectively the Atrum Galliasta of Fate/Apocrypha.

I would not be mean enough to call them the utterly nameless dude that was originally supposed to be the Master of Assassin before Medea super murders him. You have to die off-screen before the story starts to get that level of disgrace.

Since Darnic is the leader of Yggdmillennia clan it only makes sense for him to get a good deal of the screen time since he is going to be the major foil for so much of the cast.He definitely comes off as a cold and calculating plotter. While he may have big and you can even say romantic ambitions his methodology is very mechanical and utilitarian. He is also the sort of man who would team up with Nazis and create homunculi to act as disposable batteries and foot soldiers. He does not come off as deliberately evil as much as completely devoid of morals.

It is also a good way to get to know Avicebron since he is not really going to be doing a lot of combat in the field as he is much more of a support Servant. It also means learning about Roche and Avicebron’s master and student relationship. Roche is far more his Servant’s lab assistant than his commander.

Shirou Kotomine has always been a bit of a mean trick played on the fans. If you have ever read anything about Fate/Extra you will know that Nero was very specifically designed so that people would think she was Artoria and then be utterly confused the moment they actually saw what she was like. Type-Moon clearly enjoyed that so they doubled down on the idea with Shirou Kotomine.

Everything about his character design and name is clearly supposed to imply that this a version of Shirou Emiya that was raised by Kirei Kotomine instead of Kiritsugu due to the change in the timeline. I know I saw several people throw out that idea when the novels were first coming out. It turns out that this is not the case but it is proof that the trick worked.

I think people were also a little saddened because they wanted to see Shirou Emiya as a dastardly villain. Or more accurately they wanted to see him acknowledged “as the villain they always knew he was.”

Some people really dislike Shirou.

Magical girls and mecha shows have their transformation sequences, sport and fighting shows have their fancy special moves, and Fate stories always have at least one big Servant summoning scene. You don’t see the summoning of every Servant since each version so far has had several Servants summoned before the start and this is no exception. That said you always get two or three of the Servants getting summoned because that is just something you have to do. This time you get four of the Black Servants.

As I mentioned before this is a fairly large cast so a little efficiency is needed to get as many characters a little time to shine in this first episode as they can. This scene at least lets four Masters and four Servants get introduced in quick succession with a bookmark that says, “Look. We don’t have the time to go in-depth with all these people so here is a little taste of what they are like. We will come back to them when we get some other important stuff out-of-the-way. We promise.”

Since the members of the Yggdmillennia clan are not just going to become Pannacotta Fugo in Vento Aureo they should get some amount of intro. While we see them summon their Servants they not only all have to share screen time with each other they also have to play against the solo Kairi. The few brief flash of who they mostly have to be conveyed on how they react to their newly summoned Servants and other little bits of body language.  It is more than the five unimportant Red Masters get but not by much.

The Servants get even less but even the most underdeveloped Servant gets more time to shine than all but the most important Masters so their big intros can wait. Plus you have to sell Masters more. The mind automatically races to bold and cool ideas with Servants. If you don’t already know who they are you automatically start guessing their historical identities and powers. If you know who they are you still try to figure out how their most notable and infamous pieces of lore will translate into a Servant. Servants can get away with minimum information being shown about them and still get huge fan bases. Watch when they tease a new Servant for Fate/Grand Order and see it all unfold before your eyes as a fandom is created with just the smallest scraps of information. When it comes to Masters there are a few exceptions and there are people who will gravitate to Masters just on character design you still need more to sell a magus.

Mordred has always had some cool armor but seeing it in action gives you an all new appreciation for its design. Seeing how her helmet goes on and off is like discovering ice cream is a cure for cancer. You probably already loved it but now you have an even better reason to need it in your life. I think people would pay good money for a Mordred figure that has a helmet that works like the one in the anime. I know my roommate would buy it without a second thought.

I do wonder how the English-speaking fans will take to Mordred now that she has made her way to a series that they can easily experience. While she has been a fairly strong presence in the Japanese material not much with her has been officially brought over here. She is a very known quantity to me but she might be a little more unfamiliar to more casual Type-Moon fans.

I actually have a feeling people might like her more. She has almost all the same character design points that make Artoria popular with a bunch of extra features like her cool armor and casual clothing to catch people’s interest. Also, I think Mordred’s personality is far more suited to a Western audience than her father’s.

It would be a little odd for the main heroine of the series not to formally appear at all in the first episode. She did appear in the little flash forward at the beginning but for the rest of the episode goes without her. While her appearance in the flash forward is probably enough they decided that a proper formal appearance of Jeanne d’Arc in the story was warranted even if it is just for a few seconds. While she is not in her full armor or even seen head on she at least been introduced.

Fate/Apocrypha is definitely an ambitious tale. It has more moving parts than any previous Fate story. But more does not necessarily mean better. In each version of the Holy Grail War, there are Servants and Masters who distinctly feel underdeveloped as compared to everyone else. When you create a cast this large you can easily get a case where no one gets enough time to be fully developed or worse yet the wrong characters get too much time in the spotlight making the time feel even more squandered. Even after the first episodes and a fairly sizable cast reveal there are still many major positions that have not been filled.

What I am saying is that I look forward to seeing what comes next but am fully aware of what could go wrong.

 Does anyone know if Fate/Apocrypha is going to be two parts or one? As far as I know, while a single 25 episode season has been announced it seems like the pace of the show is more geared towards two 25 episode seasons much like Fate/Zero. On top of that, both series were also four books long so it only makes sense they would be of equal length. 

Even at the end of this episode of Fate/Apocrypha, we find that Jeanne d’Arc has only just been formally introduced and Sieg has only been panned over by the camera in a way that clearly shows he will be significant but could easily be mistaken for a mere MacGuffin as opposed to a significant character. I know there have been some minor edits like Kairi Sisigo and Rocco Belfaban do some haggling over the preserved juvenile hydra in the novels and manga but that is hardly earth-shattering. Considering they are eight percent of the way through the story and they have only introduced one of the main characters it makes me assume they are not doing that much to pick up the pace in the anime.

If this is going to be two seasons the pace makes perfect sense. If it is only going to be one season I am a little worried. An artful editor could condense the story and miss some important and exciting parts but still make an anime true to the original. The only problem is a messy Studio Deen Fate/Stay Night styled mishmash is much more probable.

I totally forgot to mention that those small golems first the first episode look exactly like stone versions of the B1 battle droids from the Trade Federation Droid Army. In a way the small golems severe the same role in a magical army so it makes sense but I just wanted to point it out.

While the Black Faction is mainly unified and dug in at the same time the last remaining Red Faction Master and his Servant have yet to check in with their compatriots. After meeting Shirou Kotomine the duo of Kairi Sisigou and Mordred decide they fare a better chance if they strike out on their own. Considering the fact that Kotomine puts out a hit on Jeanne d’Arc they probably made the right choice.

The longer Fate/Apocrypha goes without introducing either of its main characters the odder it is. While you can’t ignore the secondary characters with a big ensemble cast like this you should at least pay lip service to your leads unless you deliberately want them to be the blank slate point of view characters. To correct that the intro puts some much need work on the Saint of Orleans.

Jeanne d’Arc much like King Arthur is a historical/mythological figure where it would be more surprised if you did not know them than if you did. While Paracelsus Van Hohenheim is well known in certain historical and arcane circles (or people who do deep dives on Full Metal Alchemist characters) he is far from a household name. In fact, Jeanne d’Arc is so well known that a common guess for the original Saber’s identity when Fate/Stay Night first came out was Jeanne d’Arc. After being teased as a Servant in Fate/Zero it only makes sense that one of the various Fate spin-offs would incorporate her. Her focus in the France chapter of Fate/Grand Order and her utility in the first leg of the game only boosted the popularity of her character. Add in Jeanne d’Arc Alter and JDASL and her fandom is a firestorm.

Just in case you are part of the minority of people who were unaware of Jeanne d’Arc they give a quick refresher of how she died. Actually, the scene is mostly here to reinforce her role as a selfless martyr as well as being a brief history lesson for people who don’t know that Shake the Spear and Space Truckers dudes are. Also, the timeline of the Type-Moon universe is different enough that a little reassurance that things happened like they did in real life is sometimes a helpful bit of a check.

I am a little surprised that they did not go into greater details with the whole Laeticia deal. In Fate/Apocrypha due to some shenanigans by various characters, the already off kilter Holy Grail War is more unbalanced than it should be. Therefore Jeanne d’Arc does not manifest like a normal Servant with a wholly spiritual body and instead possess a French girl named Laeticia. Unless they plan to utterly skirt around that it seems odd that did not mention it more than a thin implication via her unusual starting location and a bizarre trip that only she needs to take from France to Transylvania to be the officiator of the Holy Grail War. Since she has no Master it is doubly odd she did not just appear in the middle of a church in Trifas. I’m guessing that they are just waiting to bring it up a little more organically through dialog down the line but right now it might leave some people scratching their heads.

I mainly think the opening is serviceable. I don’t have any major problems with the animation but at the same time, it also does not grab me as much as most Fate openings have. The opening by EGOIST did its job but was not as exciting as much as their work on Psycho-Pass or Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. The visuals are equally middle of the road. The part where they go through the Masters and Servants sums up quite a bit of my feelings. They have each of the main Masters with their Servants in profile over them. In is not utterly unstylistic but on the other hand, it seems rather pedestrian.

Since they were merely teased it would be somewhat mean not to see the Fab Four of Black Faction Servants that were summoned in the previous episode. Astolfo basically acts as the audience surrogate character asking about everyone in a little meet and greet. Since this is a Holy Grail War everyone is naturally hesitant to give away their identity even to people who should otherwise be their allies. Gordes flips out before Siegfried can tell everyone who he is. In a way it makes sense. If the Black Faction wins the remaining Servants still have to fight to get a single winner of the War. Today’s ally could very easily be tomorrow’s opponent. Other than Achilles there a few Servants that have a more easily exploited and well known weak point. On the other hand, it also makes deeper and smarter coordination difficult since not everyone knows what their allies can and cannot do. There is a price to pay for playing your cards so close to your chest.

It is a clear sign that this is not a super happy and trusting clan and Gordes exemplifies this ten fold.

I want to get this right out-of-the-way. Astolfo is a troublesome character mostly through no fault of the character. As a beautiful and deliberately gender ambiguous character, the fandom around Astolfo can be extremely toxic. I don’t have a problem with transgender and androgynous characters being in anime. The problem is Astolfo was made to appeal to people who are into “Traps.” If you have a fetish for a type of person that is your prerogative and there should be no shame in that. It becomes a problem if your preference disregards or disrespects the basic humanity of the people you are attracted to. The name Trap itself just tips the hat towards the fact that anyone who uses the term does not really respect anyone placed in that category. If you have ever seen fans talk about Astolfo you probably wish some sort of Men in Black Neuralyzer would remove the memory of the commentary.

In summary, Astolfo is a fine character. Astolfo fandom is like 80% human garbage fires. You have been warned.

Mordred along with Sisigo take the spotlight away from all the other characters. Without a doubt, the best interactions in the episode are between Mordred and Sisigo. Mordred is distinctly an apple that has fallen a bit of distance away from the Artoria tree. Despite the fact that they look almost identical minus the hairstyle the two women could not be more dissimilar.

The most interesting part of Mordred comes through crystal clear here: Her extremely conflicted and contradictory feelings towards Artoria. Her lines alternate between frantic pride and utter disgust for her Chichiue. She beams with pride being the child of the King of Knights and clearly desperately wants Artoria’s approval while at the same time cursing the Round Table and all it stands for. Her whole wish of wanting to have a shot of drawing Caliburn out of the stone is a mixture of bitterness and longing. The series captures the fact that Mordred has Father listed as a grand love and hate on her profile perfectly.

Sisigo for his part navigates the tricky waters of dealing with his volatile Servant. While he comes very close to losing his head several times you get the feeling he is one of the few people who would do so well.

If anything everything in this scene also informs Mordred’s profile from Grand Order:

Dealing with Mordred is simple. Do not badmouth King Arthur. Do not praise King Arthur. Do not treat her like a woman. Also do not bluntly treat her like a man. Do not behave in stiff manner. Do not become infatuated with other Servants. Properly hear her opinions. Simple, yes?

Although Mordred should be forewarned that she might not actually have the qualifications of a King.

While they were introduced in the last episode some time needs to be taken to get to know the Black Faction Servants and Masters. While you might have gotten a glimpse of who they were from the summoning scene and the meet and greet this is the first time any of duos get a chance to shine individually. Since these four pairs are going to be doing most of the fighting it is important to get to know them. Since Master and Servants are often similar it is a good chance to see why each Servant was summoned by their particular Master.

This part could just be called Frankenstein’s moe-nester.

Caules and Frankenstein’s Monster are both extremely awkward, meek but surprisingly dangerous when pushed, and both have a chip on their shoulder due to a family member. Caules feels like the also-ran in his family when compared to his sister and Frankenstein’s Monster has a classic grudge against her creator. The fact that she gets worked up whenever his name is mentioned and would rather be called Berserker says volumes.

Both of them seem like people who would be extraordinary in normal circumstances but feel like the worst of the best in their present company.  The fact that they let their pasts tie them down does not help. They seem like the pair whose success and failure is directly tied to how much they can understand and help each other. Their failure to deal with their baggage will probably be their downfall.

Fiore and Chiron both give off an air of kindness, wisdom, and competence. While the other pairs are all full of Sturm und Drang these two are casually discussing their plans for the Holy Grail War over tea. It is worth noting that when Chiron asks Fiore about her brother she makes it clear she is willing to kill him to win the Grail if the time comes. While they both seem gentle and sweet, which I think they are, they can do dark deeds if the circumstances dictate it needs to be done.

This seems like the team that people overlook because both of them seem so unassuming. They don’t feel so weak that everyone attacks them first but they don’t seem so strong that they are a priority target either. But when everyone least expects it they show that they have always had a greater power.

Oh boy. This is all pretty much an uncomfortable movement. You get the feeling that Celenike has a bookmark for a whole lot of non-con fan fiction in her web browser if you know what I mean.

Celenike and Astolfo are actually more alike than they first appear. You would assume that they are as different as night and day. And they are very different to be sure.  But they are both someone others would consider deviant, they definitely march to the beat of their own drummer, they have a highly sexual component to them, and they both have a bit of violent madness in them. The thing is Astolfo is bright, happy, and giving. Celenike is none of those things. It is clearly a case where the Servant was summoned exactly because they were the opposite of their Master. Celenike would never want a Servant exactly like her. She wants someone to own that is like Astolfo.

They are a pair that is going to be torn down by the fact that they are not really compatible. Celenike got exactly what she wanted which maybe have been the worst case scenario for her.

Apparently, every iteration of Fate needs a Shinji Matou type character and this time Gordes is just the asshat to fill that role. I’m not sure how in the hell Gordes and Siegfried are a pair that goes together. Siegfried is the personification of the humble and heroic knight. He is grace, gentleness, and strength personified.  Gordes is best summed up by the fact that he is the sort of dude who still sports a Toothbrush mustache. Unless Gordes has some crazy hidden unseen depth I have nothing that links these two. I would assume a Book of the False Attendant deal was going on if we had not seen Gordes during the summoning.

Poor Sumanai. He just can’t win.

If it were not obvious Darnic and Vlad III super compatible then this scene should clear away any doubts. These two are stern leaders who rule with a mixture of brains and power. The embodiment of an iron hand in a velvet glove. They are both men who have achieved great rank through some very dubious methods. They also have a very tainted legacy that proves they paid a high price with pieces of their soul for their accomplishments. They make for ideal leaders if your only goal is a victory. You have a good chance of winning but it will not be a moral victory.

It is time for Jack the Stripper. If you needed to pick the most controversial Servant in the story then your eyes immediately turn to Jack. While the identity of Jack the Ripper is still one of the great mysteries of history I can’t think of any major theories that pick a little girl as the serial killer’s identity. While she has her fans it is much easier to find people who hate her.

These two are not given much screen time but it is clear they both have no compulsions about murder. If anything it seems like a hobby much more than a job to them.

The interesting point I found was that while we see the corpse of Hyouma Sagara it is not explained who he is. I find that odd because the first bit of Fate/Apocrypha that was ever written was the story about how Jack was summoned and a bit of her time with Reika Rikudou. This was modified when the full series was released but so far none of this team’s backstory has been shown to the anime audience. Considering that Yuichiro Higashide really likes these two characters I assume they will just give us the details of their meeting down the line.

If there is a guide for people who get thrown into the Type-Moon universe from our world one of the top rules in that book would be “If you meet anyone named Kotomine RUN in the opposite direction as soon as you can. Try and use fire to dissuade pursuit if you can.”

Sisigo and Mordred were already not super keen on working with others but meeting Kotomine and Semiramis convince them that they would both do better on their own. While both sides feel each other out during their conversation it is clear by the end that there are now three factions. The Black Faction, Most of the Red Faction, and then Sisigo and Mordred as their own little group.

As a side note, this whole scene makes me think that we have never seen Morgan le Fay with a full character design in a Type-Moon work. She was technically in the Fate/Stay Night manga but I hardly count that as anything close to canonical. I’m sure she will make her way into Fate/Grand Order if nothing else.

Shakespeare seems to be a troublesome friend. While he is surely very useful to have on your side he also seems like the type to stir the pot whenever he is bored. It is fairly obvious that he set up Spartacus to make trouble. Both sides seemed extremely content to sit back and wait for the other to make the first move. The Black Faction has spent decades slowly burrowing themselves into a defensible position in Trifas so they are utterly content to wait for the war to come to them. Kotomine seems an equally slow and deliberate plotter. A Berserker, on the other hand, is a living Molotov cocktail that makes thing happen.

I did enjoy that they make Spartacus look and feel like a monster from Attack on Titan when he scares that hunter. Beyond a bit of humor, the main point of this scene is to set up an intro to the remaining Red Faction Servants. While the Black Faction Servants have all gotten a bit of introduction there are still some major question marks on the Red side. This gives Achilles and Atalanta a chance to show off as the backup the wild child that is Spartacus.

While this is the definition of a Curb-Stomp Battle it lets Sisigo and Mordred a chance to finally break loose. These poor golems and homunculi never had a chance. The ambush was less of a concerted effort for the Black Faction to kill off Sisigo and Mordred and more of a recon mission to gauge exactly how powerful they are.

Mordred is definitely a blunt instrument. While she is amazingly fast she lacks the elegant grace of Artoria but makes up for it with insane strength and an Anything Goes Martial Arts style. While Artoria’s grace makes her battles almost a dance Mordred fights like she is in the middle of a drunken bar brawl. Also, it is clear that Mordred is not going to pass any test on the rules of chivalric combat.

Sisigo much like Kiritsugu mixes modern weapons with deadly magic. He had hand grenades made of human hearts and a shotgun that fires cursed fingers. He has all the ease and convenience of modern weaponry alongside the power and versatility of necromancy. This armory also seems much more ramshackle street thug than Kiritsugu’s professional mercenary sensibilities.

Together they make a very complimentary team. It also helps that Mordred is a melee specialist and Sisigo is all about ranged fighting. If anything their greatest weakness is they might be too similar. If someone is very effective at fighting one of the team they have a good chance of having an advantage against both of them.

Stay Good Karna. Stay Good. You can tell Kotomine is evil because he gets the Hero of Charity to go out and try and kill La Pucelle. Well, Jeanne will hit the ground running when she enters the Holy Grail War.

I enjoyed the ending much more than the opening. It does a good job of portraying the dual nature of Laeticia and Jeanne. They are very similar which is why Jeanne was able to possess Laeticia but they are still two very different people. Of course, they also have to have a nude scene with Laeticia and Jeanne because that is what happens you you make Saber with big boobs.

My biggest complaint is these first two episodes really make it seem like this series is about Sisigo and Mordred. It really seems they are the center of the story and everyone else are just part of the large supporting cast. I have a feeling that there is going to be some gatcha level salt as Jeanne and Sieg begin to eclipse them. I was distinctly made aware of how much people hate Sieg when the idea of him being the free Servant for the Fate/Apocrypha event in Grand Order came up. People are going to feel like they fell for the worst kind of bait and switch.

It is going to be rough.

Previous Fate/Apocrypha posts:

Fate/Apocrypha #01: One Night in Trifas Makes a Hard Magus Humble

By the way, your main character is the recently escaped homunculi and not Astolfo. I wanted to make that clear before I got anyone’s hopes up.

At this point, I only pop in on fandom discussions but I already see there is a very distinct and vocal faction of people who HATE this guy. When it comes to Type-Moon properties the main male protagonists tend to either be ignored or hated. Up until this point, Shirou Emiya was the fandom’s lightning rod of hate. He was so hated that I think he helped draw away anger from other characters. Soujuurou Shizuki and Mikiya Kokutou play second fiddle to their much more prominent heroines to the point that they barely register enough to get hate. I’m not sure I can’t even remember anyone having a strong opinion on Soujuurou. I’m sure people have opinions on him but I have never seen them. Shiki Tohno is pretty much the exception that created the rule. Fans liked his style of the protagonist so much they have not really taken to any other sort of main male character. Then in comes the character who eventually is known as Sieg.

As I have stated before I only know the broad strokes of the stories and characters of Fate/Apocrypha, therefore, I am a little hesitant to make judgments on any characters unless I am familiar with them from other Type-Moon stories. As an example at this point, I really know Mordred from other material but I can’t really tell you anything about Achilles more than you would get from reading his historical Wikipedia page. It does not help that most of the time people merely state that they really just hate Sieg. I’m sure they have a significant beef with the character I’m just not sure what it is. He is mostly a mystery with a vague cloud of resentment around him.

What I’m basically saying is that I’m going to try to go in and judge him as fairly as possible. I’m going to avoid mindlessly jumping on the hate train as much as I avoid defending him just because he is a target. If you hate the guy that is cool as long as you came to that conclusion on your own. Heck after watching this series I might be one of you. But if you really like the dude you might also take this as a bit of advice to avoid saying that publicly unless you are spoiling for an online argument.

All Holy Grail Wars starts with the initial pokes and prods as all the Masters try to gauge who they are up against. The Great Holy Grail War is no exception. On one front Siegfried and Karna spar a bit before the sun rises with Jeanne d’Arc as a neutral observer despite the assassination attempt on her life. At the same time, Spartacus is making a wild charge on the fortified castle of the Black Faction.

While this is all going on one of Avicebron’s homunculi has gained consciousness and broken free from just being a mana battery. He is fortunate that  Astolfo finds him and hides him away before he can be caught by the Yggdmillennia security. What will this unfortunate artificial human do with his newfound consciousness?

Is this going to happen every episode? I like scantily clad ladies as much as the next heterosexual male but I can go an episode or two not seeing Celenike essentially have the PG-13 version of a dead fuck with Astolfo. If you want to have a scene like this one of every few episodes that make sense. It shows you what sort of character Celenike is while providing a little fan service. But while repetition reinforces an idea I can’t help but feel this is more pandering than thematic.

Up until this point, the homunculi have had three roles for the Black Faction. They are batteries so the Yggdmillennia Masters could use their Noble Phantasms with less restraint, they are disposable warriors to act as the support for Yggdmillennia Servants in battle, and they are potential cores for Avicebron’s super golem. But one of them seems to have broken free of its simple automaton like existence. It was clear that this homunculus was different because the camera lingered on him every time. Now we find out why.

Besides placing formally placing Sieg in the main cast the most important part of this scene is to actually give Astolfo and Chiron some chances to show who they are before the fights really start. Given they two of the more obscure Servants historically in the Black Faction, this is an extra value for them.

Astolfo is whimsy personified. Astolfo acts without thinking and is not really someone who does things for grand reasons. While not a Berserker per say Astolfo is definitely a free spirit who dances to the tune of their inner chaos by default. Astolfo tends towards acts of kindness, generosity, and honor so think chaotic good but the emphasis is on the chaotic.

Chiron is the ultimate sensei. He is both a teacher, a doctor, and a bit of a monk. He acts as a physician when he diagnosis and treats Sieg. He acts like a mentor to Astolfo who acted without thinking and needed someone who is more of a scholarly mind. He also acts like a monk when he gives Sieg  a philosophical road map when he is told he has a very limited time to live. Chiron seems like a good guy but he seems the sort who will help those who ask him but does not seek out those who need his help. He is the mentor to heroes more than a brave adventurer.

We meet the Red Faction’s sleeping slaves of fate. If you were wondering why you had not seen the other Red Masters this scene shows you why. Shirou Kotomine is controlling all the others Masters besides Kairi who slipped through his fingers. While Shirou could kill them they are much more valuable as mana batteries the faction’s Servants. If they were dead he would have to support five more Servants. If he was Kirei Kotomine he would get a bunch of orphans, chop off their limbs, and use them as magical Duracells but I guess there are differences between the two of them despite the shared surname.

Shirou most probably lets Kairi leave because it was clear that with Mordred at his side he would be too much trouble to babysit like the other Masters and would actually have to kill him. At that point, Mordred is not the type to happily or even begrudgingly follow a new Master.  Better to have those two running around as a thorn in the Black Faction’s side even if that means they are mostly a friendly third faction past this point. It might be a bad move if they make it to the end but it would definitely be a bad choice to betray them right out of the gate.

This first real fight between Servants reminds me of the fight between Archer and Cú Chulainn in the original Fate/Stay Night. Two heroes on the top of their game testing each other while they are still fresh. They are both looking for a weakness in the other one’s style while holding back any aces they might have up their sleeves. They tease that they might start bringing out the big guns but you have to save that for later on. For fight now, this is mostly a preview that lets the characters show off without giving away anything big.

If nothing else it does let the audience see two characters animated that have only been seen in games. Siegfried has only ever been in Fate/Grand Order and since he is one of the first Servants out of the gate his animations are very generic. Karna has a larger resume under his belt as he was not only in Fate/Grand Order but also Fate/Extra CCC, Fate/Extella, and Fate/Extra CCC Foxtail so his fighting style is far more established. Even then this fight gives a little more sense of style and weight to what Karna can do even when he is holding back. I can’t wait to see more when they go all out. 

Siegfried’s back story seems like a mixture of Archers and Akio Ohtori’s. It just so happens that is also his back story in legend as well. The average person watching this will see the parallels between EMIYA and Siegfried almost immediately. They were both heroes of justice who were working themselves to death only to be betrayed by powerful leaders for petty personal reasons. But it also reminds me of Prince Dios from Utena. A noble selfless hero that the people cannot help but slowly deplete his essence. The more he proves himself an incorruptible hero, the more the people begin to rely on him like a drug, and then slowly but surely they begin to eat away at his very being since he is not an infinite wellspring.

In the case of Dio and EMIYA, the death of the hero transforms them into someone who regrets their former self and lives selfishly in their new life. Siegfried is nowhere near that corrupted but he is wondering what it could mean to live a little more for himself.

Sadly there is less than a 1% chance that Siegfried will die, become evil, and the seduce everyone while doing car based acrobatics. You will have to look towards fan fiction to fill that need.

Gordes is one of those guys who thinks they are a Chessmaster 9000 because they are able to trounce the rank amateurs in their local scene but learn a hard truth when they go up to the state level and get creamed. Gordes clearly thinks he is going to be a Super Master who comes in and defeats Karna therefore winning the support of Ruler making him not only the supreme general but a master politician. You can see his frustration increasing when not only is Siegfried not able to just knock out Karna with a single blow but Jeanne wants nothing to do with him despite the fact that he jumped in when Karna attacked her. He already had a massive chip on his shoulder but this has only exasperated matters. You can feel his frustration grow as what he saw as a flawless plan fails to accomplish any of his goals. You get the feeling he is only going to be more insufferable from now on.

Gordes truly is the Shinji Matou of this series.

Right now it is a little hard to tell how Sieg is going to play into the story.  While he is currently Astolfo’s pet project that hardly translates into a direct jump to main character status. Being made as a living mana battery gives him some potential to do more but as it stands he barely stands (on his own two feet.) There is clearly more going on with him. There has to be something special about him to allow him to break free like he did. But for now, he is more of a curiosity than anything else.  If I did not know better I would assume his role was more to become Astolfo’s sidekick than the main character so it will be interesting to see what his path is.

I do feel that his path from zero to hero might be the reason why people so dislike him.

With any gender swapped character the first question is always how much has changed from what you normally know about the character because of the switch and how much has stayed the same. So while this is a bit of blatant exposition it is helpful since it gives a brief overview of the Type-Moon story of Frankenstein’s Monster. (As opposed to the XKCD version.) Other than the gender switch, it seems fairly close to the story in Mary Shelley’s novel.

While they got off to a rocky start  Caules and Frankenstein’s Monster seem to make some breakthroughs in this episode. They sort of feel like two nerds on their second date. While it hardly goes perfectly it goes well enough that they actually get to know each other a little find they might actually be able to work together. At the same time, it is also very clear this is hardly a flawless masterwork of a partnership. Caules also seems like the sort of guy who has a chronic case of foot in mouth disease and could easily say just the wrong thing at the wrong time to set off his volatile partner.

My roommate and I were talking and we were joking that it feels like Fiore and Chiron almost seem destined to lose precisely because they seem to have the most reasons to win. First and foremost they have a good working relationship. Of all the Masters and Servants they seem to have the easiest bond as they seem cordial, respectful, and amenable to each other’s goals and generally are in sync. They seem fairly sane and generally like good people but have the potential to do what needs to be done if push comes to shove. While they have flaws neither of them seems to have some crippling vice or hang up. In fact, if you look at them from a distance you might mistake them as a pair that would be the main characters.

In a way that is what makes them such prime candidates to be defeated in the most horrific manner possible. They just feel like the two who are going to be betrayed by another jealous team member, fall into a horrible trap that preys on their strengths, or die saving someone else. Since they are not the main characters they seem like the perfect examples of what could go wrong in a Holy Grail war.

Since they got so much attention in the first two episodes it only makes sense that Kairi and Modred get a far shorter amount of screen time. That said they still do some important bits of character building.

Of all the Masters Kairi has had the least amount of time to prepare but he seems to be making up for lost time really well. Since he is a necromancer he has fortified himself in a mausoleum which makes perfect sense. It makes his defensive magic far more potent while also giving him a small fortune’s worth of components for an offense. While they might not be able to stand up against a whole faction they are certainly prepared to defend off a Servant or two all by themselves.

Also, it seems that they are not 100% their own faction. Kotomine and Kairi still have some means of communication so they have not completely cut ties. They have more than a nonaggression pact but less of a bond than full allies.

Spartacus is still charging forward. It seems that Achilles and Atalanta (aka the Greek Hero Duo) will have to wait until the next episode to really appear as more than characters in the shadows. The Yggdmillennia faction doesn’t seem that worried. In fact, they actually seem to think this is a great opportunity. Not only can they test their defenses but they seem to have something in place to sway Spartacus to their side. Starting off the Holy Grail War with a bonus Servant would certainly be a major coup.

While some major strides were made this episode it does feel like there are still major portions of the cast that have only gotten lip service at this point. The Red Faction Servants seem less fleshed out than the Yggdmillennia Servants and peripheral characters like Lord El-Melloi II have appeared more than Jack the Ripper. It would be a little too soon to kill off any characters so they have to do more with the time they give characters. Hopefully, the next two episodes will give the Red Faction Servants who are not members of the Round Table a little more time to breathe.

Previous Fate/Apocrypha posts:

Fate/Apocrypha #01: One Night in Trifas Makes a Hard Magus Humble
Fate/Apocrypha #02: Who Wears Short Shorts?

 The major problem with Type-Moon anime coming out in the summer is that the summer also tends to be the busiest part of the year for the blog other than December. The real time sink is Otakon because the month before the convention is nothing but preparation. Then Otakon itself is amazing fun but drains all your energy in a sleep deprived blur. The month after that is con reports and catching up with everything else. That always made starting the Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya posts have a weird period where I had to play catch up with them while also playing catch up with everything else in my life. Therefore it makes it doubly important that I don’t fall behind on anything beforehand because it takes the challenge mode tasks of writing for the blog after Otakon and adds hard mode on top of that.

Basically what I am saying is that I love battle heavy episodes like this one when I am running behind. They tend to require much less writing and analysis since they are more about visual spectacle. There are still elements to unpack but overall they are far simpler besides some notable exceptions.

If they can keep this up for the next few weeks my life will be much simpler.

While multiple Servant battles are hardly unheard in Holy Grail Wars the Great Holy Grail War makes it a commonplace occurrence. Spartacus starts the first major battle of the Holy Grail War beyond the first few skirmishes that had come before. While the Red and Black factions face off Astolfo takes it as a chance to sneak the homunculus he saved out of the castle. Soon enough this leads to tragedy and unexpectedly the first major casualty of the Great Holy Grail War.

Spartacus really feels like a Berserker in these scenes but a different sort of Berserker than previous Servants in that class. Heracles always felt like a machine of war. A Tetsujin 28 of the magical world that followed the orders of his female Shotaro Kaneda. Heracles was something you pointed at an enemy and he made it dead. While Lancelot seemed more of a thinking warrior who just went off the rails when certain triggers went off. Both of them could be a handful to deal with under the right circumstances but their major drawback was their heavy magical cost. Most of the time they were actually dependable weapons in the hands of a powerful Master.

Spartacus, on the other hand, feels like a storm that theoretically has a nominal Master. You can give Spartacus orders but if you’re expecting them to be carried out with anything close to the precision you’re going to be very disappointed. He mostly seems to be a weapon best just dropped near the enemy. He is going to make problems wherever he goes so it is better to have him do that where your enemies are so hopefully one of two of them get caught in the chaos. He also gets more powerful the more damage he takes so it makes even more sense. He is more dangerous if he only takes little wounds that don’t obliterate him.

Shirou Kotomine seems to realize this so he basically uses Spartacus much like a creeping barrage in WWI. He throws out Spartacus with fewer expectations that he will take out an enemy Servant or Master. That would be a wonderful bonus but it is not his main purpose. Since the Yggdmillennia Masters are so dug in with their defenses the Red Faction needs a multilevel strategy to break through them. Since Spartacus can’t be used as a precision weapon it’s best to use him as a powerful bomb that hopefully shows where the enemy is both strong and weak while also hopefully doing some structural damage. If this was the standard single Master and Servant Holy Grail War this would be an incredibly dumb strategy. But with seven Servants on both sides, this is far more viable especially if Spartacus might otherwise be dangerous if left idle. It is better than just having him kill himself.

The Black Faction seems to clue in on this as well. Since Spartacus just seems to be the mindless drone sent at them better to capture him and then lob him back like a grenade that was thrown too soon. Otherwise, you play right into your opponents hands. Also despite all of his power taking out homunculi and golems, Spartacus goes down fairly easily when the Servants come out. Astolfo has a hard time with him but Spartacus goes down when faced with Vlad and Avicebron.

There are also no uncomfortable faux sex scenes between Astolfo and Celenike this week. They are still really awkward around each other but all the weirdness only has very loosely implied sexual tones as opposed to outright disturbing imagery.  Hooray!

While they have mostly been hinted at more than anything the Greek duo of Atalanta and Achilles actually get to step into the light in full. It is clear that Achilles is already super suspicious that something strange going on with the Red Faction situation especially with Shirou Kotomine being their only real point of contact the other Masters. Atalanta also seems to have picked up on this but clearly does not care even a single iota. She is here to win the Holy Grail War and does not seem very interested in anything else. Not having an active Master might be a bonus.

Since the Red Faction servants have had so much less time on-screen this fight has to do a lot to show off  Atalanta and Achilles because while Frankenstein’s monster and Chiron have hardly been the main focus of an episode they have had at least had some time to express themselves as characters. Atalanta and Achilles have to pull double duty as they show off who they are while they fight.

So far Chiron has been able to show off that while Atalanta is an amazing archer she is not up to the Sogeking levels of god archery that Chiron is capable of. Atalanta is the type of Archer who can knock the wings off a fly on the other end of a football field. The only problem is Chiron can counter all of that from a mile away. So every one of Atalanta’s kill shots is deflected by Chiron which means that they spend most of the skirmish countering each other.

That allows Achilles show off as he faces off various Yggdmillennia Servants. Interestingly enough despite that, his actual abilities are a bit vaguer. He has a spear and a chariot and he is a great fighter but other than that it is mostly tough talk. While most Servants have been keeping their big abilities in their back pocket Achilles feels like he fighting with both hands behind his back. He actually expresses a lot more in his conversation with Siegfried. Since Siegfried is stoically prim and proper it gives Achilles’ playful seriousness when in combat a far greater contrast.  Achilles is that sort of guy who is cheerfully murdering people on the battlefield with a quip and a smile for the ladies like he was an 80’s action hero.

It is also important to mention that while Achilles is unaware of the Yggdmillennia Archer is the opposite cannot be said for Chiron who clearly recognizes Achilles. Since Achilles has one of the most famous vulnerabilities that is not Superman and kryptonite Chiron definitely has a major advantage now.

Gordes continues to do his best Shinji Matou impression as he just does everything wrong. Much like Shinji we see Gordes do everything in his power to prove he is the person he believes he should be but in turn only prove what a failure he actually is. Each of his failures only exasperates his poor decision-making as makes rasher and rasher decisions to move things back onto the timetable in his head. His fails to defeat Karna which makes him desperate to win over Jeanne. Jeanne’s rejection fuels a madness to prove himself by then defeating Achilles at any cost. No progress with  Achilles makes him assume Siegfried is sabotaging him making him force his Servant to use his Noble Phantasm. This impatient decision makes Darnic force his subordinate to use another command seal to counteract his last action. That humiliation makes him desperate for any success leading him to be extra sloppy when trying to capture the escaped homunculus.

At any point, he simply needed to do one thing to stop all of this. Take a second and reflect. If at any point he stepped back and looked objectively at his situation he might have been able to avoid disaster. A moment of reflection or an appeal for help from another member of his faction might not have guaranteed success but they would have avoided the worst case scenario. In the end, Gordes refused to address his inadequacy which leads to the ultimate death of his Servant.

With all the Servant action going on with the Red Faction Servants it gives Astolfo a chance to escape with the homunculus. It turns out that Avicebron really wants that escaped doll and is not easily distracted. It is easy to see Astolfo as a goofadoof even when he was fighting Spartacus. But that was a cause he was not really invested in. When he is fighting for the homunculus’ freedom he seems much more like a proper paladin of Charlemagne. He might be infamous for being the weakest of the twelve and a bit of a space case but he can do what needs to be done when the chips are down.

It is amusing to see Astolfo giving the fancy sword to the homunculus for protection. Since Astolfo is a character famous for getting magical items and then giving them away just as easily it only makes sense that he would casually give away his sword to someone he barely knows. Such is the unpredictable c’est la vie nature of Astolfo.

Well, that is not how I expected the first Servant in the series to die. I knew that Siegfried eventually gave his life so Sieg could live but I did not realize that happened so soon. The first episode makes it clear that Siegfried is not completely gone but it still feels really fast. With a huge cast of characters like this, you have to be willing to kill off characters but you have to let the audience get to know them before you start pulling the trigger otherwise it feels like Slipknot’s death in Suicide Squad.

I did find it amusing that Siegfried sees his sacrifice as selfish. I get his reasons for his decision. Before this point, all of his good deeds were acts of obligation more than utterly selfless acts. He merely chose never to shirk his obligations when others would have found a way out. This time he defies orders and conventions to aid another. Still, it just feels like someone with a compulsion finding a loophole to do what they normally would have done anyway.  I admire the sacrifice but wonder if he really learned anything.

I would be remiss not to mention the fact Siegfried has become a meme in Fate/Grand Order. For all his power and indestructibility in legend, he is rather middle of the road as an extremely mediocre 4 star servant in the game. Players often get excited that they have rolled a golden Servant only to find it is merely the apologetic Sumanai. I have already seen some people forgive Siegfried for showing up in their rolls thanks to this episode whereas others were just happy to see him die for his perceived slights against them.

So it is beginning to make sense now. Sieg really feels like a Gary Stu after this scene. In fact, he goes from random important side character to the main character in less than five minutes and all by coincidences of circumstance and the happenstance of birth. He goes from an artificial human with all the strength and power of a newborn chick to having the powers of a legendary Servant along with Jeanne as his sworn protector. All because he was the secret chosen one who had free will. It gives him both the feeling of the accidentally chosen one and the position of a wish-fulfillment character. The fact that someone else sacrifices himself so the chosen one can live does not help matters.

The biggest problem with this is that it comes in the fourth episode. All that I mentioned above could easily be picked apart about something like Harry Potter. The thing is Harry Potter pretty much up front tells you that this is going to be the story of how The Boy Who Lived will triumph over evil. The first three episodes make this out to be an ensemble cast story with a little extra emphasis on certain characters. Then after four episodes this character you have barely met jumps up and steals the show. Now they did set this up a bit with the intro but that only makes sense in retrospect.  And it is not as if the ensemble nature is going to completely disappear. It just feels like you were sold a slightly misleading bill of goods.

I’m going to give Sieg a chance. He really has not had too much time to prove his worth or why he is the worst. I’m just saying it is now clicking into place why he has the reputation that he does. Even if he is a wonderful character he was introduced in a way that makes him an easy target for hate.

Previous Fate/Apocrypha posts:

Fate/Apocrypha #01: One Night in Trifas Makes a Hard Magus Humble
Fate/Apocrypha #02: Who Wears Short Shorts?
Fate/Apocrypha #03: Meet Your Real Main Character