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.
This is probably Rani’s first mass audience exposure so I expect she’ll get lots of spotlight, perhaps more so than Rin? And I’m not sure if this is the last we’ll see of either as things move forward. They were both major supporting characters in both Extra and CCC, although I really hated how they handled having to choose one or the other in Extra for each route. As for Drake, well, she and Shinji were the sacrificial stepping stones to move Hakuno up a level so we may not see them again til near the end, if at all, much like Fate Extra. I’m pretty sure Drake didn’t make a comeback in CCC either, which I thought was a shame. Pretty glad she got her own chapter in FGO and looking forward to her Extella Links debut. About your dissatisfaction about her lack of resistance last episode, I’m pretty sure she let them win because she hated being stuck on the first level like that. The whole theme of that episode seemed to be about the horror of stagnation and foregoing progress or evolution for fear of death. >.> Even that whiny Shinji didn’t do his usual “No! I don’t want to die!” freak out dance or take the out Drake offered him, preferring death to losing his safe zone.
About Nero and baths, it’s just Nero’s thing. When they were promoting Fate Extra for the PSP, they had a fanservice minigame for Nero on the website where you had to get her bath hot enough for her to use (it might still be up for people to play) and a few special romance route/plot progression scenes for Nero in all Extra/Extella games were held in baths. I would just ignore it if it’s not your thing. Bath scenes were also a speciality for the monogatari series too so I’d be more surprised if they didn’t take advantage of this.
Well that settles it. I haven’t watched this episode due to being disappointed in the last one, though I figured I’d check out this review just in case, but if the series’ creators have so little confidence in the series they’re making that they feel the need to add lots of fanservice in order to make it sell, then their series isn’t worth my time.
To each their own. I completely dropped Inuyashiki after watching a kid brutally murder an innocent family in cold blood for his own amusement. With a strong feeling that this kid was going to be one of the main “protagonists”. And that was just the 2nd episode. I can’t understand what turns people on to such gratuitous brutality. The sheer effort they went to detail such a horrific scene. But I guess that’s the nature of art. Different people express themselves differently and the response of the audience may be equally varied. I have to strongly disagree that those bath scenes were “added” just to make it sell. It’s what they wanted to create and there are people who might consider it, like the successful monogatari series, a work of art, just like Inuyashiki. You’re probably making the right call for yourself. We all have our turn-offs and I doubt Fate Extra has a lot to offer to people who aren’t into the franchise.
Which franchise? The video game Fate/Extra & it’s sequel? The greater Fate franchise? If it’s the former then you’re right. I haven’t played it and thus have no opinion on it. If it’s the latter, well I’ve watched every Fate anime series since Fate/Stay Night, and only dropped Prisma Illya out of all of them (due to excessive loli fanservice), though I lasted until the end of the first season of Prisma Illya and regretted it. I should have just dropped it after the one awesome fight scene. Sometimes I’m just too lenient with Fate series.
I’m reading the Fate/Zero light novels and following the anime of Emiya-san chi no Kyou no Gohan currently, which despite not being a fan of the “docile perfect waifu” side of Saber which shows up in the latter, most of the other characters who have showed up, like Lancer, have been pretty hilarious so I can overlook Saber’s role and still enjoy it.
If I’m not a fan of Fate then I don’t know who would count as one, to be honest.
That said, my great affection for Fate series in general does not exempt me from finding fault with them. There are definitely times when Fate series add annoying and unnecessary fanservice in my eyes, such as Rin in UBW, or loli Jack the Ripper in Apocrypha. I understand that that straight gals like me are not the target audience for Fate, as it originally started as an eroge, and if you see Last Encore’s fanservice as art all the more power to you. Try as I might, I’m not able to see it as art, and feel a bit annoyed and degraded when I see female characters being objectified. A guy being handed a hardcore yaoi smut manga would likely feel somewhat uncomfortable reading it & wouldn’t be likely to view it as art. Same sort of thing. Even though I’m not a fan of yaoi, it was interesting to see the guys’ faces at anime club when they peered over and saw what some of my more yaoi loving friends were reading. None of them looked like they viewed yaoi as anything even remotely close to “art”.
If the fanservice wasn’t added to make Last Encore sell, then the alternative is to believe that the writers were just a bunch of horny guys who wanted to draw fanservice. That’s fine, but it’s still not my kind of thing. Fate/Zero is still the greatest Fate anime series to me. FSN had Saber turn into a blushing, embarrassed waifu-type character at the end, in instead of the awesome serious warrior character she had been before then, UBW had lots of Rin fanservice, Apocrypha lost its way by the end, but I still liked each of these series enough despite their faults to keep watching until the end. Last Encore has nothing to really hook me. Making this series’ Saber character cute and fanservice-y instead of cool and serious made me lose interest fast. I like Rin, but even she wasn’t enough to save this series for me. If you enjoy the series that’s great, just don’t ask me to see fanservice as art. I’ve studied art and design, and I know that what people view as art or not is very dependent on their culture, experiences, and values. If you can view fanservice as art that’s fine. I am unable to view fanservice as art because of my experiences and I’m fine with that also. Last Encore just isn’t a Fate series I’m able to enjoy because of that, but if you do then that’s good, and I hope you have fun watching it.
You make some great points that hit the mark here and I think you’re making the right decision dropping Encore. It’s nothing like Fate Zero. For one thing, for me at least, the core of Fate Stay Night is that it’s a love story. Yes, battles, famous historical figures come back in a fantastic new form, world threatening crisis. But also, hope for a happily ever after. While this current series is all new content, I think it’s safe to assume it will come out somewhat like the monogatari series. And there were romantic visual novel style elements too. So you’re looking at a cyberpunk/psychological mystery battle tournament mixed in possibly with some random comedy hijinks and a bit of pg level fanservice. At the core though, a love story. Rushed, probably a tragic one but a love story nonetheless.
There will likely be a potential romance or at least intimacy between Hakuno and Red Saber although for me, not to the depth we see in Fate Stay Night. Spoilers for Fate Extra, you can play a female Hakuno too and have an intimate relationship with Red Saber (female), Caster (female) and Nameless Archer (male), regardless of gender. There is some possible flirting with the major supporting characters Rin or Rani too. CCC ramps this up further, which I think is the major reason why it didn’t get an english adaptation. So if elements of that show up here, you can add Gilgamesh to your roster of potential partners, as well as a few iterations of Sakura. And a bunch of famous personages. Episode 2 had cameos of Leodinas, Darius the 3rd and Fergus mac Róich out of Fate Grand Order. I’m expecting more.
FSN was an eroge originally because at it’s core, it was a romance novel, with routes for Saber, Rin and Sakura. I’d like to think it didn’t get trashy but that’s another to-each-their-own. So yes, the great warrior woman king is going to get mushy because she’s falling in love. The original Fate Prototype is more classic shojo, with a female Master falling in love with a classic Gary Stu Saber. Rin fanservice in UBW too because it wasn’t about who gets the Grail and wins the war or saves the world but about Shirou and Rin falling in love. The Holy Grail War? A minor magic ritual with little impact on the world. And the eroge part is because it had bedroom scenes. But the setting was just that awesome. The massive setting and awesome support characters like Lancer, Ilya, Kirei, Gilgamesh, etc steal the spotlight easily. Ilya was originally meant to have her own route with Shirou by the way. (Hm, I wonder why that didn’t work out? ) Fate Zero, a backstory to set up why everyone is the way they are. And yet, done so well as to create it’s own fanbase in a different genre, although buried in there too is a tragic love story that culminates midway. Awesome as it was, it was a bad ending for the protagonist there that paved the way for the protagonist in the next generation. Some of the popularity of Prisma Ilya is in that it’s a continuation of an alternate happy ending for Fate Zero. I’m not into loli fanservice either but I’m much less interested in seeing Ilya haunted by the twisted ghost of her beautiful mother, get tortuously operated on and bound to an overpowered Servant, leaving her with the fate of dying way too young in too many horrible ways. >.>; Is this a case of learning to appreciate the best by experiencing the worst?
I really doubt you’ll lose much missing Encore but I personally love the characters and would love to see what they plan to twist this story into, given what I already know of Extra, CCC and Extella. You could wait for a full review later to get an idea about whether it’s worth your time but given what you said about your tastes, I don’t think you’ll miss much. As for another Fate Zero, the best I can suggest is to wait for the next Heaven’s Feel movie. I hope that doesn’t disappoint, although, again, at it’s core should be the romance between Shirou and Sakura. You already know how it went in the novels. How is Ufotable’s adaptation?
Yeah, I think I may have very different reasons for watching Fate than some or maybe most people. I don’t care about the love story part and would be happier if they left it out. The whole “strong female character falls in love and becomes a docile doormat” trope is one of my most majorly disliked tropes and often enough to make me drop a series for life. If the games are all about romancing servants I’m glad I haven’t played them, as they don’t seem to be my sort of thing. If the series must have romance, I’d prefer something more like (although I know it wasn’t a romance) Mordred & Shishigou because they’re basically equals who seem to enjoy each other’s company, without one of them having to stoop to being a doormat. I’d really rather no romance though. It just feels so unnecessary and wrong, especially with servants, since they can be controlled with command spells against their will.
For me, Fate is an epic battle story which brings to mind a Shakespearean tragedy. Almost everyone dies by the end, but you don’t know how, and watching the characters struggles and triumphs usually has me enraptured.
Oh, and I should mention that I haven’t seen the monogatari series, aside from when someone at anime club randomly decided to put on “the toothbrush scene” and I got very weirded out. A lot of the others seemed to find it funny though, so perhaps that scene just wasn’t my cup of tea. I did watch the Zaregoto OVA, by the same author, and…well, the mystery was interesting, but the main female character acted like she was 5, which annoyed me enough that I can’t really say it was a “good” series in my view, despite the intriguing mystery. More of a “frustrating” watch. If Last Encore ends up like Zaregoto then it definitely won’t be my kind of show. I might keep up with reviews on it though.
Yeah, that’s a good point about Prisma Ilya. Better to make a “good end” for her instead of the end she gets, although I could have done without the author inserting their loli fetish into the mix…
I’m looking forward to the Heaven’s Feel movies, since at least Ufotable’s doing them, so I should have some awesome fight scenes to look at no matter what the story is like, and I’ve been curious about Black Saber since she appeared in Prisma Ilya. Apparently she shows up in Heaven’s Feel, right? Can’t wait.^-^
Yeah, if you like Fate/Extra & are getting something out of the anime version I’m glad. I’m guessing that this series might be more for fans of the game anyway. I’m more of an anime-only Fate fan, though lately I’ve started branching out to the LN spinoffs. (Besides Fate/Zero, I also have the first volumes of Fate/Strange Fake, Apocrypha, and Lord El-Melloi II Case Files sitting on my Kindle)
So far it looks like the anime of Fate/Zero was really faithful to the LN, though I’m still fairly early in, and I’ve heard the two diverge completely by the end.
I tried to play FGO when it first came out in Japan, but Mash just seemed like such an annoying generic moe character to me. Then came the part where she became my character’s servant and I couldn’t put up with it any longer & rage-quit the game in frustration. Maybe it gets better later though.
Have you played the original FSN VN? I’ve been thinking about watching a Let’s Play of the Fate route, to learn more about the lore of the Fate world. I’d probably quit before the Saber ending that annoyed me, but I can’t help but wonder if the first FSN anime left out a lot of details about the world, which I would have liked to hear as someone who loves detailed world-building.^-^
Fate route does have a number of building blocks for the Fate universe, like how magic works and such. But if you have problems with romance and someone becoming a doormat then Fate is the most problematic route. The first Fate anime had people believing Shirou was a sexist after all. While their is an internal monologue that does at least allow you to understand his mindset, there are some rather…questionable lines in there. Personally I see it as an artifact of it’s prototype phase where the genders were reverse for Shirou and Saber so this particular angle the story was going for was much more wholesome.
@Aidan
Thanks! The reply link didn’t show up, so this will be out of order but oh well.
Guess I’ll try watching the Fate route then, at least most of it, since I figure the romance part which isn’t my thing wouldn’t have much world-building content anyway. Shirou being sexist doesn’t bother me too much, as long as it’s just the patronizing kind of sexism he shows in the anime. I deal with that kind of thing every day. It’s the controlling or abusive kind of sexism that bothers me (AKA, why I ultimately stopped reading the rape-fetishy Berserk manga), but as long as it doesn’t go into that territory I don’t mind much.