Well is it just going to be a thing from now on to have Nero take a bath in between floors? The large amount of Nero fanservice seems a bit of the excessive side and I feel like shaft is to blame for that. As a matter of fact now might be a good time to bring up cons with this series seeing as we have made it past the three episode guideline. So far I still remain somewhat invested in the story but I admit that we may be moving to a formula with how to approach the remaining masters. Seems that Hakuno and Nero will move to the floor, have an encounter with the master and his servent, meet some serventless master on the floor who clues them in with exposition before moving to take down the floor master. Then wash, rinse and repeat. Likely there is some changes to this coming but if this is to be the formula going forward this could get rather stale.
It wouldn’t be such a problem if the action was good but I find that Shinbo’s style doesn’t quite work well with the normally kinetic nature of Fate’s servant battles. It works when the characters are standing round having a chat so when it comes to exposition that this series is shoveling out heavily, Shinbo’s style works. But with it comes to action scenes, the quick cuts and odd determination to not show attacks actually hitting proves to be rather frustrating to watch. It might be rather unreasonable to expect Shaft to bring the level of fights Ufotable has trained fans to expect but even the likes of Prisma Illya and Apocrypha attempted to meet that expectation. For this however the style is clearly getting in the way of making the action work which is a same as the opening does show that Shaft can make some rather excellent fight choreography.
On that note I am disappointed to see that Drake wasn’t added to the opening and instead it remains being just Nero fighting off shadows. The song is growing on me but it does feel like a song that lacks an explosive chorus. Instead building throughout the song to just cut off suddenly. The endings are updated at least to show the master/servant duo of the week and the illustrations are quite excellent. For another previously mentioned con, the Nero fanservice is getting on the excessive side though I am surprised that they didn’t take the opportunity to show off Rin in the bath if that was the agenda. Look, Nero is such a narcissist that she thinks nothing about showing her naked body to people but having her walk out of the bath wearing nothing but a ribbon is just going far too far. In the first place, did I miss the bonding session where Nero became so comfortable with Hakuno in the first place?
Nero seems awfully attached for a servant that only knew her master for a day or two. Though yes this brings me on to my next con, Hakuno desperately needs some goddamn personality. All we got from him is that he has this vague hatred and a need to win the holy grail war. He still is the player character of the game and this is truly a missed opportunity to give him some characterization. At least we could have taken the route done with Persona 4’s protagonist which turned a normal mute player character into a deadpan snarker. Or even Gudako from Fate/Grand Order who has basically been characterised as a massive troll by supplementary content. (God I wish she was the protagonist of Grand Orders anime, could have gotten some amusement out of it then.)
Moving on to another con, we have Rin disappear and a new girl pop up called Rani. I am really quite surprised to see Nasu actually bring Rani into this as while she was a character in the Fate/Extra game, she wasn’t a fan favorite despite being a potential main heroine. Personality I always saw her being destined to join the backalley alliance in Carnival Phantasm featuring the unloved Sacchin, Sion and Riesbyfe.(Though maybe Sacchin wouldn’t be so unloved if she got her damn route in that Tsukihime remake that you should have been done writing about now Nasu!) Ultimately Rani’s purpose her is to shovel exposition which has gotten rather excessive with this series but we at least learn that this anime is set far into the future and that the digital humans within this virtual world may be the last remnants of mankind. Not sure what to make of that as I am still trying to piece together just what is going on too much to actually find the reveal all too shocking. I spent the majority to this post talking flaws but overall this episode was rather straightforward, new servant, new exposition dump and more questions.
A noteworthy aspect though is that this particular master and servant have done a completely 180 in how they were in the game. Before the old man was the one who wanted to fight fair and square which often worked against his servants style who is more accustomed to playing dirty. It’s a pity as i rather liked that dynamic in the games story but lets see just where this is going. As a last note it appears this series has two arcs, the first of which is this one named “Oblitus Copernican Theory” and a second arc named “Illustrious Ptolemaic Theory” which will be broadcast at a later unconfirmed date. It has not been clarified whether the second arc is a second cour of sorts though I am placing my bets on it being another 12 episodes. Some seem to believe that this is doing some sort of Danganronpa 3 Future/past arc broadcast with the future arc being broadcast first with the past arc answering questions. Though considering how unpredictable this series has been as of late, we really cannot guess as to what we are truly going to get.
