Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

18if – 07 [And now There are none…]

by SuperMario, posted in 18if, Currently Watching:

This episode is one of the reason why I am glad that I’m still putting my faith on 18if, an episode that displays a complete different range of visual style, and a satisfying children’s story about friendship as a cherry on top. There’s a lot to love here, from the beautiful aesthetic that heavily influenced by the European stop-motion-like (it’s still hand-drawn though) animation, to the tale that inspired by children fairytale with more mature, political undertones and the song “And there were none” at the end nearly take my breath away. This freedom of creating wide range of visual-storytelling based on each directors’ own visions is 18if’s most appealing factor, and episode 7 is when that freedom works totally for the show’s benefits. This comes as no surprise that the director handling 18if this week is veteran Kouichi Chigita, a director who responsible for Last Exile; Brave Story and Full Metal Panic. Apart from a bit of obvious, shaky CG opening, the rest of the episode moves with ease with the stunning visual that pays homage to many other Western animations, but nonetheless is original enough to stand on its own.

I’m not attempting to discuss about the actual plot of this beautiful episode (ala what all this means in the real life), as I believe the dreamy story we witnessed makes sense enough that trying to dig deeper into the plot kinda do its story a huge disservice. Instead, I will delve into the literacy inspirations this episode makes references from. The most obvious comparison would be The Little Prince, both because of those similar styles, but also they share the same kind of fairytale story and the same mature feeling those two manage to pull. Well, the main character, Pol, is a prince if there’s any more doubt. The character designs are decidedly simple that are reminiscent of stop-motion puppets and a fair bit remind me of Pixar’s characters of all things. The art designs are another highlight as 18if produces an enormous amount of standout backgrounds, from the peaceful forest, to the doomed city life to the creative kingdom designs. At one time the show reminds me greatly of Samurai Jack as you can see in one of the screenshots, and at other time the character designs, especially those who manipulated Pol, take a nod towards those villains in the Triplets of Belleville and our mains this week are another nod to the characters from the Wizard of Oz. Like I said, while this episode has huge inspirations, never at once I feel it as a rip-off, because those influences are in service of deepening its narrative and manage to bring the emotions across.

Then, the characters of Pol and Pot are heavily implied as a reference to Polpot, the infamous Khmer dictator and the Khmer Rouge and the even more infamous The Killing Fields. The way Pol eventually abandons his friendship, becomes heartless in the process and rules the Kingdom of massacre of innocent people, people died from hunger, totalitarian rules and the way he was just a puppet figure head all have very dark political undertones pointed towards that dark period of Cambodia. It’s also implied that Pot, his best friend, is executed for the crime of “treason”, the same crimes that the Khmer Rouge would use to kill intellectual people (more commonly known as “people with glasses”).

But all the metaphors and references are just a mere service to tell a story about a friendship between Pol (the Prince), his best friend Pot and the girl Nene, whom later become a Witch. And I would recommend you not to look so much into the deeper metaphors because the story is beautiful as it is, while at the same time tell us just enough about the Witch’s issues. It’s a rather tough trick to pull considering that the whole episode is from Pol’s (not the Witch’s) perspective; but we can really understand what make Nene drifting apart and come to hate the friendship that she used to love. The story literally goes all the phases of emotional progressions (the Five Passions: joy; pleasure, grief, anger, hate), while paralleling all the phases of their friendship from how the friendship is formed, how it comes to a genuine love and how everything just broken apart afterwards; how Pol comes to term with accepting the fault he made and how eventually Nene comes to forgive him about his misdeeds. It’s a story about growing up, all told in a form of dreamy fairytale that might not appear to make sense on the surface, but make total sense narratively.

Well, I’m intrigued to see what 18if will go from here. This episode alone receives a perfect 5/5 score from me and I’m not pressing to say that this episode is my favorite standalone episode of this season. As in the nature of 18if, this episode is a standalone story so everyone can watch it and see the stunning, simple yet elegant little story for yourself. Sometimes it’s nice to see something like this in an anime-landscape, which remind me again of the possibilities and the globalization anime medium is capable of.

Re:Creators – 17 [The Rain’s Rhythm Shoots Down on the World’s Roof]

by HelghastKillzone, posted in Currently Watching:, Re:Creators

If you are still remaining faithful to Re:Creators over the course of months on end, then this is the episode where all the buildups and exposition pays off in dividends with the grand opening of the ‘Elimination Chamber Festival’. Characters with long standing grudges square off, insert songs being played back-to-back, and Studio TROYCA really went all out with the visuals in serie’s longest sustaining and best fight so far. In spite of all the explosions, pretty lights and new powerful abilities, nothing, outside having Altair embracing Selecia from inside her cockpit, is surprising. None of the fights have resolved themselves although there are signs that there are much bigger twists to come like Alicetaria’s eventually betrayal and Magane’s continuous intrusion into Sota’s life.

While the first half satisfied that craving of action that has been sorely missing for the last two months, the second half had the best conversation between a creator and her creation. Within the initial nine creations introduced in the first half, Blitz is the final character to met up with his creator for a chat and this was probably the best out of them all as it provides some of the best insights into why a creator would subject their creation to terrible scenarios. Simply enough, the answer is for the sole enjoyment of the audience. Think of some of the most popular franchises out there like Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Berserk, Attack on Titan and Tokyo Ghoul and the insurmountable challenges and hardships within them. It is in these extremes where the audience finds their greatest enjoyment as characters we know and love go through their journey of suffering and ultimately triumph. In comparison, Altair’s motivations of revenge, as Suruga describes it to be a shallow fanfic bore out of resentment and anger, ,are actually quite basic once you get passed her dressed-up fancy speeches. Blitz isn’t cut from the same cloth as her, in spite of following Altair around for most of the series and being hellbent on following through with his destructive plan. There is something far deeper that a dedicated creator like Suruga has invested into Blitz and this is the exact method, with the stunning reveal of his daughter, in which to turn Blitz against his current master. The best part is that the crazy ride to Re:Creators finale is only beginning with plenty of surprises to come.

Made in Abyss – 06[Seeker Camp]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Made in Abyss

I feel like Riko has been naked quite a lot in this series and I thank god that it’s not treated in a fanservice manner. That may be something that should be par for the course but with my experience in anime it often takes every opportunity to throw in some fanservice. At this point I have become rather immune to it but I can appreciate that Riko has been topless on screen a number of times and it doesn’t make me feel like I am watching something that could potentially get me arrested. Something that I cannot say so easily about certain other shows which shall not be named. The episode recaps at the start of episodes feel like they are getting longer but animation still is at a high level which I hope continues till the end of the season. I am surprised at Ozen whom I originally had pegged to be significantly more villainous by the end of the last episode. This episode instead shows her as a much more playful character than her intimating design would suggest. She reminds me a bit of a Katanamonogatari character with her eyes and general listlessness. So far she is acting the role of the cynic, and raining on Riko’s earlier misplaced optimism. One by confirming that her mother is indeed dead and also verifying that the message inspiring this whole journey was not written by her.

I find this rather…cathartic. Riko has so far attributed that everything that has happened so far is related to her. Much like the main character in a story she thinks that the world revolves around her only to have Ozen confirm that she doesn’t really have anything to do with this at all. Of course we don’t quite know if Ozen is telling the truth or not but based on the character she has shown in this episode I don’t quite think she’s the type to lie. In fact this journey appears to be more about Regu than anything else and Riko is more just the tagalong. Sadly this episode ends right before what looks to be the biggest and most shocking reveal but we did get some interesting things. We have a strange corpse like creature that Riko saw in the middle of the night as well as some new info on the Abyss.

My guess is that this corpse being happened to be the Whistles that tried to ascend from the lower levels and got hit with the curse at it’s worst. But as to why it happened to be in Ozen’s house at that moment does make me wonder whether Ozen is experimenting on them. For other exposition we have Marulk who lets us know that the further down you get in the abyss, the more complex the artifacts become. As well as how a tree this giant can grow in the abyss by taking nutrients from the sea floor of the land above. Also Marulk may be a boy instead of a girl seeing how he reacted to Riko walking in naked and Regu inquiring about his gender. So we have reached the halfway point of this series and I do wonder just what twists await with this white cube and how it will effect the story going forward.

Fate/Apocrypha – 07[Where Freedom Lies]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Fate/Apocrypha

As a Fate fan I can state for certainty that this series does have a problem of having a bit too much anticlimax. Which is a problem that may affect all Chuuni style stories come to think of it. I love the series but I can say that I don’t think any of them truly capitalised on the holy grail war concept. Often at the start of the series there’s a build up and promises that the series more often than not doesn’t deliver on. This is also why I am conflicted when asked to decide whether Fate/Zero is better than Fate/Stay Night. For while in many aspects Fate/Zero comes across as the superior story, I still believe that Fate/Stay Night had better climaxes and did things that Fate/Zero didn’t do. But how is that relevant to this episode you may ask and well it’s just that a conflict was resolved with everyone just deciding to duke it out later which happens to be the third time this has happened. This is followed by a buildup to what could be the biggest fight of the series yet and I find myself with a wariness over whether it will be truly satisfying. At this point characters and general plot haven’t engaged me as much as I would have liked them to so the final vanguard is whether I can see some cool fights. A prospect which is looking less and less likely when the animation per episode is getting rougher.

Still it really is nice to see interpretations of historical figures and their history does enrich their position in this war. It’s logical that Shakespeare wouldn’t take a combat role considering his vocation and he staying by the sidelines just so he can chronicle the whole war as a new work is a great take. Though to make up for his lack of real combat power the Assassin of Red is playing a dual role. There has been some rewriting of the rules a bit and Semiramis possesses double summon which means shes effectively a Assassin and Caster rolled into one. Contrived indeed but hardly the first contrived exception to the rules. This episode marks the rise of her noble phantasm which is a giant floating fortress by the name of the “Hanging Gardens of Babylon”. Exposition time: Semiramis did not in fact make the Hanging Gardens of Babylon but their creation is often mistakenly associated with her. As a result she needs to jump through some hoops to actually summon it but it is an example of a servant gaining a power based on popular association, something which should come into play later. Servants powers are in general amplified based on popular belief. In reality Excalibur wasn’t really able to shoot laser beams nor was Alexander able to summon an army at will.

Once again Seig proves that any moment he’s on screen is a moment this series becomes boring. His talk with his caretaker reminded me a lot of the talk that Waver and his fake grandfather had in Fate/Zero and I get the feeling it was trying to emulate it. However it was missing the real heart of that conversation as well as Gen’s masterful hand at writing exposition. Seig’s dilemma and ultimate choice just come as expected. Even within the narrative it was already decided that he would be jumping back into the fray. So really this isn’t some much a character development moment for him but rather a reaffirmation of him being pushed into a stereotypical role. My hope is that his role isn’t too big in this story as when he’s off screen this does become a better show.

18if – 06 [Curses Return Upon the Casters]

by SuperMario, posted in 18if, Currently Watching:

This episode… certainly is random as hell. While the first half is a decent treatment of a bullied girl case who escapes the world by becoming the anime character that she loves – a priest; the second half… suddenly they’re in a mecha robot to save the world from aliens. Wild imagination there. Feel like the producers just demanded that “We want mecha robot. Make it happen” and here is what they came up with. At least 18if is being weird, that in itself is rewarding enough. The director of this episode was Yukio Takahashi, whom mostly done episode directing, most notably in Last Exile: Ginyoku no Fam, Seirei no Moribito, Shangri-La and B gata H kei. Not that impressive resume but the episode is nicely done as she handles the various tones: the drama, the various action scenes, and the goofy Scooby Doo’s actions quite alright. It’s the writing this time that takes the fall.

The witch this time, Natsuki has a relatable – if a bit too obvious – circumstances. Bully in school happens more frequent than you think and in her case, receiving constant bully and being completely isolated from the class is a serious matter. For a show that each episode is handled by different director, 18if is surprisingly very consistent in how they emphasize each witch’s circumstance as a victim in her own society. A feeling of sympathy perhaps, and as a result, a disapproval, somewhat angry attitude towards those who cause the misfortune. In episode 2, Haruto assisted the Witch to kill one of the killer, FOR REAL; episode 6 also has the same message: Curses Return Upon the Casters. They reap what they sow.

Natsuki is also has a nerdy side of her, as she’s a secret fan of On-Bara, an anime about a priest who protect the town by killing dark spirits. Thus, when Natsuki commits suicide, she tranfers to that world and becomes the said priest. She has fun fight off dark spirits; until she realizes that there are just so many of them so she… curses her friends instead. This is the point where the show just lost its rhythm and do its own Freeform. First, Haruto just speaks like, 3 lines and he already convinces Natsuki to change her mind. Wow,just wow. And then, the alien invasion is just on a whole new level of goofiness that it’s rather refreshing to see. Ya know, just throw all the build up we have so far through the window and let’s play some robot. Save the world. Keep bullying the bullies. Then returns back to life because life is precious (or rather, because living a shounen life is too taxing and cursing alone is lonely).

I have nothing much to say unfortunately; since this is an episode where you have to see it to know for yourself. Personally, I have a good time watching 18if this week. The sum of its part is terrible, the transition from a touching, serious subject to full campy B-movies is too jarring and too much to take in, yes but the first sequence and last sequence are so vastly contradict each other that seeing how they move from A to B is rather entertaining to watch. Next week in 18if we have an Agatha Christine’s inspired title” “And Now There Are None” so I expect great dark mystery in the vein of episode 2. Let’s wait and see.

Made in Abyss – 05[Incinerator]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Made in Abyss

This was one of those anime episodes where I am shocked to see the end credits show up as the time flew by when watching it. I often consider that a mark of a truly great series while a bad series can make you feel like an episode never ends. Though I will say that this post may be shorter than my usual ones as there isn’t really much to say story wise other than Riko and Regu continuing their travel down. I will rescind my previous mark about Riko carrying her own weight as while Regu is handling most of the grunt work, Riko is doing a good job directing the expedition while making use of her knowledge of the abyss. Allowing her to warn Regu of some the creatures such as the one introduced with this episode. I think by now the kids gloves are off and we are starting to get a bit dark with the story with these corpse weavers.

Birdlike creatures that eat explorers and then imitate their voice in order to lure others into a trap. This seems much more open a dark turn and afterwards we even have Regu comment on them eating a corpse weaver being indirect cannibalism. Still despite this the general tone of the show seems carefree which could be attributed to how easily Riko is taking all these events, though Regu is not quite handling it with as much cheery disposition. I wonder if it’s supposed to be symbolic that a big source of human morality in this series comes from the character who is at this moment known to be a robot? Perhaps showing that the humans in this world have been distorted from traditional common sense into something more darwinist?

When a group of corpse weavers attempt to eat Riko this triggers a change in Regu causing him to unveil an ability he displayed in the first episode. That he is able to fire a beam of light from his arm and boy do I appreciate that this series has managed to keep up a high level of quality animation to really show it off. Well there was a moment during the monkey chase that had the rather outdated use of speed lines but other than that the production of this series has been truly top notch. Riko is delighted over this new ability and names it incinerator while Regu is mortified at the fact that if his aim was only slightly off then he would have blasted away Riko along with the corpse weavers. It’s interesting in how these two approach this journey in completely different mindsets. Riko sees this whole thing as some big field trip, a chance to have an adventure and live up to the legacy of her mother.

Whereas Regu is really beginning to acknowledge just how dangerous this journey really is and question the very purpose of his existence. There is definitely a turning point in their characters coming up and I feel this series is building up a wake up call for Riko. She has lost two of the main guides which her tossing the star compass and now her notebook has been burned to cinders. The corpse weavers where the first genuine threat these two have faced, I don’t really count the monkeys as they didn’t really pose that much of a threat, so it only stands to reason that monsters will get worse the further these two get. The safety nets are falling away and I think she’s about to encounter something that won’t be solved with a happy go lucky attitude. That something likely being her mother’s former partner whom looks to be the focus of the next episode.

18if – 05 [The Witch of Ordinariness]

by SuperMario, posted in 18if, Currently Watching:

The fun of watching 18if: It’s like a box of chocolates, you never know which one you’re gonna get. After the disastrous episode last week, episode 5 turns out to be sweet, sad and overall solid. Although the conclusion of the dream sequence is a bit of head-scratching, there’s a lot to admire here. This episode was handled by Minoru Oohara, who had Glass no Kantai as a director in his resume and was an episode director of EVA. Not to say I know much about him but he’s certainly a veteran and he approached 18if this week with such confidence. The pacing, in particular; is a step above from everything we’ve seen so far in the series and the witch this week ends up as the most well-written character 18if has to offer (a bit whimsical consider that she doesn’t technically turn into a witch this week). The visual is on the great side too; carrying out the theme very effectively, while never stand out much for its own sake. I am very satisfied.

Mirei, the witch of this week, has a much more relatable personal issue, although you still need to get pass the unsettling (and somewhat absurdist) sequence of her locking herself up and nearly… chop up her injured leg, with an AXE. I’ll come out and say this, apart from that scene, Mirei has a very grounded personalities and issues, probably even more grounded than all the lead characters combined. She’s a superstar figure skating that more or less the golden girl of Japan, busy both in and out of her professional life. But because of all the time dedicated for practices and commercials, she barely has time for herself. Eventually Mirei yearns for a normal highschool life, a life where she can really have fun and you know… have real relationships. Things take turn for the worst as she injures herself in one of her routine and thus losing everything she has. With so much stress, she falls into deep sleep and as a result, becomes a sleeping beauty.

As I mentioned above, her case isn’t exactly original, but it’s well-grounded. The dream world that she eventually escapes to, is just a typical mundane school where she’s just a plain, ordinary girl who enjoying this university life. It also helps that Haruto this week has more personality than previous week, and here I can feel the chemistry between them. All is fine and dandy until the final conflict. 18if (strongly) argues that Mirei eventually can’t escape the “destiny” that she is bornt to be the skate figure, so she must face it and release herself. I wholly understand that escaping isn’t the way to solve the problem, eventually she will have to embrace figure skating aspect because it has always been part of her life. But dear, no way “shines the brightest when she does figure skating” a valid argument to convince her that everything she has done wasn’t right; that happy moments that she had are all lies. From what I see, she was much happier in her dream than her real life so why the need to show her that figure skating is her destiny? It sounds forced no matter how I look at it, but I can let it pass since the great visual direction more than makes up for its shaky conclusion.

While watching the episode, I also entirely expected that there’s going to be a twist at the end. Indeed, the twist surfaces and it does deepen the narrative, just imagine Mirei spend  her entire youth locking away in her own fantasy really make my heart swell. Although like any twist you needn’t question it too much (because when you do, it opens many more questions – for example, if she has been sleeping beautifully for that long – like 30,40 years, how can she aware of the concept of cellphone? Nevermind – I say). This episode also pretty much confirms us about Haruto’s true existence. He has never appeared in the real world and now he questions himself that he feels stuck for some reasons – stuck in the dream world that must be. Lily also goes far this episode, as this is the first time she actively involves in a case, but more with a purpose to signal Haruto than to help the Witches out. When we see it that way I can see why she insists on calling Haruto “brother”. They’re both the products of this dream world and in a sense, she only has him as a companion. I believe 18if reaches the new height with this episode, and to be frank with this “a director handling 1 episode” approach AKA inconsistent quality, this episode is all I could hope for. Be different, 18if. That’s what we all here for.

ps: They indeed pronounce 18if as… eighteen-if. I’ll be damned. Might try buying a lotto ticket now. Now that I mention it I have no idea what the title even means. Someone here has any idea?

Re:Creators 16 – [This is the actual beginning, isn’t it?]

by HelghastKillzone, posted in Currently Watching:, Re:Creators

After over a month and a half of talking heads, recaps, scheming and theorization, Re:Creators is finally on the cusp of having every creation throwing themselves into a massive team deathmatch complete with live performances, streaming and a raving fandom packed into a stadium.

Thus far, Re:Creators has largely managed to avoid their creations be subjected to the pitfalls of fanservice within the anime but this episode goes all out on the nudity with everyone going to the hotsprings. If you ever wanted to see what the creators and creations looks like underneath all those costumes, then this is the episode for you where all the tired tropes of hot springs episodes comes to its full realizations. The rest of the episode was forgettable as it only has the government’s representative drunken dominatrix crazy rant as its punchline.

The real meat comes in last half of the episode as everyone gets into their positions that is six months in the making for the big battle. Vogelchevalier finally comes back to Seleica and it going to be a giant brawl with two mecha on the side of the government against Alrair’s forces. The question becomes on whether on the various upgrades that the creators have augmented into their own creations are enough to defeat the God-like powers of Altair and the unpredictableness batshit craziness of Magane. I’m surprised that Alice is still sticking with Altair, given her maneuvering with Magane and the release of her own creator. Given that Altair already has these God-like powers of predicting the future through her tarot cards, it wouldn’t be a stretch to already have Alice’s plans already unraveled.

With six episodes left to go, the events of the Elimination Chamber will certainly not be the climax of the series but it looks like the agonizing slow pace of the last couple of episodes will finally pay off in a grand arena where everything comes together in a delightful merger of light, explosions and meta anime goodness.

Note: Episode 17 is very likely delayed this week due to scheduling issues like its awkward 22 episode format.

Made in Abyss – 04[The Edge of the Abyss]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Made in Abyss

One level of the Abyss down and so far things are looking good for our two explorers. Though the only thing they really had to worry about was the search crew coming to take them back to the orphanage. The adventuring spirit is in the air and if their is a dump truck full of misery and death ready to drop on our protagonists then I haven’t seen signs of it yet. Not to say there is not foreshadowing as they certainly are making it clear that whatever is waiting down there isn’t going to be pretty. From the start of the episode we can see that Regu is doing the main heavy lifting and while Riko is helping out a little with food and does have useful knowledge but it’s certain that she needs to really start carrying her own weight.

Without Regu, Riko would be dead several times over so it makes me shocked that she actually intended to head down on her own at the start. Riko does provide something though as we can only insinuate to other people’s intentions though her theories. She believes that the message from the letter was her mother’s message to her, that the artifact(That she lost moments later) pointed to the depths of the abyss and that the leader purposefully let them journey off as some sort of test. But as we know, Riko is far from infallible and many of these assertions are being made on a personal whim. We don’t really know what’s really happening here and I have a feeling there is more to it than Riko’s simplistic conclusions.

Though it passed me over while watching, I seen someone put together a series of shots which really show off the cinematography of this series. There are plenty of background and visual motives which present this as these two descending into the belly of the beast. Throughout the episode there was a serious sense of foreboding and this does feel like the last safe haven for the two. After this the training wheels are off and they need to deal with the full wrath of the Abyss and everything that comes with it. So right before the second level our two get a visit from a Black whistle diver Habo who surprisingly doesn’t stop them from continuing their journey but instead brings supplies and news. It is a wonder as to why he doesn’t try to prevent them from doing this but he seems to have a degree of resignation that this would happen eventually. Perhaps it is like Riko said earlier, all things that come from the abyss eventually return to the abyss and as we know, both of these two originally came from the abyss.

At least he did originally offered to guide them down to the third layer but after Riko’s refusal and seeing the letter from Leader decided against it. Habo does mention about a active white whistle in the third level who happened to be the person who helped carry baby Riko out of the abyss when she was born. In a way she may be considered Riko’s godmother and Riko is certainly excited to met her despite Habo’s warnings that she may not be the most trustworthy. Next episode we have the second level of the abyss, the forest of temptation and already I feel sad that this series is only a single cour when we only just get started four episodes in. However the anime has currently covered about ¼ of the source material(This covers up to halfway through chapter ten and there are 42 chapters currently.) so we could very well be up to date with the manga by the time the series ends.

Fate/Apocrypha – 05[Will of Heaven]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Fate/Apocrypha

Seeings as we are five episodes in and my joyous period of fanboyism has subsided I believe it is time to admit something. I don’t actually think this show is that good and I am questioning just why that is. I don’t believe my assessment of the source material was wrong as it was indeed a strong narrative there which had my full attention. However here, something is off. I can’t quite pin down what precisely it is but something is killing this story. My previous culprit to blame was the pacing but in this episode they thankfully slowed down. Perhaps the animation? No, while A-1 is far below the quality one could expect from a Ufotable production this isn’t a terrible looking show. Still not gone on the character designs but animation wise it’s fine. No, perhaps the fault lies in how it’s adapted as there are some questionable choices at work here. Take for example Lancer of Black, aka Vlad Tepes. I say most would be surprised to see his leniency in punishing Astolfo in this episode considering his legacy in the common eye as a bloodthirsty tyrant. But in the novel this wasn’t much of a surprise as it went into detail on just why Vlad has joined this battle and I personally though his motivation was a stroke of creative genius. I can’t really go into it at that point as it’s bound to be brought up sooner or later but I think this is the problem with rushing the beginnings of this story. In doing so a number of characters have been left with one dimensional characterisation. I wouldn’t blame a fan of fate animated works being disappointed in this as I too find it much more underwhelming than its book counterpart.

My current state of thinking could be just a temporary thought as this was a rather weak episode in comparison to the others. Mainly because the focus was on Ruler and the newly named Homunculus, Sieg. These two really do drag on and I think that instead of rushing the cool battles we were supposed to get last episode we could have rushed this instead. For this is remarkably dull watching these two utterly bland characters. Ruler I will give a pass as it more or less is her sticking to the character of Joan of Arc and the role of the holy maiden. Still it doesn’t make for great characterisation and at times I am missing the interpretation of Joan from Drifters. She’s isn’t completely boring as she has the standing above all the servants and is badass in her own right but I worry that the main reason this episode got more focus than the last is due to her being prime “waifu” material. But if there is something I just find dreadfully boring with no upside it’s this Sieg fellow. You can give Shirou a lot of grief over his survivor’s guilt and superhero complex but at least it made him interesting. Sieg on the other have is a dull emotionless empty character who basically needs to learn how to live and grow a personality. He’s self insert material and I dislike that he has a role in this at all. He’s dangerously close to becoming the usual light novel protagonist and I even see signs of girls falling for him for no reason and with Siegfried’s heart he’s bound to get free power ups to show how “cool” he is. This kid is a chekhov’s gun that’s just ready to kill any potential this story has.

We get a small glimpse of Assassin of black and her master this week and yet again we have another servant who has been shafted by the anime. Assassin of Black actually has a short story detailing her summoning and the main book did dedicate time to showing just what went down. At the moment they are basically the Ryou and Caster duo in being chaotic evil. Now as it’s revealed in this show our Assassin here is Jack the Ripper and out of all the strange servants on Apocrypha this one is the one I have the hardest time suspending my sense of disbelief with. Personality wise I actually find it interesting to interpret Jack the Ripper as a child demon born from discarded babies from the positives of London. Her relationship with her master is equally interesting as they have a mother daughter relationship instead of a master and servant one. It was made a point in the books that when Jack calls her master she simultaneously says Master in a way that can also be interpreted as mother. But despite this concept being very intriguing and one I can get on board I cannot for the life of me take her remotely seriously based on her design.

I mean, Jack the Ripper, represented by a Lolita in dominatrix gear. It’s just really really dumb. There is in fact another interpretation of Jack the Ripper in the Fate Universe and that comes from Fate/Strange Fake which was written by Narita Ryohgo of Baccano/Durarara fame. In there Jack was shown as a shapeless being who could assume many forms as the real Jack the Ripper was never caught so his legacy is that of an anonymous serial killer. In the particularly quirky style of character writing that Narita has this servant was summoned as a berserker but due to Jack the Ripper already being insane, placing mad enchantment on him only ended up turning him sane. Both interpretations have there great points but in Fate/Apocrypha case I wish that Jack’s design wasn’t so obviously geared towards fanservice. So with the final moments of this episode we have pretty much established that the Red masters won’t be playing much of a role in this war, if the opening and character designs of the them didn’t tip you off to that already.