Fate/Apocrypha – 15[Differing Paths]

It’s funny that only now, when we are well into the halfway point of the series that it takes some time to flesh out its cast. Sisgou has gotten some backstory, Fiore was fleshed out a little and even Gordes got some time to prove he’s not a complete caricature. The last one is something Celenike really needed before she was decapitated by Mordred as at least now Gordes has a little more to him than just being some arrogant mage. When I saw Gordes approaching the injured homunculi I was preparing myself to see him start abusing them or taking out his frustration on them. Instead Gordes completely surprises me and actually starts giving advice on how to heal them. He’s still arrogant but now that the Holy Grail War has gone nothing like he expected it’s caused him to look at himself and recognise where he went wrong. He’s just as antagonistic and shortsighted as ever but this at least makes him a better character than what he was. Celenike meanwhile just remains a sadistic bitch and gets her rocks of seeing others suffering. If we had just a few minutes like this to show she had anything else then maybe her death could have held more value.

Flore has also been a character solely lacking development as her defining traits are just that she’s wheelchair bound and has Doctor octopus mecha gear. The flashback to the death of her dog shows that even though she can be a strong leader, she can also be quite naive and too kindhearted for her own good. An observation that Chiron happens to notice thanks to his history as a teacher. It really is small moments like this which can really make a character and what may be the main pitfall of the start of this series as a whole. I mentioned previously that as the death count climbs this could result in the survivors getting more fleshed out and that does appear to be happening. Even learning that Atlanta wishes for all children to be loved is a rather kind hearted sentiment despite her rough disposition. All the more important when you take into account her history where she was abadoned by her parents in the woods and only survived thanks to the pity of Arthemis. Sisgou has managed to keep being an entertaining character thanks to his skills and interactions with Mordred but finally knowing that he has a personal wish as well makes his stakes in the battle all the more important.

I really do love how the two of them delight over planning to stealing the grail while everyone is busy fighting over it. So we now have our factions, the red team has come together under Shirou’s command though there was a mistranslation in UTW subs regarding Karna’s motivation. Put simply Karna said their interests align at the moment so he will fall in line but his one desire is to serve his true master, not Shirou. Shirou seems to have some plan detailed out so that using the Grail won’t backfire on him as that is how it works. The grail has the power to skip the process and deliver the result but you need to know what result that you want. This was the big mistake Kerry made in Fate/Zero when he wanted to wish to save the world, but had no real idea on how to do so. So seeing as the grail was corrupted at the time, it choose to go with the worst way possible to grant his wish. Shirou here seems to know exactly what he wants and the grail here isn’t corrupted so he could very well get it. The big problem is that to accomplish his task could very likely result in something rather horrible, like humanity giving up all free will.

The black team are gathering what forces they can to launch an attack on the Gardens of Babylon which Sisgou and Mordred temporarily working with them. So what of our little rogue element? Assassin of black has done pretty much nothing for quite a while and I worry she might end up being a throwaway character much like Avicebron was. As some last notes, I really, really don’t like that they seem to be going with this Joan and Sieg romance. I have heard others say that if Sisgou and Mordred took over the main character slot then this show would be significantly better and I am quite inclined to agree. Besides that was clear favoritism of your part Joan, giving Sisgou one command spell and Sieg two despite them doing the same amount of work. On top of that they appear to be planting some chekhov’s gun for what looks to be a Deus Ex Machina in the future with his odd command spells. Also can we have more Shakespeare please? His character is criminally underused.