We have officially entered the second half of Fate/Apocrypha and with that comes a new opening and ending. The ending doesn’t leave much of an impression but I do prefer this opening over the first opening. The first opening just didn’t really suit my tastes while I prefer the melody of this opening more even if the visuals of it are rather generic. As far as Fate anime openings go for the whole franchise I still believe that Fate/UBW has the best ones. For the past few episodes this series has actually been pretty good but it seems that streak has ended with this episode. Part of the reason is that the long action sequence has ended and another part is that Sieg is getting center attention again. I swear this kid is like a fun black hole, where all fun is sucked out of a scene just by his very presence. I don’t like the fact that I keep harping on about this kid but he really is that much of a problem. His design is boring and every line of his dialogue is archetypal and systematic. He’s quest to discover his purpose is gone and with that he has essentially become the most predictable and expected hero character you can write up. I can almost predict his every line of dialogue in any given situation.
Made all the worse by his continued climb up the Gary Sue ladder with him now not only being a servant himself but also a Master. Not exactly a new thing in the Fate universe as Medea from the main series also managed to summon a servant despite being a servant herself. Though that came with it’s own problems, one of which looks to have been severely hand waved here. For now Amakusa Shirou is is sole master for almost the entirety of the red faction. Now it may be a question for some that if a mage can summon a servant during a Holy Grail War then why don’t they try to summon more than one? There are no rules against having more that one servant. However the problem is that it is akin to trying to drive three cars when you only have enough gas for one full tank. Sure you can drive them all if you divide up the gas between the three cars but all three will never drive as far as one can with a full tank. There are even cases such as with Shirou and Saber in the original where Shirou didn’t have enough mana to fuel her and as a result her abilities were handicapped. So the question is, how is Amakusa Shirou managing to fuel six servants(Including the newly defected Caster of Black) without them getting downgraded? Even taking into account that Shirou is a servant himself who also requires mana. He did mention about potentially being incarnated but even a previously incarnated servant needed an external source of mana. I don’t really expect an answer to this as this show has already made it clear the rules don’t really matter all that much.
I don’t like Riders master. No, I don’t mean that in the obvious way as she is a character meant to be disliked. What I mean is that I don’t like how horribly and lazily written she is. With such a large character roster it’s understandable that a couple of characters would get shafted when it comes to characterisation but this really is F grade villain writing. She gets off on torturing others and throwing them into despair and it’s just such childish reasoning. If you want to write a character who has that with better motivations and personality then take notes from DanganRonpa’s antagonist. Here I just realize that the entire purpose of this character is for this one scene, to give the protagonist a free servant and the satisfaction of seeing her head get chopped off by Mordred. Not saying that wasn’t satisfying to witness but come on, Shinji from Fate/Stay Night had better writing than this. I also find myself immensely irritated at what is the worst forced servant retreat in this series to date.
We have only four servants on the enemy side, defected Avicebron, Semiramis, Shirou and Karna. On the good side we have Joan of Arc, Atlanta, Chiron, Achilles and to top it all off Mordred enters the fray. Five against four and two fo the four are low tier servants. So why did Sisigou order a retreat? Karna is a problem, most definitely but he can be kept busy and while Semiramis has a territory boost she still would have trouble with a Saber. With Shirou being the master of all red servants, all the good side needs to do is kill him to win. So why did Sisigou order a retreat? Shirou may have command spells but Joan of Arc is a Ruler Class and thus has two command spells per servant. She can quite literally order all the servants on the opposing side to stand down. Not to mention getting into the hanging Gardens of Babylon again would be a hard task and facing Shirou with such advantageous odds again is even harder. So just why did Sisigou order a retreat? I just can’t understand it no matter how much I think about it.
Now that Sieg is Astolpho’s master and Vlad is dead this series will probably focus on these two and Jeanne. My biggest fear is that Jeanne’s only reason for existence is to become Sieg’s pure girlfriend. I never liked these developments – I mean I always prefered Shirou with Rin or Sakura, but someone could argue that Shirou and Saber were a special case, considering Saber’s wish and past fits well to Shirou’s wish to safe everyone. Not to mention that they were living together for some time. But not only has Sieg barely interacted with Jeanne, he’s also, unlike Shirou, just an incredibly bland character.
What makes matters worse is that Jeanne seems to be very irrelevant so far. All she’s doing is running. She never really interferes. She tries to, but she usually gets interrupted and the scenes switch to other servants who actually fight and do something. It seems like they made her way too tame, I know that people have this naive concept of holy maidens, but Jeanne is just too harmless and boring for a historical military woman who was famous for her patriotism.
I too don’t like the Saber and Shirou pairing. They were always so awkward around each other. I personally prefered his playful interactions with Rin or his more natural realistionship with Sakura. Shirou and Sakura were pratically on married couple level with how they interacted with each other.
I argee that Joan is unfortunatly too passive in this conflict. She has done some things like preventing Berserker from blowing up the town but for the most powerful servent in the war she sure isn’t doing all that much when the rules are getting obliterated.
As far as Fate anime openings go for the whole franchise I still believe that Fate/UBW has the best ones.
Wholeheartedly agree. The marriage of visuals and song were really amazing there. That said, I think the songs for Apo weren’t bad. While most anisongs tend to have more broad market appeal, Egoist’s OP in particular felt like the theme song of a modern day stage production. The lyrics and general feel of the theme fit right to the story and tells a lot about what it’s about. The ED seems to be Jeanne’s theme song and perhaps speaks about her character and motivations.
not only being a servant himself but also a Master.
See this part is really interesting to me. You play FGO right? So you know about Demi-Servants? Shielder, El-Melloi II? Is Sieg something similar? A rough prototype of Mash that works cos of Sieg’s homunculus nature? Well, personally, I only consider him one of a vast cast of characters. Yep, he’s the plot device protag who wins in the end, but along the way, I’ll be paying great attention to everyone else. Well, they could pull another Selesia on us. Seriously did not even imagine that coming. >.>; I can totally hear Sieg’s last MEME words. Maybe he and Siegfried can say it in unison.
Now it may be a question for some that if a mage can summon a servant during a Holy Grail War then why don’t they try to summon more than one?
Hm. But he didn’t summon everybody. Each was summoned by a different Master. But Shirou managed to steal all their command spells, thanks to his Assassin’s magic smoke pot. That’s how I’m reading it.
So the question is, how is Amakusa Shirou managing to fuel six servants(Including the newly defected Caster of Black) without them getting downgraded?
I hope they flesh this out more too but I’m not too bothered by this myself. He’s a Ruler class, which means he was a Servant-level Grail War Referee, with all the inside information and root-level admin codes that entails. A whole different dimension from a church assigned referee like Kotomine Kirei or even his foster dad. Also, I’m pretty sure he used to be the Servant of the Einzberns, which means he probably has some homunculus/magical circuit knowledge of his own AND 60 years time to build up mana reserves. Gil and Kirei had 10 years to prepare. I didn’t see Kotomine having any issues maintaining Cu at his theoretical max power or Gil holding back on his NPs.
So why did Sisigou order a retreat?
Personally, I wonder as to who’s on who’s side here. It’s not really clear where Achilles and Atalanta stand. They only worked with Ruler temporarily to stop the undead. Karna too, I have a feeling he’s only temporarily submitting to Shirou in order to find a way to rescue his Master. He’s at a terrible disadvantage if Shirou has his command spells, his true Master as a hostage, along with his own Ruler-class powers, and being inside Assassin’s domain. If Karna is anything like his CCC counterpart, he’s likely to try to pull off a miracle to save the life of his Master. Let’s recap: They’re all inside the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Assassin’s personal domain, which I assume gives her bonuses like Lancer of Black’s on Romanian soil. Shirou would have each Red Servant’s (excluding Saber’s) usual 3 command spells plus his own ruler-specific 2 spells so that makes 5 to Jeanne’s 2? What’s the usual thing Masters do when their Servants look like they’ll rebel? And Avicebron was a willing collaborator with his army of instant mobs to distract them. Plus Shakespeare. I’m thinking that’s why Sisigou would order a retreat. He said to Saber, “It’s time!”, so this was all according to his plan.
Well, that and this series would be a lot shorter if they started the final climatic battle right now. XD Just my two cents.
My biggest fear is that Jeanne’s only reason for existence is to become Sieg’s pure girlfriend.
I’ll be totally shocked if this happens, but personally, I see her relationship to Sieg as something like a foster mother or guardian. Remember, Sieg is a newborn with an expected lifespan of a Replicant. But he is a living person from the era, unlike the Servants, who are ghosts of the dead from another. So she’s likely to become his guide to making the best out of this situation.
She never really interferes.
She’s the Ruler-class of this Grail War, which means she’s kind of like the referee of a duel. She’s not supposed to interfere unless there’s a break in the rules. Remember Saber of Black vs Lancer of Red. It would take something like getting attacked or finding out a Servant from an old war becoming a Master in a different one and being in the position to use the Grail on his own to get her to intervene. Things are still developing though and she’s still vague about why she was summoned there in the first place. She’s set to work against Shirou for now but I’m really not sure how this story will go. She’s already expressed how she agrees with Shirou’s wish. It’s only his methods that is the problem. Much plot development for her to come, I assume.
Alright I will jump in to address a few things here but I do have a few other things I need to write up so I can’t go into everything.
The impression I got of demi servents was that they were people assuming the roles and powers of the servent. Not really turning into one like Sieg does. You could say he’s a flawed demi servent as his transformation is temporary when Mash’s and Wavers is perminant.
The question about summoning more than one servent was more to bring up that having more than one servent does not give any real advantage.
The Ruler class does not have a master so he didn’t serve the Einsberns(Rather funny considering the cheating of the Einsberns is what caused a Ruler to join the fight in the first place.) The rular isn’t privy to any cheat codes either, they just know the rules and have the command spells to reinforce them. As for Kirei, he did in fact have mana reserves to help him power both Cu and Gil…that was revealed at the end of the Fate Route and it’s not pretty. Basically all the orphans from the great fire of the Fourth holy Grail locked down in the crypt acting as Mana batteries. A fate that Shirou would also of had if he had not been adopted by Kerry.
Shirou is not a ruler class anymore. Otherwise the other servents would have wised up because you can’t hide that. So he has no Ruler command spells. Also you misunderstand, the Rular class gets two command spells per servent. There are 14 servents in this war which means that Joan gets a grand total of 28 command spells. Five were spent powering up the servents to take down dracula. But still far more than Shirou could ever have. Karna and Semiramis are powerful servents but fighting that many servents at once is still a hard task. The two red servents could eb disabled by Shirou’s command spells but again Joan can pretty much use her own command spells to counter his while shutting down his servents.
Alright I will jump in to address a few things here but I do have a few other things I need to write up so I can’t go into everything.
NP. I’m very happy to have someone to talk to about this as I want to clarify my own point of view on an admittedly potentially confusing subject. I never read the Fate Apocrypha novels myself and am playing FGO from Japan, untranslated. I’m only getting vague hints from the participants about their relationships. No real specifics on what happens in Apocrypha.
The question about summoning more than one servent was more to bring up that having more than one servent does not give any real advantage.
Hm. You might need to elaborate. I might be missing your point here. One thing about the original battle royale style of Grail War, is that you have great difficulty getting Master/Servant pairs to work together unless it was to everyone’s advantage. Case in point, Zero Caster’s NP that was threatening the whole city. It would be nice to steal other Servants from their Masters but like you mentioned, you’d need to be a great mage with a massive mana pool. Medea managed to pull this off in UBW, by having Assassin, Archer and Saber (WIP but still…). The main issue being each Master/Servant pairing having their own wish and the filled Grail having the power to grant only one pair of wishes? But if you could get that to work, well, you’d have a party of Servants able to synergize their strengths and cover their individual weaknesses and have something greater than the sum of their parts. In theory, anyway, if Amakusa could pull this off, he would have a team of allied Servants against a bunch of lone wolves.
I get Kirei’s method of mana collection but I’m not discounting Amakusa having his own method. Perhaps something not so gory. He might have his own source of homunculus batteries to draw on given his connection to the Einzberns or perhaps something more benign given that he has had 60 years to prepare, and doesn’t look like he has aged. He may well have gone off the deep end, given his willingness to kill off his fellow Saint, dismissing her as a “hindrance”. And about cheat codes, I was actually thinking about Ruler Command Spells, their ability to identify the true identity of servants on sight, their ability to receive visions, and Amakusa’s claim to Avicebron that he knew everything about the Greater Grail. Still not quite sure what this means. Amakusa still enjoys all these abilities so I’m pretty sure he’s still a Ruler, just like Gil was still an Archer with all his Archer abilities intact, in spite of having incarnated into a flesh body from the Black Grail.
Shirou is not a ruler class anymore. Otherwise the other servents would have wised up because you can’t hide that.
Mmm…? Jeanne called it the instant she laid eyes on Amakusa. And Amakusa himself admitted that he was of the Ruler class too. In FSN, nobody could tell blondie was a Servant either..or that an 8th one was around. So maybe only Rulers can tell for sure. Maybe Amakusa did incarnate, like Gil, and that’s why other Servants couldn’t tell.