On the list of top ten worst ways to start an anime episode, I think that panty shots is quite high. Well if it means anything I at least appreciate that Ren didn’t flush up and start stammering, instead acting relatively normal about it. Unlike Kasumi who well reacted in the usual manner of resorting to kicking his teeth in. Like Ren said, you can’t blame the guy if you are the one that put it in his line of sight. So for all one or two of you that are actually still keeping up with this series I say this is the episode you drop. I can’t blame you honestly as this adaption is truly making me question whether the visual novel itself was all that great. It is truly a mark of a bad adaption if it causes you to think lesser of the source. I do remember the beginning of DIes Irae being slow but for visual novels this is usually par for the course. Think of any visual novel adaption and you will likely find it’s beginning to be rather slow paced. Believe it or not this is actually moving at a faster pace than the visual novel and for that I am glad. Truth be told i didn’t really start getting interested in DIes until after this little serial killer arc was done.
Fight animation is better than it was in episode zero but in comparison to fight animation we get today it’s quite lacking indeed. I do recall someone remarking that this anime reminds them of early 2000’s animation and not in a good way. Indeed that is the impression I get as well but part of what is contributing to that is Dies Irae’s obvious inspiration. The visual novel came out a couple years after Fate and many were still chasing Fate/Stay Night’s success and you can certainly see that. Though to be fair the plot actually mirrors another Type Moon work by the name of Tsukihime. The persist in this episode is obviously Kirei inspired and the general serial killer plotline is much like that of Tsukihimes beginning plotline, which also insinuated that the main protagonist may be unconsciously a serial killer.
It’s a pity that the anime skipped over the dialogues between Mercurius and Reinhart as those two really could supervillain monologue. Though the translators might have serious trouble when they start talking. They already appear to be having trouble as terms are mistranslated. For one they are called Lisa, Riza. Calling Valeria the priest of the grail instead of the Golden Vessel. But the biggest mistranslation here is calling the obsidian round table, the black round table. I hear that fans offered to give a terms guide to the translators at crunchyroll to help them stay consistent with the visual novel translation but seems they didn’t take that offer. I mean I can understand a level of apathy with this series but this is a matter of professionalism. If you are going to do the job then do it right. What could make this more of a problem is if the Simuldub of this series(Yes, Funimation is doing one.) goes off the Crunchyroll translations rather than the proper terms. Again though, I did understand if that level of consideration isn’t applied as the series itself isn’t going to do any real justice to it. Still I would like to be surprised and see this series improve as the true story begins.
