Seig really went from nobody to central focus character in no time flat. I was just talking about this with Elliot Page but Type-Moon does like to use the idea of the decoy protagonist. It happens with the Rin prologue in the original Fate/Stay Night visual novel and prologue of Fate/Extra with the fake out protagonist. In a way, this is no different from those examples but the amount of lead up to the reveal feels a bit different. It reminds me of the story I heard about how Tomino always wanted to make a mecha show where the signature mecha never appeared in the first episode but Sunrise NEVER liked that idea. Even with Turn A he at least had to show the titular suit at the end of the episode.

We shall see if the Tomino or the Sunrise approach was the correct one soon enough.

The homunculus was saved by Siegfried’s sacrifice but he is not out of the woods yet. Avicebron still wants his potential golem core and the Black Faction’s powerful Saber is now dead. Jeanne d’Arc is able to defuse the situation but as much as she makes it seem like the matter is resolved that is more a comforting lie in a stressful situation than anything else. But all of that goes on hold as the arrival of Jack the Ripper and her Master sets everyone off on both sides.

While they saved Seig’s life it was definitely done with a whole slew of serious consequences. First of all the other Black Faction Servants are not going to simply execute Astolfo but from most of their perspectives he has stolen a valuable magical item and gotten Siegfried killed even if Siegfried was not murdered but sacrificed himself. While Chiron has his sympathies he is also keeping his head down. Normally they would just use a command seal from Celenike to make this simple but a Ruler throwing in her two cents allows Seig to go free. While they would like their homunculus back it is not worth fighting a Maid of Orleans over it especially just after losing their Saber. Overall this is a huge loss for them. While capturing Spartacus was super valuable they lost a Servant and golem core as well as broke the trust between Astolfo and Celenike. They were already sort of incompatible but this definitely has put a huge wedge in between them.

Overall it is easy to see this scene as a quick bit or boring but necessary bookkeeping that lets the audience know that Shiro is aware that Spartacus has been captured and that Siegfried is dead therefore avoiding the standard “how do they know that?” question. Now, this can also be done with a quick throw away line if utterly necessary for pacing so if you’re going to devote a whole scene to the conversation you should usually add a secondary objective so the time does not feel wasted. If you unaware of some major plot points this scene mostly seems to miss that secondary purpose but if you have ever played the Japanese version Fate/Grand Order you possibly already know what I’m talking about. Otherwise, this scene is only important in retrospect or in a second viewing.

If you think about it Shiro has an incredible amount of information about what happened to the Servants in the forest around the Yggdmillennia Castle. You can chalk it up to really good scrying or amazing scouting by familiars but it turns out it is neither of those things. It is merely Shiro using his power as the other Ruler of the Grail War to sense all the Servants participating in the conflict. I’m sure he is also doing some independent spying but his utter clarity of events in enemy territory is due to his class abilities as the hidden Servant of the war.

It is a clever little scene that does not tip its hand too much but allows viewers to see that the reveal did not come out of nowhere.

So we are back to uncomfortable non-consensual sexual scenes with Astolfo and Celenike. Wonderful. I guess the reprieve was too long to last.

As my title suggests Seig does not share Astolfo’s carefree embracing of freedom. While he glad to be free of being a living battery he is not really super enthusiastic about his newfound freedom as well. You get the feeling that Astolfo was told he only three years to live there would be a bacchanalian trip around the world in the Paladin’s plans. Seig seems like the type to die after the three years merely regretting everything.

The main problem is Seig has a nasty case of Shiny Luminous syndrome. Shiny Luminous was a character from the second half of the original Precure.  After 52 episode of getting to know the dynamic of the original two Precure and their vibrant personalities, they introduce a third member of the team. Like Seig, she is pretty much a newborn despite her teenage body, therefore, it takes many episodes for her to have a distinct ego and interesting motivations. This was clearly done so that the audience could see her progress and hopefully really like her as time went on. The problem is her Tabula rasa existence made many fans just hate her before they could ever get to know her as they just felt she stole screen time from the characters they already loved.  It is very easy to see how Seig is already falling into the same trap. He like Shiny Luminous might become much more interesting later on but right now he seems more like a plot point than a person.

The last main characters finally show up in real scenes that are not just a teaser. That said it is hardly a full scene. It is fairly clear that they have killed the man who was originally supposed to be Jack’s Master, they have no problem in killing in general, and they exude an aura of creepiness. They really feel like the Gilles de Rais and Ryuunosuke Uryuu of the series. They are the murder machine first bosses that can be killed off with little remorse. I’m sure thanks to their character designs they will individually and collectively have their fans but overall they make a first easy foil for the more upstanding members of the cast.

So we finally get the deal behind Jeanne’s unusual existence as a Servant. She is not an entirely spiritual existence that can manifest a physical form. (One could even say that Servants are Spirits in the Material World.) She is a spirit wrapped around a compatible human. The main question at this point is why has Laeticia been dragged into this. There are dozens of ways to show that there are problems with this Holy Grail War via Jeanne that doesn’t introduce a random new character. Jeanne’s human core will clearly have some bigger consequences later on but for now, we will have to just speculate what they are.

Gordes really want to make sure you know that he is the Shinji of this series. Since he did not die after his Servant died like Fate Path Shinji he has taken the route of Unlimited Blade Works Shinji. His mixture of bitterness and self-loathing make him the prime target for manipulation from outside parties. He clearly is looking for any chance to redeem himself and prove his worth which makes him a simple target for anyone looking to exploit his abilities. His desperation only makes him an easier mark. Thankfully no one is here to give him the King of Heroes to wield on the battlefield.

Frankenstein’s Monster and Caules seem to have a better working relationship. While they don’t fully see eye to eye they seem to have come the farthest in their bond. The main problem seems to be that Fran still has a hair-trigger. She could be working at 100% at one moment but totally go crazy after one poor decision by her Master. Fran is looking for a mate and she is getting closer to Caules. If he rejects her advances there could be big trouble.

As much as Jeanne might try an convince everyone involved otherwise Seig is not leaving the center stage. From a simple story telling perspective, the narrative has invested too much time and effort at this point for him to simply grow up with this old farmer. Also, there is no way that Avicebron is simply going to let such a prime golem core just wander off without a fight. Jeanne knows all of this is true and that Seig having a Servant’s heart makes him an integral part of the Grail War. I’m guessing her hope is that she can buy him as much time to get his head on straight as she can. If nothing else Jeanne is very good at fighting when everyone else would consider a battle a lost cause.

Well, Shiro has officially come in as the janitor to sweep several unnecessary Masters off a crowded stage. I guess all of their plans have … gone up in smoke. But seriously Shiro has just reduced the size of the cast significantly even if it was by removing some rather incidental characters. It is clear from some additional material that at points these characters were supposed to have a greater role but that seems to have been cut for time in the actual books. Oh well. This is Type-Moon I’m sure they will appear in other stories like the Lord El-Melloi II Case Files novels at some point in the future if you really liked the character designs on any of them.

I did have a revelation with this episode. At this point other than Jack I think Semiramis is the main character who has received the least amount of development. All the development she has gotten in the reflected moonlight of character development as opposed to the direct sunlight of primary development. We have the line from Mordred about her being similar to Morgan le Fay and the opening has her intimately cradling Shiro in her lap. Those both paint a picture of the woman but the few lines she has had are mostly neutral statements. She has some rabid fans but right now she is the Servant we have the most questions about. Hopefully, she will get more time in the center stage soon.

But what I am really excited about is more Modred in episode 6. Also apparently we get to see Morgan le Fay. I am hype.

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
Fate/Apocrypha #04: Sumanai

 If you’re not playing Fate/Grand Order I will point out that the title of the post is a reference to Mordred’s Max Bond Level Card. Even if you know nothing else about the game it should be a big hint that most of this post will be spent talking about the Knight of Treachery.

The biggest revelation in this episode is actually quite significant in the greater Type-Moon pantheon of lore but is easily missed by casual fans. This was the first onscreen shot of Morgan le Fay. Even if she is either in shadow or a faceless memory it is still more than she has even been seen before. When Fate/Stay Night has first released King Arthur and Bedivere were the only Arthurian characters who had portraits. As time has gone on various Fate offshoots have increased the amount of fully fleshed out pieces of the legend. Especially since Merlin was unveiled there have been three people who I feel are critical and have been left out. They are the Lady of the Lake, Guinevere, and Morgan le Fay. Thanks to Fate/Apocrypha one of the three great mysteries finally have some answers. While Morgan le Fay is still partially clouded in secrecy she now has a general character design and a voice actress. I expect to see her appear in Grand Order fairly soon with a full character design and a little more insight into the infamous sorceress.

It starts with a dream of a child only wishing to be acknowledged by their parent. But the waking world quickly rears its head with a battle with a tiny assassin and a scholarly centaur. While the Red Knight deals with a one-two punch of deadly Servants her Master is challenged by an extremely dangerous paraplegic.

Looking back like this it is easy to see why Artoria is filled with regret about her reign when she is summoned in any Holy Grail War. It seems that Morgan le Fay succeeded more due to Artoria’s mistakes than her own genius and duplicity. While Mordred was supposed to be blade that brought down the King it did not happen the way that Morgan le Fay envisioned. For the longest time, Mordred was enthralled by her father’s glorious reign. The fall of Camelot was only due to Artoria’s really disastrous handling of Mordred’s feelings. Only then could Morgan le Fay finally use Mordred as intended. Until then she was a pretty poor sleeper agent as we see from these flashbacks. Morgan le Fay is constantly nagging her daughter to take down her hated sibling but Mordred is mostly ignoring her like an annoying parent trying to get their child to clean their room.

To top it off while it is not seen here Agravain starts off as an Assassin sent by Morgan to infiltrate Camelot and then kill Artoria but instead also winds up becoming a devout follower. As I stated before he is the Paul von Oberstein of the Round Table. Although he is partially responsible for destroying Camelot by discovering Lancelot and Guinevere’s affair it is another case of an agent who inadvertently succeeds at their job. Artoria’s horrible disaster control is the actual problem.

The whole flashback makes me realize that being such a fluid story the tale of King Arthur has played out in so many ways over the years. The beginning and the end is usually are the same but the beats in-between can be amazingly different depending on what the author wishes to say.  How Arthur falls from grace says volumes about the person telling the story and the times they live in. The Fate interpretation of Arthurian legend speaks so much to its character focus and the fact that it all centers on Artoria’s personality belays its visual novel roots.

If you saw random animated Gifs and pictures from this episode it was probably not of the cool fights or stunning pieces of lore. It was almost assuredly pictures of Morded playing with cats. This is the age of the Internet. Only a fool would assume anything differently.

This little interlude does well to get everyone together in the same place while also building the bond between Mordred and Sisigou showing that they make a fairly good pairing. They both seem like the type that does not work well with others. They do have the right mixture of openness and offstanding that lets them not only tolerate working together but actually enjoy it. It lets them work separately from the two major powers in the war and not immediately be at a disadvantage.

It is also worth nothing that the apple does not fall far from the tree. It seems that Mordred has retained  Artoria’s love of eating and seemingly bottomless appetite. Camelot had to be a prosperous Kingdom to support the two of them. In a different world, they could have bonded over a proper feast or two. I’m sure someone has written a story of two involving Shiro and that premise.

Also, does anyone know what Modred stance on Gawain’s boring quantity over quality stance of food preparation is? Artoria was clearly traumatized by it but Mordred might not have been as fussy.

Speaking of super compatible Masters and Servants we have the exact opposite here. Celenike finally goes full on yandere as she cuts up some homunculi out of frustration. I’m just going to assume the physical violence was the capstone to the sexual variety. She now has her sights firmly set on degrading and destroying Sieg to twist the knife with her rebellious Servant. This is only going to make her an even more divisive character. So to a certain segment of the fanbase her appeal just tripled but to most other people she just became a more dislikeable fiend. For Astolfo fans this is doubly true.

With so much focus on the prime Red Faction members, it only makes sense to balance it all out with the Yggdmillennia screen time. If you thought  Caules was a nerd this only confirms he is a big otaku. I could not identify any of the posters as direct parodies of particular shows but they looked more like generic shows that are definitely supposed be recognizable in their genre of choice. They are the generic brand versions of anime. If that show has been Magical Medical Medusa that might be a different story.

It seems a VERY bad idea to make Gordes the heart of a Homunculus. Sure at this point, he is mostly dead weight but that does not make him worth using as a core. Just because you have a junker on your front lawn you don’t put its engine inside the frame of the new car you’re working on because the engine still kind of works. Sure you got rid of the eyesore in front of your house but now you have sabotaged your new purchase. Gordes seems like the type of loser to water down any project he is a part of. Let him drink himself to death in his room.

When Jack the Ripper was revealed to be a 5-star Servant in Fate/Grand Order there was a very upset part of the fanbase. They felt she was a super low-quality Assassin who did not deserve to get such a high-ranking. Due to her loli character design, those sentiments are never going to go away but I feel that this fight sequence shows off that she is not utterly useless. She holds her own against Mordred and almost takes out Sisigou. In a straight up fair fight, Jack could never beat Mordred but her talents are in taking out Masters with the ability to not get straight up murdered by a Servant if she gets caught. That is technically how the class is supposed to work. I don’t think this will win over any fans that hate her character design but it at least shows she is not utterly undeserving of her ranking.

Chiron actually does not do that much better. While he is able to do a decent job of occupying Mordred from a distance his abilities greatly decrease when things get down to the close combat level. Chiron is clearly a super capable Servant. It is just that Mordred is like a mix of a Saber and a Berserker. Engaging in a straight out battle severely puts Chiron at a disadvantage. Mordred is a Servant you have to outthink not overwhelm.

While the Servant fights are always cool I feel that the fights between Masters can be few and far between. You have the fight between Kiritsugu and Kayneth as well as Kiritsugu and Kirei in Fate/Zero but beyond that Masters tend just to be support characters on the side lines. I guess you must have middle-aged men involved to get proper magical fights.

It would seem that Fiore would be the Master you expected to fight from the side lines but she makes a good show of why she has so many hopes pinned on her. It is also one of those cases that makes sure to acknowledge that if you have all these magical abilities you also have a way to cover a lot of deficiencies that would otherwise plague a combatant. Her Doctor Octopus frame makes what might otherwise be a standard battle feel very fresh.

It is also a great knockdown slugfest. Fiore takes on Sisigou’s mixture of modern weaponry mixed with magical might shot for shot. Neither of them seems to be adverse to techno-magic like so many other Type-Moon wizards. Kiritsugu would be proud. (Or maybe just upset that people are stealing his shtick.)

At the end, Fiore looks like she is done for but they make a BIG deal that Caules is going to try to back her up so there is no reason to worry about her at this stage. They clearly want to have her stick around longer so this is more of a cliffhanger than anything else.

This was a super solid episode but it really focuses on most of the characters that people like (ignoring Jack) and avoids the characters people hate. If this is an indication of what is to come then I think we will be alright. It was a good mixture of development and action and that is when the Fate series works best.

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
Fate/Apocrypha #04: Sumanai
Fate/Apocrypha #05: Freedom! Horrible, Horrible Freedom!

 I praised the last episode for sort of being the ideal mix of what people like about Fate episodes when they are firing on all cylinders. You have a good mixture of lore, characterization, and action that all complement each other in a way that makes the whole stronger than its parts. They all help prevent the show from either feeling ponderous or vapid. When people praise Type-Moon shows it is for episodes like that one. The problem is when people slag on Type-Moon shows they usually bring up episodes like this one.

This is entirely a setup episode for the first full on Red vs. Black battle. That means a lot of people having chats in throne rooms and gardens or while eating food. The small amount of combat that occurs is just to wrap up the interesting parts of the last episode. As a die-hard Type-Moon fan, I tend to get a good deal of enjoyment out of episodes like this while I admit they are far less exciting. They are the workmen episodes of Fate/Apocrypha.

In the defense of episodes like this, I would point at the current season of Game of Thrones. In previous seasons people loved the writing but often complained that pace seemed a bit too glacial. While there were major plot developments and shocking events it often seemed they were too few and far between in the sea of setup. Season Seven of Game of Thrones is blazing by at a breakneck pace. Every episode is nothing but plot point after plot point. The problem is to get that rapid pace of development characters all seem to have gained either the ability to teleport or found Seven-league boots off-screen. In return for their amazing speed, they make some silly and out of character decisions. The complaints about the pace being too deliberate have disappeared but a whole slew of new complaints have taken their place.

Episodes like this are important connecting tissue. They are far from glamorous but they enhance the flashy episodes when they appear. When they are done correctly they make the big fights and the huge reveals far more compelling. The best of these episodes can stand eye to eye with an action filled episode but even when they are not in the top form they have an important job of holding together the show in a rather thankless fashion.

The battle from the last episode ends in a draw as both sides realize the fight is almost guaranteed to end in a pointless mutual knockout. That triggers the end of the little probing attacks as Shiro unveils the Red Faction’s counter to the fortified castle of the Yggdmillennia. At the same time, Sieg decides that he can no longer just sit passively on the sidelines. Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war.

Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war.

The battle between Kairi and Fiore seesaws several times as both mages are extremely formidable. But the balance is initially tipped in Kairi’s favor since he is an experienced mercenary and is a bit more capable of using his environment in his favor in some unconventional ways. Caules’ appearance not only saves his sister’s life but also tips the balance in the favor of the Yggdmillennia. Kairi holds his own but his advantage slowly dissolves in a two on one battle.

This is an excellent dynamic example of how Kairi and Mordred work so well together while still being very vulnerable. Mordred is an ultra-powerful blunt instrument but not any sort of strategist. Kairi is the brains but can be overwhelmed if cornered. This time Mordred’s onslaught is what forces a withdrawal despite the fact that Fiore and Caules had the advantage. This battle also gives the impression that maybe Kairi and Mordred are not as invincible as lone wolves as they would like to believe. If Caules has also brought  Frankenstein’s monster this would have gone very differently.

It is also a good insight into the relationship between Fiore and Caules. It is clear that the difference in power as mages has made sure they are not the closest of siblings. Fiore is supposed to be the boss and Caules is the minor subordinate. So much of their conversation is like an officer chewing out a private for breaking military protocol despite the fact his insubordination had positive results. Despite all of that a bit of genuine appreciation and familial affection peaks through at the end. There are still the faint lines connecting them as kith and kin despite the mechanisms of magical society.

The conversation between the old man and Sieg really show that he is really a victim of the curse of Shiny Luminous. The old man has all these sweeping arguments about the tricky power of free will, the binding chains of obligation, and the balance between both of them for happiness and safety. You get the feeling he has made countless choices in regards to this. He does not really have an answer for Sieg but he showed the thought processes and philosophical frameworks of when he made similar choices. You get the sense me made hard choices (although less world shattering ones) and sees Sieg having to do the same thing.

The problem is you don’t get the direct sense that Sieg is anywhere as conflicted as the story wants you to feel that he is. All the dialog from the old man and some of what Sieg says makes this seem like a vital choice but everything else about Sieg is far less convincing. Since we hardly know Seig and he comes off as very milquetoast so it is a bit hard to get invested in his conflict. It more seems like a perfunctory part of his Hero’s Journey more than an exciting piece of character development. The Call to Adventure. Check. Refusal of the Call. Check. Crossing the First Threshold. Check. It is mechanically sound but does not feel satisfying.

In Precure w hen Shiny Luminous was growing she was able to bounce off of the far more compelling Nagisa and Honoka. They were supporting her lack of character with their overabundance of personality. Hikari still caught a lot of flack but it could have been worse. When Seig was playing off of Astolfo he was playing off a personality that could counteract a dozen underdeveloped players. This old farmer is more of a village NPC than a heroic persona. He would make a good foil for someone like Mordred but it feels more like boiled tofu trying have a dramatic conversation with white rice. It is filling and gets the job done but comes off in some desperate need of spice.

The interesting thing about Shakespeare in real life is despite the fact that he is one of the famous people in history there is far less known about him than you would expect. It is one of the reasons that all of those authorship questions spring up. So it is clear that Fate/Apocrypha decided to interpret him as the king of the scenery chewing hams. They go out of their way to have him steal any scene he appears in. Despite the fact that the main purpose of the scene is discussing the big conflict it mostly just acts as a backdrop for Shakespeare’s antics.

It is worth noting that they actually had to build Hanging Gardens of Babylon as opposed to just having Semiramis snap her fingers and it appearing. It is not like most Servants have to go out to the magical world version of Home Depot to get their Noble Phantasms to work. Apparently, Semiramis is linked enough to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to use it as a Noble Phantasms but since it is not really her Noble Phantasms she has to supply the raw material for a ritual to make it a reality. It lets her use a super high-level Caster class Noble Phantasms despite ostensibly only being an Assassin.  It also explains why the Red Faction did not just whip this out the first day.

In a way, this battle needed to happen. With the current set up the Yggdmillennia could just hunker down behind their defenses and slowly snipe the Red Servants until they just had an unbeatable advantage. All things being even the Yggdmillennia are just too well defended for most type of frontal attacks to be sucessful. They would have to actively and repeatedly make major blunders to lose to all but the best guerrilla warfare campaigns. So this flying fortress vs. fortified castle battle is the only way this becomes a fair fight.

Now it might seem like this is going to be a really short series since we have jumped right into the last battle. Red vs. Black in total. The beginning of the end. I’m guessing there will be far fewer causalities than anything to kick the show into the end game. In fact, I would be surprised if anyone important dies here. I see tons of dead homunculi, golems, and skeleton warriors but no Servants or Master deaths. At MOST maybe one death. The real result of this battle would be the Yggdmillennia forced out of their seemingly invulnerable position. When the castle is destroyed the Yggdmillennia will have to become a much more mobile fighting force. It lets both sides randomly run into each and makes it much more likely for both sides to try to lay traps for each other. In other words, it makes it a more standard Holy Grail War. The purpose of this battle is not to have a definitive win for either side but to shake up the status quo.

The most interesting part of the Yggdmillennia preparations is seeing Vlad step up to the plate. So far they have constantly mentioned that he is the head of the Black faction but much like Darnic he seems like the type to lead from the back. This is the first time we see him as a front line general as well. He is not just the boss who gives out order back in his castle. He is the type to be the tip of the spear when the real fighting starts up.

Sieg finally made a decision as an active character. He is going to go back into the fight. So far Sieg has been an almost painfully passive character.  While you could argue that he was hand-held towards this decision, especially if you hate the character, it was still a choice that he made on his own. The real question is what will come of it and will the story be able to mold this character into something interesting.

At this point, Sieg has no real alliance. While he has the spirit of Siegfried he does not have an allegiance towards his old partners. In fact, they are still gunning for him and he wants to free his fellow homunculi. At the same time, the Red faction is not that much better and you should never throw in your lot with anyone with the last name Kotomine. That only leaves him on team Jeanne d’Arc which makes the most sense but you then have to wonder what is he going to do there. Jeanne has a very clear job. At best Sieg can be her Watson and occasional mediocre bodyguard. That would firmly place him in the Shiro Emiya position and … the fandom’s reaction to him is becoming crystal clear.

That also means that he has to work really hard to distinguish himself as more than just the dishwater dull Shiro. As he has now stepped into the role of active character he has a limited amount of time to start distinguishing himself as a full personality that people can get behind. The longer he takes to stand out the deeper in the hole he gets. All the flashy fights and cool powers in the world will mean nothing if everyone sees him as a Jeanne’s blando sidekick who just happens to get plot convenient superpowers when needed.

What Sieg does in the next two episodes is going to shape his legacy indefinitely. He is already off to a bad start but this is do or die time for him.

As I implied you let these episodes lay the foundation and if you are patient they will pay off be dividends. The next episode should be some excellent battles between Servants that will pay off all the set up in this episode. Seig might also start paying off all the attention that has been given him so far as well.

Fingers crossed.

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
Fate/Apocrypha #04: Sumanai
Fate/Apocrypha #05: Freedom! Horrible, Horrible Freedom!
Fate/Apocrypha #06: Who Am I?

Ace of the Diamond by Yuji Terajima

I can go on for a long LONG time about how much I love Ace of the Diamond. That podcast is a spoiler minefield by the way. Yet, I haven’t put that love into writing here on the blog before. In fact, the only time I talked about it on Reverse Thieves proper, I wasn’t actually very taken with it. It is a series with a slow roll; after giving it a second chance, I discovered it pays off big time.

Eijun wasn’t planning on playing baseball seriously, he just wanted to spend time with his friends. But after he is invited to see a major high school team’s practice, everything changes. He gets to pitch a few, piss nearly everyone off, and gets recruited thanks to star catcher Miyuki and coach Kataoka.

Eijun, however, is not the ace of the Seido baseball team. He dreams it. He wants it. But he isn’t it. You might think it is obvious that Eijun will become the ace, but the series has a lot of uncertainty. As I see it, there are many aces of the diamond because this, as with all good sports series, is about a team and not a single player. Different moments have different aces.

At first, Eijun is hard to like. He begins the series as a sincere baseball lover but also a bullheaded jerk. More than likely you’ll be like me and become very passionate about the stories of catcher Miyuki, captain Yuki, injured Chris, the Kominato brothers, and the many other players. However, Eijun, for all his flaws, learns so much in the early parts of the series thanks to the stellar cast. It doesn’t take too long (but certainly more than a couple of volumes) for him to realize the error of his ways and start down his true path.

And finally what keeps me glued to Ace of the Diamond for the long haul is the emotional resonance. The series is top-notch when it comes to showing the determination and heart of the Seido team. I have cried harder, cheered louder, and raged more fiercely when it comes to Ace of the Diamond than I have for any other sports series.

So you may not like Eijun at first. And the series is more than 50 books and climbing (Ace of the Diamond is 47 book, Act II is 8 and ongoing). But I am here to tell you that it is absolutely worth the investment.

I’ve been beyond elated with the recent offerings of sports manga in English. Ace of the Diamond is another series that is getting a digital release which is a great way to go with these long-running series.

• Read Ch. 1 for free!
• Get it!
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~kate

 One of the best parts of any Holy Grail War is seeing the different Servants fighting. It invokes all the craziest parts of any “which of these two historical characters would win in a fight” argument with a healthy dose of fantasy spectacle. A fight like this battle royal multiplies that excitement seven fold. Part of the entertainment is seeing what Servants throw down with each other. You can see everything from the seeming mismatches of a speedy hard-hitting lancer vs a low defense Caster or a more evenly matched battle of ranged combat between a Caster and Archer. Even when two Servants of the same class face off they can have fascinating permutations. Two Sabers with similar styles can be a pure battle of skill but it can also be a clash of wildly different styles and how they compare. It is also interesting to see which Servants pairs up, who goes it solo, and who jumps in to save (or betray) a fellow team member. Will fighters makes themselves a huge target to draw out the most powerful champions, will they strike from the shadows, and will they just sit on the sidelines and wait to see what happens? There are so many and exciting permutations so it is intoxicating to see which ones play out.

Fate/Apocrypha has turned into Dynasty Warriors as the Red and Black Factions wade through seas of grunts to face off against their equals. Vlad III leads the defense taking on several servants all on his own while the Red Servants all try to break through the castle’s formidable defenses. In the middle of the carnage, Sieg attempts to valiantly save a few of his fellow homunculi.

The foot soldiers here do a great job of letting the Servants on both sides show off their abilities. Even someone like Atalanta who does not do much against Vlad III looks damn impressive when she rains down Phoebus Catastrophe on a group of homunculi and golems. When it comes to actually fighting Vlad she takes a back seat to Karna but at least she has her time in the sun even if it is against cannon fodder. Then again Achilles looks really cool when he is tearing through the battlefield on top of his Troias Tragōidia but is stopped dead in his tracks the second Avicebron actually starts to take control of his golems as more than just automated pawns.

The battle of the Lancers is the first real battle of an Immovable Object vs. an Unstoppable Force in this war. If you have ever heard Type-Moon fans complain about Karna it is how they tend to nerf him in games. The thing about the Mahabharata heroes is they are all Epic level Dungeons & Dragons characters in a Monty haul campaign compared to the standard level characters of most other heroes. Mahabharata heroes usually are all immortals with dozens of weapons that can destroy worlds. So when a jobber like Gilles de Rais (Saber) is able to take out Karna they get a bit upset. That is not the case here.

They do a good job of showing how Vlad III would be insanely powerful in any situation but given the fact he is fighting in defense of his home country of what used to be Wallachia it makes him practically a god. So he can go toe to toe with someone like Karna even with the backup of Atalanta and still be on top. But the Sun Bro is not going to fall to the Impaler without a lengthy battle. Vlad could be seen as the Unstoppable Force and Karna as the Immovable Object but in truth, both of them have a few the aspects of either title. Both of them have an insanely high offense and defense. Atalanta feels more like a level 10 minion next to these level 25 demigods.

One of the major questions surrounding Chiron and Fiore is how ruthless can he be when push comes to shove. Both of them make a big deal that they can snuff out their kindness towards those they love and kill anyone to win the Grail. Fiore says she could kill her brother to win the Grail when she is first getting to know Chiron. Likewise, Chiron says he is willing to kill Achilles despite their friendship. But the question is how true is that in the end. While you get the obvious feeling that Achilles is in an obvious state of shock seeing that he has to fight his old teacher Chiron gives off a vibe that he is 100% Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.

But at the same time, he has known right off the bat what Achilles one and only weakness is when Achilles had no idea who his opponent was. If Chiron was really and completely cold-hearted he would have set up a trap to let him get a good shot at Achilles heels and dispatched him before Achilles recognized him. It might not have worked but it would have given him a great advantage right off the bat. Instead, Chiron leads Achilles to him with shots that he knows Achilles can dodge so they can have their face to face meeting. Chiron then gives a speech to Achilles which seems mean-spirited but with a step back it is to even the psychological playing field. Now Achilles will have a much easier time fighting his former mentor to the death. Chiron might be earnestly fighting for the grail but he is still a protective teacher of heroes.

Sieg’s role in this episode seems to be that of a medic. Considering most of the homunculi are on the painful end of some serious Noble Phantasms and named weapons they don’t really need a doctor as much as an undertaker. He is able to patch up a homunculus named Toole who only received a glancing blow. It seems that Sieg has gained a somewhat reluctant partner in his quest to save the other homunculi. It is not as if Toole is hesitant to join Sieg because she thinks his plan is foolish or wrong. It is more she can’t even really comprehend his basic idea.

Overall this is a fairly good step forward for Sieg’s character. He is making proactive decisions and moving the plot forward. He still has a distinctly dry toast light novel protagonist personality but it is a positive move forward none the less. The major problem for him is that while the security around the castle is not as much as it could be because of the fighting Avicebron is still in the castle and he is 100% aware of everything that goes on there whether Sieg knows it or not.

They have done it in the past but I felt like pointing out that they REALLY want you to think Shiro Kotomine and Shiro Emiya are the same people from different timelines. They even make sure they the give him the fairly iconic Shiro smiling shrug in this scene just in case you were unaware of Shiro Kotomine’s true identity. Sneaky.

Despite throwing out red herrings like that to mix things up they do drop quite a few hints about Shiro Kotomine ‘s true nature. While his conversation Semiramis neither of them ever say outright that Shiro is both a Servant and a Master but they like to imply in heavily. Shiro is also constantly mentioning how he has similar abilities to Jeanne d’Arc including her Revelations.  He is also far more worried about her than he is anyone on the side of the Yggdmillennia. It seems like the Yggdmillennia are mere speed bumps on his way to his prize whereas he makes Jeanne feel like his real last boss.

What happens when you mix the innate driving skill of Artoria Pendragon with the wild recklessness of Irisviel von Einzbern? Kairi Sisigou, unfortunately, knows the answer to this question as you can tell from his Chiyo Mihama like face in this episode.

I’m mostly just amused that Mordred really wants in on this battle. As it stands she could have sat back and let everyone else fight it out and just taken care of the survivors but that is not her style.

Avicebron is clearly a really powerful support mage who is pretty defenseless when you get into close combat range. Medea also had this problem but at least she was an offensive spell slinger par excellence. In fact, Shakespeare has the same problem. Someone like Cú Chulainn Caster or Nero Caster could rip through them without a modicum of effort. That does mean if Sieg does get caught by Avicebron he actually has a fighting chance without having to invoke plot armor.

Astolfo has his more than enough on his plate without deliberately tying one of his hands behind his back. Attacking the Hanging Gardens of Babylon by himself is fairly ambitious but without his noble phantasm is sort of insanity. It will be interesting to see how much Semiramis actually throws directly into the fight as opposed to just unleashing the defense systems on the Gardens of Babylon. Since she is not in Grand Order yet I have no idea how she fights. You do get the feeling that if Astolfo could use his Nobel Phantasm this would be a very different story. But between a yandere Master and a refuse to drain homunculi for mana he can’t get the energy he needs to fire his ultimate griffin based attack.

Also, Celenike continues to be a Creepy McCreeperson. I wonder who is more of a danger to Sieg.? Her or Avicebron? Sieg would be in real trouble if they were to team up but thankfully for him, they don’t seem the type of people to do that.

It seems like Shiro is trying to trade up with Berserkers. While he has a magical sword he is wisely not trying to take down Frankenstein’s monster with brute force. He is instead trying to use his much more effective words. He was able to usurp five of his fellow masters (with Semiramis’ help) so if anyone actually has a chance to get a Servant to change sides it would be him. I don’t think it will work though. Frankenstein’s monster and Caules have actually bonded so she probably one of the few Yggdmillennia Servants who would stay loyal to her Master unless there is some supernatural element to the persuasion used on her.

Mordred is really going to mix things up in the next episode. Her and Sisigou really feel like wild cards in this battle. Everyone else seems to have a very set path but they seem like the two to tip the balance via sheer unpredictability. Even the rampaging Spartacus seems like someone who can be anticipated ironically enough. Spartacus will throw down with the first Servant he runs into. Mordred can be far more of the coin flip.

Sieg and Jeanne are also wild cards but they seem more reactive than active. They seem more like the type that will get attacked and have to defend themselves than attackers themselves. In fact, I see Sieg and Toole getting attacked and Jeanne coming in and saving them. Since the plot is eventually going to push them together this would be a good opportunity to do so.

But no matter what happens I am very curious to see how this fight progresses.

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
Fate/Apocrypha #04: Sumanai
Fate/Apocrypha #05: Freedom! Horrible, Horrible Freedom!
Fate/Apocrypha #06: Who Am I?
Fate/Apocrypha #07: Castle Crashers

 Seeing that this battle has the feel of something you would see in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms I figured I would name this episode after one of the most famous battles in the book. The Battle of Red Cliffs is not the final battle of the Three Kingdoms periods. In fact, it is one of the earliest battles of the Three Kingdoms period proper. But it is a decisive battle that sets much of the tenor of what comes after it. Therefore I think you could pick few titles that set the tone for this episode better. This is hardly the final part of the Great Holy Grail War but it is a huge battle with almost all the major players that will determine how everything else plays out past this point.

With the foot soldiers mostly swept aside, the war becomes a Romance of the Three Kingdoms styled battle of generals. With all the Servants and active Masters (other than Jack) on the battlefield, the fights get serious. Using the battle as cover Seig is able to save his fellow homunculi but is drawn into the fight to save his savior, Astolfo.

Before I begin I should point out that while they never name him in this episode (and I have a feeling they might not name him at all in the anime) Darnic’s Servant in the Third Holy Grail War was Fionn mac Cumhaill. It is clearly one of those points that made all the super fans all when they see it but everyone else just scratches their heads and wonder who the hell that random knight is. It is in that weird territory between an Easter Egg and an in-joke. I think it is amusing but I can easily see how it would be annoying. Then again a constant stream of Legend of the Galactic Heroes styled name subtitles would be odd and clunky expository dialog would have been awkward.

The Fate/Grand Order player in me is EXTREMELY skeptical that Darnic won the Third Holy Grail War with Fionn mac Cumhaill but the history and mythology nerd in me perfectly understands how he could have won with the leader of the Knights of Fianna. It is one of those cases where a character in the game is far weaker than they are in myth and legend. In Irish legend, Fionn is one of the most powerful warriors. In Grand Order, he is one of the worst 4 star characters in the game. It is what I was talking about with Karna in the last post times ten.

The other random Servant in the fire will eventually get an introduction as Shiro but for now, they want to keep it somewhat of a secret. While this episode keeps dropping major hints to Shiro being a Servant they are still hoping that the viewers who are not in the know will pick up on their clues before they state it outright.

Shiro is clearly the enemy of all Fate/Grand Order players as he spams out the Black Keys like he was Kotomine with an extra helping of Ciel. It really lets him stand toe to toe with Frankenstein’s Monster. It is a little unclear if he could kill her if went on the offense but he seems not to be breaking too much of a sweat when he is fighting defensively. This makes him close to Bazett in terms of Masters who can hold their own with Servants if all thing were fair. But they are not. Since Shiro is very deliberately keeping his Servant status on the down low it is hard to tell how powerful he actually is.

Shakespeare is one of those Servants who would not be great in a normal Holy Grail War but really comes into his own in a group dynamic. His powers are great for powering up other Servants and giving them an advantage but he is not really strong enough to take advantage of those items on his own. His ability to escape from harm, create minor Noble Phantasms, and inflict psychological damage are great tools to keep himself alive long enough to create an opening for another Servant but not enough for him to deliver a killing blow.

Then again Alexandre Dumas shows that a totally support centered Caster can work in a standard Holy Grail War but you really need a Master who had the resources and skills to use such a Servant. They could even be a major advantage to someone like Bazett but Masters that can fight on par with as Servant are few and far between. So I guess it is more precise to say that any fool has a chance with a Gilgamesh styled powerhouse but only a select few can triumph with a support Servant.

At this point, while Astolfo has built up a fan following based on personality and design but Astolfo has not really been shown as a powerhouse Servant. So far Astolfo has done very little against Siegfried and Spartacus and basically, both of those fights were interrupted by outside factors. As the weakest of Charlemagne’s paladins I don’t think anyone was expecting Astolfo to be this monstrous threat that everyone tip toes around like a Gilgamesh or a Hercules but at the same time, the character needs some chance to shine otherwise he is completely in the role of a charismatic jobber. Therefore they at least have an Astolfo and his mount kicking some ass in an aerial battle to show off that this Servant has some skills beyond cuteness. His use of La Black Luna shows that he can be dangerous when he wants to be.

In Astolfo’s defense, he is purposely fighting with one hand tied behind his back. He knows that if he goes all out with his most powerful attacks he will be killing Homunculi batteries back in the castle so he has to avoid using anything that would consume a lot of mana. So Astolfo’s true potential is still being hidden even if it is not the same as some of the major power players in the battle.  Astolfo probably would not be able to casually defeat a Vlad or Karna even if he were in tip-top shape with a steady mana flow but he would be doing more than this.

It is worth noting that Semiramis is fighting like a Caster despite the fact she is ostensibly an Assassin. She has a huge flying fortress Bounded Field which shoots out familiars and beam spam as well as has magical walls of protection. She fights much more like Medea than the Cursed Arm Hassan.

There is a camp of Fate fans that really dislike that there are a lot more Berserkers that can speak especially after the release of Fate/Grand Order. In their opinion, the almost bestial examples like Hercules and Lancelot are the REAL Berserkers and ther others are just posers. I feel Spartacus makes an excellent case for a Servant that can speak in full sentences that still really captures the idea of the Class while still having the ability to converse. Spartacus has a cause and he rushes towards it with a sword in hand no matter what. His Berserker nature gives him strength and fortitude beyond that of other Servants but in return, he abandons nuance and strategy. He will attack his supposed allies as quickly as his enemies while he is in a constant fugue state if it is in service of his core ideals. This makes him feel like the Berserkers of lore as much as the animalistic destruction engine sort of Servant.

Then again there are still fans who are super mad that they have Assassins that are not one of the nineteen Hassan-i-Sabbahs so there are just fans who are persnickety rules lawyers.

At the same time, Atalanta feels under powered when her Phoebus Catastrophe does little to actually stop Spartacus. The Noble Phantam itself is damn impressive. It pretty much destroys most of Spartacus but like Wolverine at his most overpowered as long as a decent sized chunk of his body survives then he can regenerate the damage. It is one of those instances where Atalanta would not look so bad but after doing almost nothing against Vlad she seems more underpowered than she normally would when she is ineffective against Spartacus.

Ok. I was wrong. Apparently, Chiron still has enough divinity that he can damage Achilles despite the invincibility that his Andreias Amarantos normally gives him. That means that Chiron’s normal attacks are actually dangerous without having to strike Achilles’ heel first. It still shows that Chiron is being kinder than he needs to be because Achilles used to be a student of his but it also shows he is not completely throwing the fight.

I really expected this great escape to go much worse. I’m super surprised that Avicebron did not do anything to stop the Homunculi from escaping. I know there is a huge battle going on but Avicebron seems to be hanging back so I assumed he would notice Seig and Toole breaking into the castle. I guess he is too busy controlling all the golems and keeping Spartacus in check but I still assumed a huge disruption like the loss of the Homunculi batteries would be noticed more. I wonder if the plan is to let them go for now and recapture them when the battle is over. Seig will eventually get himself in trouble when he goes to save Astolfo but this went amazingly smoothly.

You have to admire how nonchalant Mordred is arriving on the battlefield. It feels more like she showed up late to a party or a concert than to WWII. It is also an interesting view into her odd mindset. At times she clearly considers herself the noble hero like Artoria. Other times she is a merciless villain who mocks those who hold honor and principle above survival. She is the antihero to the maximum. Also, she kicks Astolfo’s ass without breaking a sweat. You get the impression that even if Astolfo was at full power it would still be a one-sided fight.

This is probably the most experimental part of the episode. When Shakespeare uses The King’s Men the whole style of the episode really shifts. Everything becomes like the 1910’s silent Frankenstein film. The animation is often deliberately sketchy to show the growing madness in Frankenstein’s Monster as the spell draws her further and further into the stage play of her life. I’m not sure it all works but I feel it was an interesting experiment. I’m hoping that they play with the style of the show every time Shakespeare uses The King’s Men. It really enhances the effect of the power and makes it feel like more than just a chance to explore the Servant’s back stories.

There are two interesting things to note about the little series of attack of Semiramis on Jeanne d’Arc. The first is the fact that Jeanne has a literally godly level of magic resistance. She is able to ignore the full onslaught of the Hanging Gardens without breaking a sweat. She can ignore any level of magic that is not related to the church. So Merlin could not touch her but she would easily fall to Ciel. Also, it is amazingly clear that Shiro and Semiramis are going out of their way to make sure that Jeanne does not meet Shiro. They have mostly stayed in the background but they only seem to go into overdrive when Jeanne starts getting close to Shiro. It is clear that Shiro is the source of the disruption in the Grail War and the Red Faction is doing whatever it takes to make sure Jeanne who already has a hunch of where the disruption is coming from does not learn the truth.

This looks like it is going to go super well for Seig. Well actually they are but it is clear he is supposed to be majorly outclassed but will make it through this anyway. I continue to feel that I can’t fully pass judgment on Seig yet. Right now I have a decent image of what the strengths of the character are as well of how he seems riddled with elements that make him a really easy character to hate. It is super clear that a mixture of deus ex machina and interfering characters are going to have to jump in to save Seig from Mordred. The next few episodes are extremely critical to determine how many people just view him as a Gary Stu. At this point, he is locked in as a character that will get the Gary Stu label. It is really just a matter of how commonplace that label will become.

I generally get the impression the staff at A-1 Picture were flexing their muscle a bit in this episode. Overall while they don’t have a Studio Deen utterly bottom of the barrel level reputation they are more just known for being utterly acceptable but nothing more and sometimes a little less. Before this point, I thought the animation was OK. There were some highlight scenes and some underperforming parts but overall the animation did its job but it was never even close to Ufotable on a bad day. I understand why you would want Ufotable all the time but A-1 Picture gets the job done.

This episode felt different. Make no mistake it is, still not anywhere near Ufotable level. Before this point, the animation felt like it was competent but never artistic. This time it felt like the episode director was experimenting a bit more and trying going a little beyond just acceptable. I don’t think everything worked out perfectly but it felt like the episode was not just going through the motions. They of dip their toes into stressing more vibrant motion instead of trying to stay model. They played around with different art styles, went a little jazzy with the fight animation, and overall made this episode feel a bit more unique. I don’t feel this one will get them out of the perception they have about what sort of show this is but I will give the episode respect for trying to rise above just satisfactory.

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
Fate/Apocrypha #04: Sumanai
Fate/Apocrypha #05: Freedom! Horrible, Horrible Freedom!
Fate/Apocrypha #06: Who Am I?
Fate/Apocrypha #07: Castle Crashers
Fate/Apocrypha #08: Mordred Went to the Yukari Tanizaki School of Driving

 Up until this point, Fate/Apocrypha has had to keep shifting the focus to cover all of the cast. Certain characters have definitely gotten more screen time than others but they have been working their darnedest to flesh out the main cast especially since they have to start killing some of them off soon. This is the first point in the anime to really focus on only a handful of characters. It makes sense considering this is the first real deal death of a Servant so a little narrowing of scope is vital to give impact to the first casualty. (Siegfried does not really count given this episode.)

Mordred fights Sieg, Astolfo, and Frankenstein’s monster all at the same time and kills two of them. Before Mordred can get a hat trick Seig returns as Siegfried so that he can actually give the Knight of Betrayal a worthy opponent.

It is one thing to say the Saber is the most powerful Class but it is another thing to see it in action. Mordred really shows off the power of Round Table when she takes on three enemies at once without too much difficulty. I admit  Sieg, Astolfo, and Frankenstein’s monster are sort of the low-end of the opponent pool but they are still significant threats. Astolfo has the excuse that he just fought Semiramis and is deliberately not using super mana intensive attacks. Frankenstein’s monster is hobbled a bit by being a newer Servant and therefore having less cultural cache. Sieg is mostly better than a human but far less than a Servant or even a well-trained magus. So while Mordred does fight three opponents it is not a fight against Gilgamesh, Scathach, and Altera. It is far more than most basic Servants could ever do but not a god tier of combat prowess either.

Still, it is amusing to see her throw around Sieg and Astolfo like they were training dummies.

It seems that the G String Assassin is actually on the battlefield. She has just chosen to murder some of the homunculi and golems that are on the edges of the battle to increase her mana supply since her Master can’t do that. Since the homunculi and golems are also on the Black side I have to wonder if this is a bit of a declaration of war on their own side or is this a bit of a misunderstanding since Reika Rikudou is an unusual master.

This does feel like a bit of a missed opportunity. The chaos of a battle like this would be the perfect time for Jack to try to take out some Masters. She does not seem like the sort to do super well against combat monster Servants but she has proven to be decent at killing magi as demonstrated by her trip from London to Trifas. The problem is that at this point there are really only two Masters left on the Red side. Shiro is a bit too big a target and she just tried to kill Kairi Sisigou so it would be a bit boring for her to attack him again. This is a case where having the other five Red Masters around would have helped. They would not necessarily have had to die but they would have let Jack do more than be cute while she murders nobodies.

I was not expecting Frankenstein’s monster to be the first Servant to be killed. In retrospect, it makes sense since Yuuichirou Higashide went out of his way to set up her history and motivation more than any other the other minor Servants. He also had Frankenstein’s monster and Caules have more interactions than any other pair other than Mordred and Sisigou so the audience had some emotional attachment to her before she died. If anything I have to give the series a little praise for not just throwing Frankenstein’s monster all of that development in the same episode where she dies. I know some people will mention this is something that even the newest writers should easily avoid but it happens so often in other series that it is worth a thumbs up when that trope is avoided.

If you thought Frankenstein’s monster went down easily then Seig asked someone to hold his beer while he showed everyone what a REAL jobber looks like. At first, Mordred seems almost sympathetic to the valiant homunculi trying to save his friend but Mordred is hardly a saint. Even the Buddha gets mad after the third time and Mordred is not really qualifying for the Saver Class anytime soon.

I’m sure there were a small group of people who thought that Sieg died here. But everyone other than those two people probably guessed that he was going to pull through. At this point, there has been far too much emphasis placed on Sieg for him to die and this is not the type of story to subvert those expectations.

If you’re going to go out you might as well go out like a champ. While Frankenstein’s monster does not do that much more than making Sisigou send a command seal it is a damn impressive way to do it. Plus at that point, it was not like Astolfo and Frankenstein’s monster had any chance without a sacrifice play.

The more interesting question is what role does Caules play past this point. Unlike Gordes, the story has shown that Caules is capable outside of having a Servant.  Now that he is no longer a direct threat to Fiore’s ambitions he easily could become her direct ally or at least a general supporter of his sister and Chiron and the rest of the Yggdmillennia faction. I’m not sure what role exactly he will play but as a bit more of a free agent he still has lots of potential as a character.

I know that entering the Dragon’s Lair is one of the steps on the Hero’s Journey in the monomyth but you don’t have to be THAT on the nose about it. He essentially gets permission to have the power of Siegfried and Fafnir by taking up Siegfried‘s quest to help others even if the cost is his own sense of self. In many ways, this scene is both the heart of what makes Sieg a compelling character and what makes him feel so bland.

He is simultaneously a very passive character but at the same time, he is often being active. Most of the time he feels like a leaf in the wind in regards to the plot. He seems to just float along to where he needs to be next. But then at key moments, he makes the decisions and choices to move his story forward but he always feels like his hand is being held while he makes that choice. If a parent is standing over a child’s shoulder nudging them towards the right choice so it can feel more like the parent’s choice than the child’s. In every scene so far where Sieg has been active, he feels very passive in his agency. It is a messy feeling that can rob his choices of a sense of character growth.

OK. So Sieg now can temporally turn himself into Siegfried. While it is only for a short period of time it is a HUGE upgrade from his previous milksop form which Mordred brushed aside without even a second thought. He also has a bit of an upgrade thanks to Blasted Tree reviving him on the battlefield. He went from Zero to Hero in the course of half an episode. It is like Sieg is a passive Mega Man. Every time someone dies in this series a weaker version of their power goes to this kid. This really seems like more evidence towards the Gary Stu interpretation of the character.

It seems that we have almost caught up to the beginning of the anime. It will be interesting to see where things go from here.

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
Fate/Apocrypha #04: Sumanai
Fate/Apocrypha #05: Freedom! Horrible, Horrible Freedom!
Fate/Apocrypha #06: Who Am I?
Fate/Apocrypha #07: Castle Crashers
Fate/Apocrypha #08: Mordred Went to the Yukari Tanizaki School of Driving
Fate/Apocrypha #09: The Battle of Red Cliffs

Restaurant to Another World (異世界食堂 ) by Takaaki Kugatsu

It only makes sense that there would be demand for anime and manga centered around food. With the sheer diversity of topics that manga touches upon and considering how much eating is just a fundamental part of being a human, it would be bizarre if there were not some manga about food. And make no mistake there have been plenty of series about food and cooking from Mister Ajikko to Ristorante Paradiso. Some are extremely mundane like Sweetness and Lightning but you also have the crazy over the top antics of Yakitate!! Japan. You even have the ultra-macho Iron Wok Jan as well as the soft and gentle Yumeiro Patissiere. But recently I feel there has been an increase in the number of food-related manga being adapted into anime. Our recent New Shows for Older Fans panel had four food-based shows on the list and Crunchyroll recently started a Cooking With Anime column.  So cooking manga has always been around but it has gotten a bit of a bump thanks to some higher profile anime.

Therefore I wanted to talk a bit about Restaurant to Another World this month. I feel it is an exciting mixture of many of the extremes of food manga. It is fairly fantastical while still feeling pretty grounded. A nice medium between the poles of Oishinbo and Toriko. The base of an Iyashikei series like Bartender with the fantasy spice of Delicious in Dungeon.

In Tokyo, there is an unassuming little restaurant named the Western Restaurant Nekoya that serves its Japanese patrons foreign food six days a week.  Every Saturday the restaurant seems closed to the outside but inside a door opens connecting it to various places in a Tolkienesque fantasy world. Anyone who enters the doors in this fantasy world can sample the foods from modern-day Earth. The restaurant is the hub that connects the connected stories of patrons and staff of both worlds.

The heart of the manga is the kindly Master who inherited the restaurant from his grandfather and Aletta the disadvantaged demon girl who he hires as a waitress. They are the two main characters who the story centers around. Their comfortable working relationship is the backbone of the series. Interestingly enough they don’t have a romantic relationship but they have a more formal bond of a generous boss and a hard-working employee. This gives the story more time to focus on the stories of the patrons, their fascinating places of origin, and their delicious meals.

The cast then expands out with a regular set of patrons. These are the characters who are most often seen in the background of the restaurant in other people’s stories. As the series goes on characters begins to interact inside and outside of the Nekoya letting the reader explore the characters they already know in greater detail while getting a better insight into the world they come from.

Take for example Faldania. She is an elf that stumbles into the cafe who has a very strict vegan diet like the rest of her people. She expects a restaurant to have the normal fare that human establishments would have. When she finds that the Tofu steak severed at the Nekoya is as good if not better than anything she has eaten from an Elvin chef she leaves her small home village to explore the world and invent vegan cuisine to surpass the Master’s cooking. After that point she runs into other patrons of the Nekoya and invites people she meets on her journey to sample the food of the other world.

Another time one story involves a shipwrecked sailor whose only tie to other people is the Restaurant. After he is saved and brought back to civilization a pair of siren siblings who find his old island home use his notes he wrote while a castaway to visit the restaurant. Each time the live of the customers intersect the story neatly expands the history of the fantasy world without long expositions dumps.

Of course I could not do this whole Manga of the Month and not describe the food. It is just as important as the characters and the setting. Being a Western Restaurant the menu is quite diverse with dishes from all over the world although the menu is a little more titled towards the Japanese impression of Western food than an extremely obscure culinary guide. Expect more Chicken Curry and Carpaccio than Fufu and Stroopwafel.

The real star is the combination of the visuals and the descriptions. The dishes look wonderful and like any great food manga the mouth-watering descriptions are what really sells the experience. The detailed experiences of the taste and texture of the food mixed with the customers joy when eating really makes it that you can almost smell what they are eating. You need that visceral connection to the meals for everything to come together.

If you have been watching the anime there are some differences to make reading the manga worth your while. First of all the stories occur in a different order in the anime and manga. The first episode of the anime introduces the Red Queen and then Aletta whereas the manga starts with Sarah Gold and then moves on to Aletta. From there the patrons continue to be introduced at their own pace in both mediums. It is not a huge change but it means certain bits of world building get traded from one story to another. Also blocks of exposition and world building seem to shift a bit as well.

The bigger and more interesting difference is that  the restaurant always just seems so much more busy in the manga. I get the feeling that to save on costs in the anime they only draws the characters they absolutely need for the episode and maybe one or two additional patrons for color. In the manga it is almost always a full house unless it is a plot detail. This really makes the place feel like a grand meeting point for people from all over the fantasy world. Part D&D Adventurer’s Inn and part otherworldly Cheers. I get impression this is closer to the vibe of the resturant in the original novels.

If you’re looking for a foodie series with an interesting twist, a healing manga with a little more energy, or a fantasy world with a little less murder and mayhem then you might want to check out Restaurant to Another World. Just be warned like any good story about food you should never read it on an empty stomach.

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 If you have played the original Mass Effect Trilogy then the sound of the colossal Reapers and their superweapon lasers will become ingrained in your brain by the end of the third game. (One might said the sound indoctrinates you.) So when Spartacus uses his mega laser as part of the finale of his Crying Warmonger Nobel Phantasm it was the first sound that came to mind. Spartacus’ attack does not have the Inception Braaam but otherwise, they sound fairly similar. Now it is not as if Mass Effect has some sort of monopoly on giant laser sound effects. Giant civilization ending weapons are as much a part of the games, shows, and movies as teleportation and faster than light travel.

In fact, if the Spartacus sound effects were inspired by Mass Effect it would surprise me about as much as if they were not. Mass Effect seems like the sort of series that made an impact in Japan but was not all over the place. It seems like a series many Japanese nerds would overlook but not so niche that only the most American obsessed otaku would have experience with it. I would guess it is above Halo fandom but below Marvel movie fandom.

I suppose only the staff of HALF H·P STUDIO could answer the question. But if you can’t randomly speculate with minimum information on the Internet what is the point of the whole damn thing.

Before Jeanne can discover what is wrong with this Holy Grail War an out of control blob of rebellion that was once Spartacus is thrown in her path. As the fleshy mass grows he begins to disrupt any of the active battles between Servants until Spartacus explodes in a spectacular fashion. This clears a path for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to swoop in a take the Greater Grail. The Yggdmillennia Servants now have to switch to the offensive now that their trump card has been stolen.

Apparently, Atalanta has played enough MMORPGs to know how to kite an enemy into an opposing force. Instead of fighting Jeanne she instead just draws Spartacus’ attention to the “oppressive” Ruler of the battlefield. It is clear that Shiro really does not want to meet Jeanne and he keeps having his people throw everything and anything in her path. While Jeanne is never in real danger it does eat up her time which is the real goal in the end.

I don’t think anyone can fully complain that they don’t give Karna is due after this. All things being equal Vlad is usually a high-powered Servant that can stand toe to toe with the best of them. His stakes are equally good offensively and defensively. They are basically a swarm of Gundam Bits that attack and defend him like any ninja who can control insects. He also can just hitscan his stakes if he does not want to chase people around. On top of that, all of his stats and abilities are supercharged thanks to him being in his country of origin. All but the most ridiculous or invulnerable of Servants is no match for him. Cue Karna.

Near invulnerable thanks to his armor. Check. A wide variety of weapons. Check. The ability to read his opponents and see through tricks and illusions. Heck. Divinity with a connection to a Sun God. Check. He is pretty much the counter to Vlad who should otherwise just dominate the battlefield. While Karna is able to make little progress in defeating Vlad he also keeps Vlad from hunting the weaker or otherwise occupied members of the Red Faction. Karna bottlenecks the Yggdmillennia’s silver bullet.

OK. They actually made Seig ability to channel Siegfried have something that feels like a time limit. If he could just channel Siegfried at will for a significant amount of time it would make it that Seig just got everything awesome about being the Dragon-Blooded Knight without any drawbacks as well as every other power he gets. That would completely seal the deal for his title as Gary Stu. In fact, that is usually one of the easiest ways to spot a Gary Stu. Having the powers of an established characters plus a bunch of extras sets off all the warning bells. The real test will be to see if Seig continues to have this short window with the power or not. If Seig’s time in Servant mode keeps getting longer than the supposed downside is not really a downside but just a way to have a power curve on a Gary Stu.

Two general notes about Mordred. The first is she is a really bad winner. I assume she is also a poor loser. In fact, in general, I assume you don’t want to compete against her. There might have been a very good reason Agravain was one of her few “friends” on the Round Table. The second is Mordred really likes to use her father’s titles. She very proudly calls herself King of Knights despite the fact that is, in fact, Arturia’s sobriquet. Mordred died before Arturia at the Battle of Camlann so she can’t even claim she briefly claimed that title. More than anything it shows that Mordred is absolutely convinced that the Sword of Selection would pick her and therefore she just causally uses Arturia’s titles as if they were her own.

Since Jeanne is able to use Luminosité Eternelle without being stunned must mean she was able to complete her second Interlude. Come for the discussion of Fate/Apocrypha episodes but stay for the silly Grand Order jokes.

I will say that there seemed to be a lot of jibber-jabber surrounding how no one could carry Seig away from the blast zone of Crying Warmonger. This leads to the classic “Save Yourselves!” “NEVER!” exchange but the is only one problem. The two people Seig is talking to are full Servants. I admit Astolfo is injured but Jeanne is about as winded as someone who just had a light jog. It is not as if Seig is a muscle man in full plate armor.  He is a lithe young man and only 120 pounds if soaking wet. Either of them should be able to pick him up like he was an empty briefcase and run off with him with only the smallest change of speed. If they were normal people this would be hard but they are Servants with statistics beyond that of normal humans. Now I understand the whole point of the scene is to show off Luminosité Eternelle but it seems a bit more contrived than it needs to be.

Talk about a reversal of fortunes. When the war started it appeared that the bookies would have sided with the Yggdmillennia Servants. They had decades to prepare for the battle, they have  dug into their defenses, they had a Servant who was overpowered due to the battleground, and they had the Greater Grail. Now it only makes sense from a storytelling perspective to set up one side as clearly dominating and then showing how misguided that idea is when the rubber hits the road. The Red Team and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon really prove that they have more than enough to handle anything the Yggdmillennia throw at them. In fact, Spartacus still devastates the Yggdmillennia castle despite ostensibly being under Avicebron’s control. The Yggdmillennia get steamrollered enough that they even lose the Greater Grail.

At first, this looks like it is going to be the REAL Great Holy Grail War. Before now Servants have fought together but there has been no Captain America: Civil War Airport Scene where the two teams face off with multiple members facing off. It seems like everything is in place of that. Since the Hanging Gardens of Babylon steals the Grail the Yggdmillennia Servants have a very important reason to go into enemy territory en mass while the Red Servants need to kick them out lest they lose their two biggest advantages. The confined space also means more chances for partnering up and opponent swapping. Sadly this will only happen for a short period of time and before Darnic messes everything up.

Time to set up a new entry on the Top 10 Anime Betrayals list. This little scene makes it clear that Vlad is NOT a fan of his portrayal of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This picture always comes to mind when Dracula and the Servant come up. It has become so tied to his name in the popular consciousness that it even infects his persona in the Throne of Heroes when he is summoned as himself. While he admits to doing a great number of horrific acts as the defender of Wallachia he did all of those things in defense of god and country. His portrayal as a damned creature of the night is a mockery of his accomplishments both grand and base in his opinion. So he would rather face defeat than using the increased power of his Legend of Dracula ability. While his whole goal is to use the wish granted by the Grail to retroactively wipe his vampiric legacy from history his pride refuses to let him tap that power to accomplish that.

Of course, it is clear from Darnic’s reaction that despite his promises he sees the Legend of Dracula as his trump card. He may pretend to revere his Servant but Darnic is also a dude who worked with the Nazis and then proved to be slimier than them. He is probably not the first guy you should trust. In fact, he should probably be right at the bottom of the list next to anyone named Kotomine. (Caren is included in that generalization despite the name change.)  Anyone who is surprised by the events of the next episode should be ashamed of themselves. It would have actually been more surprising if the Legend of Dracula ability never got used. Then again if you put a Chekhov’s gun like Dracula on the mantle it would be sort of silly not to use it.

Poor Liz. Getting dragged into this whole mess. If her uncle got his wish then what would happen to her status as Servant. Who will be the comic relief in Fate/Extra games? Who will be Nero’s musical rival? Who would put on festive outfits during holiday events in Fate/Grand Order? They can’t just throw Artoria or another Saberface into a different outfit every year. The Dragon’s Daughter legacy must survive!

Next episode is the everyone attack Gilles de Rais episode from Fate/Zero. It gives Servants who are normally rivals a temporary excuse to work together and works well for as a minor climax for the middle of the story. It is time for Fate/Apocrypha to go full Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000. 

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
Fate/Apocrypha #04: Sumanai
Fate/Apocrypha #05: Freedom! Horrible, Horrible Freedom!
Fate/Apocrypha #06: Who Am I?
Fate/Apocrypha #07: Castle Crashers
Fate/Apocrypha #08: Mordred Went to the Yukari Tanizaki School of Driving
Fate/Apocrypha #09: The Battle of Red Cliffs
Fate/Apocrypha #10: Mordred Gets a Kill Streak

So ends the first half of Fate/Apocrypha. You can tell this for two reasons. The first is that after this they had a recap episode. I really appreciated that because it let me catch up with my posts for this show. But the real halfway moment was Jeanne and Shiro finally meeting face to face. Shiro and the story itself have been keeping the two Rulers from meeting face to face because that is when the shenanigans behind the War are revealed. It also finally pays off all the hints about Shiro that the series has been dropping all this time. It is a signal that the story has shifted to anyone who figured out the truth and finally gives an answer to everyone else who was wondering what was going on with this guy.

Lesson #1: You should not casually fight a mage in his own sanctum. Vlad learns this as he loses his boost from being in Romania while inside the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. This prompts Darnic to active the Legend of Dracula as all hell breaks loose and everyone has to team up to stop the vampiric Servant. While the combined might of all the Servants within the Hanging Gardens of Babylon led by Jeanne cannot stop the abomination the holy powers of Shiro can. Now that Shiro has stepped out of the shadows Jeanne sees Shiro’s true nature as the foreign element in the Grail War.

With the big reveal coming at the end of the episode the story begins to lay all of its cards about Shiro out on the table. While it heavily hinted that Shiro was a part of the Third Holy Grail War this little flashback still does not say it outright but give lots of evidence for anyone who was most of the way to that conclusion but just needed a little push.

I do wonder if they will ever go back and do a story about the third Holy Grail War. As time goes on it is a story that has more and more details but still has large bits that are unknown. It is clear that Zouken and a homunculus that looks like Illyasviel participated in the war. They either summon Shirou Kotomine or Angra Mainyu depending on the timeline which is super critical for how everything turns out. The Edelfelt family summon double Sabers with twin Masters. The Tohsaka participate in the war and majorly traumatized the Edelfelt family participants but nothing else is known about them. There was a puppet master Assassin but his Master is unknown. One might assume that the Nazis and Darnic summon Fionn mac Cumhaill in all timelines but it is only known for sure in the Ruler based timeline and not the Avenger one.

It seems like a Fate/Zero situation where there are enough hooks that anyone who is a lore nerd would want to see what the full story was but there is enough room for an author other than Nasu to fill in the blanks. There are already a dozen different Fate spinoff but this one has a bit more of a claim to have a purpose than some of the others.

What a difference a change in location makes. Being inside the Hanging Gardens of Babylon counts as being in Iraq (or more precisely ancient Babylon) so Vlad loses all of his cool bonuses. This is why you never fight a wizard in his home base. More than any other type of character wizards have all the bonuses while giving you all the penalties they can muster on their turf. Karna who was a fair fight becomes an unscalable wall when the tables are turned on the Impaler. It is not that Vlad is super weak without his bonuses. It is just that Karna is godlike and most Servants need a boost to fight him normally.

Darnic proves that he is a complete dick when backed into a corner. He not only complexly betrays his Servant by using his dreaded sealed ability he also basically takes over his body to get back the Greater Grail. At that point potentially unleashing an undead plague upon the planet really just seems like confirmation of what a despicable person he is.

This feels really reminiscent of the fight against Gilles de Rais and the Gigantic Horror in Fate/Zero. A Servant becomes a monster that threatens to become a natural disaster level threat to the civilian population and has to be stopped by everyone. If anything this threat seems to up the stakes a bit. Gilles de Rais was a Godzilla level menace. Vampiric Vlad is a zombie apocalypse level threat in the making.

It was not exactly made clear but vampire Vlad was a threat to Achilles because due to an odd technicality that means his bite does not count as an attack. Since Vlad’s power would make them comrades it does not set off Andreias Amarantos. It is one of those powers that any thinking mind would see as an attack but as with lots of mystic abilities the devil is in the details and wording counts for everything.

It is a meeting of the leftovers. With Darnic dead the head of the Yggdmillennia is gone. Like an army that has lost its general, they could easily fall into utter disarray. Gordes is a waste of space, Celenike is a psychopath and not in a way that facilitates leadership, Roche is 100 percent a support character, and Caules is super passive. Reika Rikudou is only ostensibly allied with them and is not really a “works well with others’ type. Unless one of them has some hidden depths none of them could ever hope to replace Darnic. Darnic may have been a scumbag but he was a monster that knew how to get people to be the best they could be. Sadly he just used it to enrich his twisted desires. Without him, everything is ready to fall apart especially after the ass kicking they have received.

Therefore it is a blessing that the Yggdmillennia still have Fiore. Despite everything that has happened she is able to rally what is left of their faction. It seems that picking her was as the next head of the clan was the correct choice. While it has yet to be seen how effective Fiore will be she seems not only the best choice but a natural fit for the role.

While vampiric Vlad looks very silly he leads to some great fight scenes. Since everyone has a common enemy you get to see all the Servants actually fight together. This really helps Atalanta and Avicebron show off what they can do since they have not been as impressive so far. But Karna really steals the show with his fire-based attacks. If Vlad did not have overpowered Wolverine levels of regeneration would have been defeated by the alliance.

This is just a small scene especially considering the reveal about Shiro’s true nature but it is worth talking about. Shiro has finally taken all of the other Red Masters’ Command Seals (expect for Kairi’s) which has been coming for a while. The critical detail is now he has finally discarded the other Masters. Up until this point, he has been keeping them around so Jeanne could not zero in on him immediately. By utterly discarding them and finally stealing their command seals it shows that he is no longer running from Jeanne. Since he is going after her head on he can throw away all the barriers he had around him at this point and head right towards La Pucelle.

For the longest time, Black Keys have been sort of a joke despite the fact that the lore talks them up quite a bit as weapons against the undead. The problem is they have mostly been used against targets that are not really super effective against. You mostly remember that they did not phase Arcueid in Tsukihime and did less than nothing in previous Fate stories. The fact that they are the junk 3-star craft essences in Grand Order only reinforces that idea. As it turns out assuming Black Keys are ineffective because they don’t work on Arcueid is like assuming a katana is not sharp because it can’t cut a tank in half. Use in on most other humanoids and you will see how sharp it really is.

Admittedly Shiro is enough of a semi-saint that he is like a mixture of Himura Kenshin and Miyamoto Musashi when wielding Black Keys against the undead so that gives them a distinct boost but is in not as if Dracula is some random ghoul. In this form, Vlad has to be somewhere in between a Dead Apostle and a True Ancestor. He is going to wipe the floor with Sacchin but not be able to scratch the White Princess of the True Ancestors. He did fight the combined might of a good deal of both the Red and Black Servants all being supported by Jeanne. So Vlad is no chump. It is just that he is super vulnerable to Church magic.

Jeanne has now found the anomaly that is warping the Holy Grail War. This second Ruler is not only an alternate arbiter of the War but a Servant left over from the last war. The dynamic of the whole affair has now changed and the true menace of the story has revealed himself.

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
Fate/Apocrypha #04: Sumanai
Fate/Apocrypha #05: Freedom! Horrible, Horrible Freedom!
Fate/Apocrypha #06: Who Am I?
Fate/Apocrypha #07: Castle Crashers
Fate/Apocrypha #08: Mordred Went to the Yukari Tanizaki School of Driving
Fate/Apocrypha #09: The Battle of Red Cliffs
Fate/Apocrypha #10: Mordred Gets a Kill Streak
Fate/Apocrypha #11: Spartacus is Secretly a Baby Reaper

Kigurumi Guardians by Lily Hoshino

Lily Hoshino takes her experience from Mawaru Penguindrum and puts it to good use in her very own absurd, surreal magical girl series.

One day Sasakura comes home to find an animal mascot named Ginger living in her home. Her family willing accepts this as an experiment conducted by her school, and sure enough when she arrives to school the next day two other students have their own mascot companions. The student council president informs them they are chosen warriors who will protect people’s hearts from The Puppet Guild. The mascots can transform with a kiss into handsome warriors of their own to aid the heroes in defeating the evil invaders.

Kigurumi Guardians does a great job of mixing things up. The mascots are giant, human-sized, and they are the ones who transform instead of the warriors. There is a clear sexual charge to just about everything without the series exploiting the characters. An unease to the setup is palpable, you know right away that nothing is what it seems. Despite that, everyone in the series readily accepts the bizarre in a way that makes you as a reader just roll with it.

I found myself thrown off, then quickly on board, with this delightful, strange, and funny series. Kigurumi Guardians is both familiar and fresh. Lily Hoshino’s sleek and sharp artwork elevates everything in the series from the humor to the beauty of the student council president and everything in between.

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~kate

 Since the first episode of Juni Taisen: Zodiac War just came out I just wanted to comment on this before I began the post properly. I think most people’s reaction to the show is the same, “Oh. So this is a Fate Holy Grail War with Chinese Zodiac warriors instead of characters from history. You even have a “you get a wish if you kill off everyone else premise.” If you know anything about Nisio Isin you know that he loves to take a popular genre and twist and subvert the general premise. This leads to his work having a very polarizing effect. More than anything else this is interesting because it means that the magical Battle Royale concept has become popular enough that Nisio Isin felt obligated to make it the focus of his next title. I’m guessing his target was the Battle Royale idea in general but I think it says volumes that he set up his story in an extremely Fate like fashion.

If anything it feels like a sign that Type-Moon has finally made it. (That and all the department store tie-ins for the Heaven’s Feel movies.)

Shiro revealing himself as Amakusa Shiro Tokisada and a Ruler Class Servant changes the entire dynamic of the Great Holy Grail War as the battle between Black and Red quickly breaks down. After some major defections, it seems that the conflict has become Servants loyal to Shiro and his subversive plans and Servants who have sided with Jeanne trying to restore order.

Thank goodness. We are finally free of Celenike. Her whole purpose seemed to be a sadistic creeper that made all of the problematic parts of Astolfo even more uncomfortable. It only makes sense she goes out like a champion class yandere as it was pretty much the only way she could leave the stage. But before then she has to get a final bit of sadistic stalker nonsense out-of-the-way just in case you might have accidentally been sympathetic to her passing. Also if you maybe thought Gordes was hands down the worst Master in the series they make a good case that there is at least someone who can give him a run for his money.

Shiro finally lays out his master plan. Or at least the general gist of it. He is one of those villains who has an admirable goal despite their fiendish actions. He wants to save humanity. But Kiritsugu in Fate/Zero proved a grand but nebulous wish like ending conflict can have a wide variety of interpretations. This also means there are a tremendous number of Monkey’s Paw ways to give people what they want in the worst way possible. It is the classic dilemma anyone who has ever used a wish spell in D&D has learned. Also considering what Shiro has been like so far you get the impression that his interpretation of saving humanity might not in a fashion that most of humanity would have picked given the option. His historical death and experiences in the Third Holy Grail War probably push him towards the darker interpretation of this idea even without a sinister Greater Grail.

Also, it is fairly clear that Jeanne d’Arc is the character we are supposed to be rooting for. Now Jeanne is mainly opposing Shiro is because he is breaking all the rules of being a Ruler class Servant on top of the general rules of a Holy Grail War. There is an interesting story where Shiro’s goals are 100% percent on the up and up and he comes into conflict with Jeanne who is reluctantly enforcing the rules as is her nature. This would be a nuanced battle of two interpretations of good against each other. Fate/Apocrypha does not seem to be that sort of story. Shiro seems the sort of the to have the most assholish version of righteousness. This makes him a sympathetic villain but a villain none the less. It is much more of a good vs. evil hero story. There is nothing wrong with that. It just misses out having some of the complexity that drew some older fans to Fate/Zero who were otherwise unimpressed by Fate/Stay Night.

Mordred comes into this like a champ. You have the classic evil wizard compelling the companions to kill each other and then before the power of friendship and love can save the day Mordred just ends the whole conflict by cutting of Celenike’s head. This really makes the later team up of Mordred and the remaining Yggdmillennia faction Servants much easier. By the end of the episode I’m fairly certain Fiore would have accepted the help of anyone but an outwardly evil Servant and even then it might be a coin flip. This just helps the transition a little more. Sieg or Astolfo might have had more objections to teaming up with Mordred before this point but after this save only sheer stubbornness would prevent them from taking her hand. Caules still might have some resentment over the loss of Frankenstein’s monster but he can easily be shut down by the rest of the surviving Yggdmillennia mages.Gordes might object but no one cares what he has to say.

Also once again it just helps get rid of the annoying Celenike which is always appreciated.

I do have to wonder how many people are mad that Sieg basically goes from nothing more than a self-aware magical Duracell battery to an overpowered wunderkind by a series plot convinces and as opposed to being jealous that he becomes the Master of fan favorite Servant Astolfo. Sure it makes sense from a storytelling sense that a rescuer replays his debt by becoming a savior. On the other hand, since Sieg has been getting quite a few perks given to him on a silver platter this only adds insult to injury to anyone who already had an ax to grind with the character. It also adds a layer of potential romantic rivalry since Astolfo’s sexuality seems as flexible as a gold metal gymnast. I know the sillier side material has Jeanne targeting the pink Rider as her rival and I’m sure that joke comes from their interactions henceforth in regards to Sieg. It is moving Sieg into the realm of harem protagonist dude which does not help his case one bit.

There is another complicated standoff with Servants’ loyalty and principles being testing and several Servants defecting left and right. The Yggdmillennia faction was already in dire straights as it was. After Avicebron switches sides it seems that the Black faction is utterly toast. While Avicebron is hardly the most powerful Servant it seems like his defection along with Karna siding with Shiro the nail in the coffin of the Yggdmillennia clan. It is only Mordred’s entrance where she chucks up the deuces to Shiro that lets the Servants allied with Jeanne escape and have any sort of chance at victory.

It was interesting that Atalanta did not give a fudge about the revelation of the fate of the Red Masters. So far she is the most mysterious of the Servants. We don’t really have a good sense of why she is fighting and why she is so willing to go with the flow to get her wish from the grail. I’m guessing she wants to undo the events of her infamous footrace but so far that is just speculation. She will probably get a backstory info dump just before she dies but now her motivation seems murkier especially since she seems not to outwardly react to any of the events occurring before her.

I was expecting Achilles to switch sides at this point. He would probably be much more comfortable fighting alongside Chiron and he does not really seem to be down with Shiro but he stays with him at this point. Then again Shiro has his command seals and there is no one else he can easily make a contract with at this point. Also as a Ruler Shiro probably has Command Spells out the yin-yang. so he could easily just order back any Servants that tried to rebel. So he might make his move at some later point but for now, he is team Ruler Breaker.

This is another episode that seems insistent on proving that not making Mordred the main character was a colossal misstep. While Sieg and Jeanne get some chances to show off their noble characters and leadership abilities but all the memorable cool scenes revolve around Mordred.  But maybe that is the point. You give the bland good guys scenes to Sieg, the noble leader roles to Jeanne, and the cool anti-hero scenes to Mordred. Sieg is Luke Skywalker, Jeanne is Princess Leia, and Mordred is Han Solo. With that dynamic, it makes a little more sense when you keep your cooler anti-hero out of the protagonist role but still make them prominent in the story.

Sieg little scene with the dying homunculus maid gives a little time to see the full price and rewards of his rebellion. His fellow homunculi are going to continue to die but at least how they have some hope of freedom and purpose thanks to him. Their lives still might be poor, nasty, brutish, and short but at least some of them have a reason to live even if only for a little while. He is now their savior for better and for worse.

Before this point, it would have been impossible for Sieg to negotiate with Darnic. He was able to escape before because Darnic did not want to waste resources fighting Jeanne but Sieg was not negotiating from a position of power. He was merely not seen as useful enough to get into a fight over. Fiore, on the other hand, is now the one in a position of weakness and therefore has to give into a lot of demands she would not have had to before everything went to hell. Now the Homunculi will go back to fighting for the Yggdmillennia but as free people and not slaves which is no small upgrade.

Also, it looks like Roche is not long for this world. He is going to take the bullet that was meant for Gordes. With Celenike dead I guess Gordes had a prove he was the worst in these last few scenes which makes him avoiding death even worse.

I definitely like this opening more than the first. I don’t think it is my favorite Type-Moon opening but it feels more like a very good second half opening whereas the first seemed like a mediocre second half opening. I will say some Servants like Mordred,  Astolfo, and Jack got flashier scenes than less popular Servants but that is just the nature of the beast. I did notice of all the surviving Servants Avicebron did not appear at all which might be a big sign that he is not going to last long this season.

The new ending is equally solid. It has a fairly even tone with a mix of melancholy and hope. They go through all the remaining Servants while in the rain and then have Sieg be the spark that returns the blue skies. If anything it goes out of its way to show that Sieg is now the hero guy protagonist from here on out. It also feels a little more animated than the last opening even if it is mostly still shots.

I apologize for taking so long with this post. I think I burnt myself out a bit when catching up after Otakon and then rolling into NYCC. I will try to pace myself a little better and catch up especially since things are really heating up in the story. Wish me luck.

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
Fate/Apocrypha #04: Sumanai
Fate/Apocrypha #05: Freedom! Horrible, Horrible Freedom!
Fate/Apocrypha #06: Who Am I?
Fate/Apocrypha #07: Castle Crashers
Fate/Apocrypha #08: Mordred Went to the Yukari Tanizaki School of Driving
Fate/Apocrypha #09: The Battle of Red Cliffs
Fate/Apocrypha #10: Mordred Gets a Kill Streak
Fate/Apocrypha #11: Spartacus is Secretly a Baby Reaper
Fate/Apocrypha #12: Someone REALLY Hates Bram Stoker

Atelier of Witch Hat (とんがり帽子のアトリエ ) by Kamome Shirahama

 Magic can be a tricky element to add to any series. The main problem with magic is that it is a powerful spice that can easily ruin a dish if it added without careful thought. The easy way to ruin the story is to just throw a ton of magic into a series without any careful measurement.

If you just dump MAGIC into a story it can easily unbalance it. There are entertaining stories to be told about what people do with nearly unlimited power but they have to be carefully constructed. If you just add such power to a normal story it can make everything feel arbitrary. When there is no structure to the magic in a series it can feel that obstacles are overcome and conflicts are resolved in a willy-nilly fashion or by deus ex machina. Challenges only exist until the story feels like they need to be removed. It can feel that progress is never earned since the characters can do anything whenever they need to since there are no real well-defined constraints on their powers. Also, characters can feel wildly unbalanced. They might seem untouchable demigods at some points and then flimsy humans then next minute with their exact power merely dictated by whim.

Even series that are fairly strong about balancing magic can fall into this trap. Read any nitpicky review of a Harry Potter story and it will be filled with comments about why did character X not use spell Y at point Z. While most of the time a healthy amount of suspension of disbelief inherent in the genre will smooth things over it is not that hard to spend that goodwill in a more sloppily written story.

The way to overcome this problem is to add restraints to the magic in a story. If magic has boundaries and limits then the more standard story progression can take place. But the problem is that this can also kill the power of magic in a story if it is too harshly applied. I love highly detailed and well-defined magic systems. The problem is these can easily take the magic out of magic for many readers. It can make magic feel like science with an occult paint job. A rigidly defined magic system can avoid the inconsistent feeling of magic but destroy the very essence of its appeal.

The other major way to limit magic is to set things in a low magic world where only a handful of people can use magic and therefore you keep it out of the hands of anyone but secondary characters. Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones are prime examples of this. The major drawback is that it means you can’t have your protagonist be a magic user which can severely limit your options. Also, you still get Gandalf and the Eagles problems but they are at least contained to side characters.

But these are hardly the only ways of limiting magic for better storytelling. In fact, different solutions to this problem can be the seed for a story in of itself. Atelier of Witch Hat is a great example of this. In the world of the manga magic is the nearly limitless power but it is the witches who practice the craft who limit how it is used. All the constraints on magic are self-imposed by the practitioners. It combines several of the above methods into one which transforms the idea into its own device letting the manga tell a story around the concept.

Coco has dreamed of being a witch since she was very young but magic can only be performed by those who were innately born with the ability to be spellcasters. If fact non-witches cannot even see what happens when a spell is cast. When Coco is able to see a spell being cast by a witch visiting her small town she discovers there is more to magic than most people know.

As my intro made clear magic is an insanely powerful force. The world of Atelier of Witch Hat and the witches in it are all too aware of that fact. Their world was devastated by constant wars and disasters by the mere virtue of letting everyone have access to magical power. It got so bad that a small cabal of witches got to together to erase the memory of magic from everyone else so that only a select few could continue to use magic and with severe restrictions. Now by a self-imposed ban witches cannot use magic on human directly. That includes witches casting spells on themselves. The only exception is memory erasing magic on anyone outside of the conspiracy that discovers the truth. There is also a group of rebel witches who wish to abolish the current system but they are currently purposely kept in the shadows of the narrative at this point.

It is this self-imposed ban that helps restrict the magic of the series. By preventing the witches of the series from casting magic on themselves it helps manage the abilities of the characters within more manageable limits.  At the same time being a voluntary ban it still lets those sorts of spells be used but only in key moments giving magic a full range of powered that is restricted for a legitimate storytelling reason. It also expands the setting while letting the story play with some interesting philosophical and sociological ideas. It also helps sets the world apart from a more generic fantasy setting.

The artwork is worth pointing out for its detailed storybook feeling. It is rather beautiful and adds to the setting at the same time. It also does something that The Ancient Magus’ Bride and Kino’s Journey do so well. They create bright colorfully fantastic worlds filled with danger and darkness. They create bewitching worlds of splendor that capture the majesty and appeal of magic while still having a menacing presence in the background that works as a wonderful contrast to the visuals. It gives a very different feel than an oppressive and dark motif would. While the darker and outwardly cray design would be instantly more effective you get more nuance from a dazzling world that you know in the back of your head is deadly.

But this is not a completely dreary magical political drama. The main center of the story is Coco learning to be a witch. She has an almost Yotsuba like glee in learning about magic which is infectious. She might be trying to uncurse her mother, the locus of a shadow war of witches, and fighting against ingrained prejudices but her exuberance for the wonders of magic counterbalance the underlying sinister undercurrent in a way that enhances both feelings. She really helps their series feel hopeful despite the fact that it could otherwise be rather depressing.

Atelier of Witch Hat is still a fairly new series but I think the mixture of an interesting approach to magic, the evocative art style, and the strong mixture of light and darkness all make a very vibrant series that has a strong draw into 20vast and exciting world.

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Shojo Fight by Yoko Nihonbashi

I’m very glad that sports series have been gaining so much momentum in the U.S., but there still are too few women-centered ones to enjoy in English. But never fear because now we have Shojo Fight!

Neri is on an all-star middle school volleyball team, but even in her third-year she’s the lowest rung and barely putting in the effort to be there. However, she is more than capable and it comes out in small moments noticed by few. Turns out Neri is hiding a passionate devotion to volleyball and a sometimes belligerent attitude that isolated her in elementary school.

Like many sports series, Neri is having trouble moving past an unexpected death in her life. Her grief has driven a wedge between Neri and volleyball, Neri and her friends, Neri and herself. Just as she starts reconnecting, a fateful meeting with a coach gives her the final push she needs.

Shojo Fight has a classic sports setup while still feeling fresh. It has the passion, the humor, and the sadness it should. On top of that is Yoko Nihonbashi’s unique art style which has thick, graphic lines and detailed use of screentone has the feel of something more Western.

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~kate

In This Corner of the World (この世界の片隅に) by Fumiyo Kouno

 When there is both an anime and a manga of the same story the natural question is which of the two should you experience before the other. The simple answer is usually to seek out the original first and then look at the other one if you have the time and money.

When a title is originally an anime seeking out the manga is usually only for those who are gluttons for punishment. They tend to be pale imitations of the original with truncated narratives and inferior storytelling. There are some notable exceptions but they are mostly the exception that proves the rule.

Titles that are manga first fare better when translated to anime. They tend to be hit or miss if they can live up to the original but good anime adaptations of manga are hardly shocking. The real rarity is the anime that surpasses its origin. If anything the anime are usually just very competent direct translations that add little to the story but also don’t lose much either. Overall your best bet is to stick to manga and maybe watch the anime if it has some cool fights or pretty scenery. It also means if you saw the anime there is little reason to read the manga.

This formula is a quick criterion that does a pretty good job of making effective use of your time.  It is important to note that there are some special examples that stand out as prime examples of flying right in the face of that simple rule of thumb. The rare case where the anime and manga are both are each brilliant pieces of art in their own way and worth experiencing twice. Each version tells the same story but is able to do it in a way that is complementary to both versions. Akira and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind are the two titles that come to mind when talking about this. People often prefer one over the other but still recommend that you see both. I would say without hesitation In This Corner of the World is also on this short list of titles that are worth experiencing in both of its forms.

Suzu is an amateur artist and a space case who lives with her family in Hiroshima. When she is married off to a young man in Kure who works at the naval yards she moves in with his family there. The normal adjustments of moving in with your in-laws is exacerbated by the shadow of WWII in the background. Slowly Suzu’s somewhat idyllic rural life is transformed by the specter of conflict around her. As the bombings, shortages, and pressure of the war increase she valiantly tries to survive with a modicum of sanity and normality. This is the story of one ordinary woman surviving great hardships with grace and dignity.

Not factoring in anything else In This Corner of the World is a fascinating look at a civilian population of an Empire at war. Suzu and her family start living very simple lives but as the series goes on the war gets closer and closer to them and the machinery of empire takes more and more from them. The transition is slow but noticeable. At the same time, the story is not just a dark meditation on the horrors of war. Despite the sacrifice, propaganda, and terror there is still humor, warmth, and strength. The extremes of emotion in the manga make both halves much more meaningful.

I think the most interesting part of the story you only really get in the manga is the friendship between Suzu and Rin Shiraki. The anime of In This Corner of the World was a labor of love that was only completed thanks to the perseverance of the staff and crowdfunding from fans who believed in the project. While it was amazing that the anime was made it had to cut some story to fit within its budget. One of the major cuts was Suzu and Rin. While the movie has a major scene with the first meeting of Suzu and the young prostitute Rin mostly disappears from the story after that point. In the manga, Suzu and Rin meet several times and develop a complex friendship. I understand why it had to be dropped in the anime but in real adds a level of depth to Suzu only seen in the manga.

The manga also plays with art styles. Since Suzu is an artist the story is often told via her art and so her more flighty moments are wrapped up in her softer dreamy style where are darker turns in the story change the way the series is drawn. The art of the book is often a subtle barometer of Suzu’s emotional state and her attachment to reality. It is a clever conceit and a real charm of the book.

This is a powerful story really worth experiencing however you can. If you have never experienced the story in any way this is a complete and powerful story in a single book. If you have already seen the anime the is another dimension of the story to be experienced via the manga.

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– Alain

Tokyo Tarareba Girls by Akiko Higashimura

Are you in the Olympic spirit like me? Then enjoy Tokyo Tarareba Girls! I’m sure a dramedy about single 30-somethings discussing their lives and loves isn’t the first series that seems relevant to an international athletic competition, but these women have a plan: get married before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

From the creator of Princess Jellyfish comes a hilarious and searing look into the concepts of youth, beauty, love, sex, and society’s expectations on women, especially as they age. Successful screenwriter Rinko and her friends meet-up to commiserate their “old age” and play the what-if game of continuously rehashing their past decisions and speculating on how things could have turned out differently. Their feelings about their failed relationships and their desires to find love are complex. They embrace society’s demands of them while also trying to reject those demands; it’s a tough and true place they find themselves in.

Funny, heartbreaking, a little too on the nose at times, and over the top at the right points, Tokyo Tarareba Girls speaks with authenticity about the actual experience of your 30s VS what you thought it would be like in your 20s. Just because life didn’t turn out the way you planned doesn’t make it wrong, but will Rinko learn this herself by the end?

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~kate

 Ufotable has set the bar for their anime based on Type-Moon proprieties pretty high. The Fate/Stay Night anime from Studio Deen is more of a punchline than anything else. It was not an utter train wreck but it is also a super simple task to pick apart all the places where it misstepped as an adaptation. You cannot even be that generous when it comes to the Tsukihime anime from J.C.Staff. It was such a bad version it has become a meme. The Kara no Kyoukai movies were a breath of fresh air that saved a fandom that was convinced that their favorite titles would never get a good anime. Fate/Zero and the Unlimited Blade Works TV series showed that Ufotable was able to replicate the miracle. The TV series was not fully OVA quality but considering Ufotable was putting out an episode a week it was close to miraculous. Also, it was a good conversion of the story to an animated medium. When Fate/Apocrypha was given to A-1 Pictures people were disappointed as the anime was nowhere near the quality they had come accustom to. It was far better than the bad adaptations but it was nowhere near the brilliant shine of anything by Ufotable.

So then Ufotable said their next big Fate project was going to be Heaven’s Feel. It was the last of the three paths of Fate/Stay Night and the only part what had never been animated. As the darkest path, there was always debate if anyone could animate the story without major cuts. It is the path where the sex is heavily integrated with the story and the violence is a bit more horrific. Now there is the Réalta Nua version for the PS2 that takes out all the adult content which could be used as a template but there is a segment of the fandom that considered that the neutered version.

So when Ufotable said they were going to make Heaven’s Feel three movies and not a full TV series the opinions were all over the map. There were the Ufotable faithful who felt they had enough successes under their belts that it was not worth worrying about. There was the once burned, twice shy gang who are always suspicious and the story being compressed into three movies got them very worried. Most other fans were a little surprised but cautiously optimistic. So began the wait to see who was right.

I had hoped that Anime NYC would get the premiere of the Heaven’s Feel movie but they had enough exclusive material that I understood that not being one of their jewels in their crown. I was lucky enough that living in NYC allowed me to see the movie in back in November. It was time to see if Ufotable could work its usual magic or if  Zouken’s 500 Years Dedication would strike the final path of Fate/Stay Night.

Fate is Saber’s Path and Unlimited Blade Works in Rin’s. The final path of Heaven’s Feel belongs to Sakura. The main difference is  Zouken Matou decides to get involved with the Holy Grail War after Shinji fails particularity against Saber and Shiro. Zouken’s dark shadow send the already horrific magical war down a darker and more disturbed path with Sakura at its center.

Wowie Zowie. Ufotable still has two movies where they could easily mess everything up but it would actually be quite an accomplishment because this movie not only lives up to their previous accomplishments it actually surpasses some of them. Presage Flower actually set the bar higher for Type-Moon projects which is no small feat. Past this point, every Type-Moon anime is going to be compared to this movie and how it measures up. The animation quality, richness of direction, and economy of storytelling are all as good or better than any of their previous works. It like Heartcatch Precure or Macross Plus might be the iteration of the franchise that unfairly ruins old and new fans for anything else.

The first time you realize Tomonori Sudou and Akira Hiyama know what they are doing is the opening. The common complaint about the various reboots of superhero franchises is the slavish devotion to retelling the hero’s origin despite the fact that audiences have seen that character’s creation several times in recent memory. It eats up time telling 90 percent of the people watching the film what they already know. One of the many points of praise for Spider-Man: Homecoming is that it wisely skips Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man because it knows that at some point audiences will have to be reintroduced to that story but now is not the time. There is far more interesting ground to cover with the runtime of a single movie. Presage Flower wisely decides that most people have seen the parts of the original game that all three paths share in a series of quick cuts. There is no reason to reiterate everything until Shiro summons Saber because most people have experienced that at least 3 times before this point. You’re not going to cover the longest path in three movies unless you know what to cut and what to keep.

But the movie does not just jump into that montage. There is one very crucial relationship it needs to establish. in Fate and Unlimited Blade Works tend to keep Sakura in the background because she is a character that is more surprising if her true depth is kept under wraps until her path. You would be sloppy to have her pop out of nowhere but you also can give too much away if she is too much in the forefront. If Sakura was as prominent as Rin any of the surprises about her would easily be ruined. With the original Fate/Stay Night anime and Fate/Zero existing much of Sakura’s secrets are common knowledge she still needs to be established within her own story. The intro of how Sakura becomes involved in Shiro’s life is critical for everything that is going to come after this. Sakura’s transformation from a disturbed automaton to someone who easily wears a mask of humanity is seen as she grows closer to Shiro and Taiga. She is still a deeply broken person but she gains enough happiness and security visiting the Emiya household that she learns to emulate being a happy and healthy human being. It is also important to establish too much this oasis of normality means to Sakura so when she goes to great and horrible lengths to protect it her actions make sense. It is far more important to see this happen as opposed to just be told it happened.

Beyond that the first part of Heaven’s Feel is Servants getting PUNKED. The original Visual Novel takes great care to make sure that the Servants that get focused on in any particular route are the Servants who best fit the themes of that story. Since Heaven’s Feel has a distinctly different tone than the first two arc and many Servants have had their time to shine in Fate and Unlimited Blade Works it becomes clear that certain Servants can be removed from the board to make room for the remain Servants and Masters. This is why Lancer, Assassin, Souichirou, and Caster are all killed so quickly. Everyone else around Medea was focused on in Unlimited Blade Works and Cú Chulainn shines in both previous routes. Gilgamesh was spared for now but he will quickly exit in the next movie. Saber is the poster girl for the series so they can’t just completely remove her but she is transformed in Saber Alter so she can remain thematically relevant.

Medusa seems the odd one out. She has had a prominent fight scene is the previous two arcs so it would seem that she like Hercules would be living on borrowed time. But Medusa is a unique situation. Since she is actually Sakura’s Servant she is in much of the same position as her Servant. She appears enough so she is not a stranger but she also never gets a deep examination. In the original visual novel, much of her Character Sheet is not filled in until Heaven’ Feel. She like Sakura has had the truth about her hiding in plain sight. This is the arc when it is all finally revealed.

The new factors in Heaven’s Feel are Zouken, True Assassin, and the Black Shadow. While Zouken is a known quantity to anyone who has seen Fate/Zero he is a surprise to anyone who has not played the game otherwise. Without a doubt, he signals the darker tone of Heaven’s Feel. Like Kotomine he is a villain character that makes no effort to hide his insidious nature.  True Assassin is an interesting wild card. While he does not have the main constraints that the original Assassin did he is not that much stronger. He really succeeds because he is backed up by the  Black Shadow. The Black Shadow is currently this overpowered moving catastrophe that is aligned with Zouken but is otherwise a mystery.  Technically the Black Shadow is a known character and is thematically linked enough with one character that as observant person could figure out who is controlling it without previously knowing the answer but for now, that answer is still not spelled out implicitly.

All of these are the little things that will impress reviewers and audiences that like to break down that they watch. Most people are going to be wowed because of the amazing visuals. The fight scenes really just pop. Even small conflicts like when Saber utterly wipes the floor with Rider or the quick fight with Hercules are all impressive scenes. They tease even greater conflicts to come. But all of that is just an appetizer for the big running a battle between Lancer and True Assassin. It is just this kinetic ballet that has its two deadly dancers fighting across the city with an artistic grace. If you only remember one scene from the movie it will be that one. The rest of the mood is equally impressive with its attention to the small details but those fights refuse to be ignored.

It is crazy to think how far Type-Moon adaptations have come. It feels like the story of Superhero movies. For the longest time, they just seemed to be destined to be the inferior version of classic stories. Then there were some moderate but flawed successes. But once the big hits came it was like you could not turn around without another title being announced. Now Superhero movies and Type-Moon anime are going through the same crisis. There are enough different titles coming out all at once that they are not all going to be winners. You still have your acclaimed hits but you also have some duds that mostly just coast along with the better productions and make pundits predict a crash. I think we are at peak production in both cases and will probably see a bit of a drop off in the future but neither franchises are going away anytime soon.

I have thoughts about the future of Type-Moon and Ufotable but I will save that for when I talk about the final movie. For now, it is nice to see that Ufotable is still able to capture the wonder of their original attempts and have even been getting better with experience. As long as they keep making anime as good as this I will continue eagerly anticipate their next project.

Land of the Lustrous (宝石の国) by Haruko Ichikawa

 Back when Anime Strike was still a thing it was a bit of the kiss of death for discussion surrounding any series that was put on the service. With the need for subscription to both Amazon Prime and Anime Strike it made the service extremely unpopular. The double pay wall meant that all but the most dedicated (and well to do) fans used the service. Now the normal “alternative methods” of watching licensed shows still exist but shows that are not easily to stream tend to get left out of the general conversation of fandom. It takes a very special show to stand out in a way that a larger audience will spend the time and/or money to find a show that is not just dropped in their laps. Land of the Lustrous was one of those shows.

I was honestly surprised that people were talking about Land of the Lustrous despite being on Anime Strike. Now some shows on Anime Strike are just not very good so it makes sense they would disappear from discussions but even very good shows like The Great Passage did not stand a chance. So when Anime Strike finally died the few shows that people were still talking about before the lowering of the second pay wall stood out. One of the shows that I remember having lots of buzz was Land of the Lustrous. It was as impressive as I had heard and made me very curious to see what the manga was like. Haruko Ichikawa’s work on the manga opened my eyes even more.

The last time I did the Manga of the Month I mentioned the somewhat rare case where the manga and the anime but both very good but also have enough of a difference in execution to make both version worth experiencing. I’m happy to say that Land of the Lustrous falls into that same illustrious category. It gives the reader a very different experience than the anime but being just as good. That alone makes it worth talking about. The fact that the series is a unique mixture of philosophy, mystery, and action takes it from the realm of should talk about to must talk about.

The genderless gem people are immortal but live in fear of the alien Lunarians who wish to whisk them away and grind them into jewelry. Phos is one of the weakest gems and does not have a proper job. Phos finds that their fellow gem Cinnabar is also dissatisfied with their job and vows find them a proper purpose in life. This casual promise turns into a transcendent journey that transforms Phos and opens their eyes to greater truths about the world.

I remember Carl from Ogiue Maniax talking about this series when we were discussing Anime Strike. Since it is running in Monthly Afternoon, which also ran his favorite manga Genshiken, he had occasion to read a chapter or two when he purchased the magazine. He mentioned that his only real impression was that he did not have one mostly because he had to idea what was going on coming into the middle of the story. That is no small feat because Carl has a PhD in manga so that should explain how this is not your standard fantasy adventure. The mixture of the alien nature of the setting and the complexity of the themes mean that you can’t just jump in and find your way with some the standard tropes and conventions of the medium. This is a unique story that takes its time to unfold to the reader at a deliberate but measured pace.

If you have seen the “What I Read, What I Expected, What I Got” picture for this show it is surprisingly insightful. Given the surface similarities between Land of the Lustrous and Steven Universe it is very easy to assume at first glance that this manga will be the Cartoon Network show with cute girl fluffy nonsense. Considering the high praise that Steven Universe receives critically and from its fanbase that would hardly be the worst scenario in the world. Any deeper examination Land of the Lustrous will show that both series care deeply about the themes of identity and self. They just do that very differently. But beyond that element both shows have very different ideas that they wish to explore and do so in unique ways.

The reason Carl could not easily just pop into Land of the Lustrous is because it has a very alien world that you have to watch unfold. The manga drops you in cold to a world very different from our own and then slowly and carefully shows you how this world works in easily digestible little chunks. If you don’t have these carefully cultivated lessons then it can feel like trying to do advanced quantum mechanics without the prerequisite math and physics courses. Thankfully Phos starts off as a lazy and inexperienced character so the reader organically experiences the world alongside them which makes everything fall into place nicely.

What is very interesting is that much like the unique setting Phos journey is not your standard character progress. At first it seems that Phos character arc will be your stock in trade bildungsroman just one in a very odd setting. As Pho grows it comes apparently they are going through something more similar to a Kafkaesque transformation that challenges to reader on the value of the growth. This subversion of the standard coming of age story mixed with Buddhist themes that challenges the reader in a very unusual fashion.

Like I said up top the manga and the anime play differently from each other. The direction and the CG make the anime feel more like a thoughtful action anime. The animation lets there be a bit more focus on the fights with the Lunarians and the body horror of the gems being broken. The manga feels more like a 70’s shojo manga. It sort of lives in the mood of those old counterculture sci-fi series that define the era. The fights are still in the manga and the deep thematic resonance is still in the anime but each one leans into its strengths.

It is not uncommon to see people get into anime and manga because they feel it offers them different stories then what they are used to in western media. The problem is that if you spend enough time reading manga and watching anime you quickly realize like any other medium there are clichés and workhorse formulas that you see all the time. The story of some newer fan getting burnt out on their 5th version of shonen fighting tournament or shojo romance is hardly uncommon. The perfect antidote to that is reading something that challenges the reader like Land of the Lustrous. There is a reason this series was able to escape the Anime Strike limbo it seemed destined to fall into. It reads in a way that refuses to be forgotten and demands to be explored.

• Learn more!
• Buy it here!
• Read Ch. 1 for free!

– Alain

ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Department by Natsume Ono

The Kingdom of Dowa is subdivided into thirteen autonomous states, all of which coexist peacefully. Or do they? Jean Otus finds himself in the middle of a country-wide coup, and he doesn’t even know it. Or does he? And with all thirteen districts renowned for their unique snacks, only one food can reign supreme. Or can it?

Independent civilian agency ACCA keeps an eye on the workings of each section of Dowa’s kingdom. With an impending coronation assumed, a power struggle is bubbling just below the surface. As vice-chairman of the Inspection Department, basically internal affairs, Jean often travels for business, crisscrossing the thirteen territories. Gaining the nickname The Cigarette Peddler for his love of the now-extravagant luxury good, Jean finds himself in possession of many unique cigarettes over the course of the series, but just what is their significance? The Chief Officers of ACCA have their suspicions about Jean, but they also have their own agendas.

Jean seems to look at the world with an all-knowing gaze. He has a quiet charm with a dry sense of humor, is a thoughtful big brother, and has an appreciation for all types of bread. But he is also a character who plays his cards very close to the vest. Part of the fun of the series is trying to figure out just how much he actually knows. Which in turn makes me questioning whether I really know anything for sure, not because ACCA is confusing, but because it is quiet and subtle.

ACCA is a refreshing political thriller that seamlessly integrates cuisine and comedy among the intrigue. I am just as likely to remember the conspiracies, royal secrets, and double (triple?) agents, as I am the office politics, attentions paid to sandwich breads, and thwarted romances.

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~kate