Fate/Apocrypha

The Holy Grail is a powerful, ancient relic capable of granting any wish the beholder desires. In order to obtain this power, various magi known as "masters" summon legendary Heroic Spirits called "servants" to fight for them in a destructive battle royale—the Holy Grail War. Only the last master-servant pair standing may claim the Grail for themselves. Yet, the third war ended inconclusively, as the Grail mysteriously disappeared following the conflict.

Many years later, the magi clan Yggdmillennia announces its possession of the Holy Grail, and intends to leave the Mage's Association. In response, the Association sends 50 elite magi to retrieve the Grail; however, all but one are killed by an unknown servant. The lone survivor is used as a messenger to convey Yggdmillennia's declaration of war on the Association.

As there are only two parties involved in the conflict, the Holy Grail War takes on an unusual form. Yggdmillennia and the Mage's Association will each deploy seven master-servant pairs, and the side that loses all its combatants first will forfeit the artifact. As the 14 masters summon their servants and assemble on the battlefield, the magical world shivers in anticipation with the rise of the Great Holy Grail War.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kuro no Rider Main

Ookubo, Rumi Japanese

Ruler Main

Sakamoto, Maaya Japanese

Sieg Main

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Saber Supporting

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Aka no Saber Supporting

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Velvet, Waver Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Aka no Lancer Supporting

Yusa, Kouji Japanese

Merlin Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Aka no Archer Supporting

Hayami, Saori Japanese

Kotomine, Shirou Supporting

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Oowada, Tomoyuki Producer

Shioya, Yoshiyuki Producer

Kurosaki, Shizuka Producer

Asai, Yoshiyuki Director

Reviews

Mar 14, 2024

Drakestalker

Recommended

Your enjoyment of this anime will be contingent entirely on your investment in the Fate franchise as a whole. When I say Fate as a whole, I mean that very deliberately, because if the only Fate property you enjoy is Fate/Zero, suffice it to say you will not enjoy Apocrypha. I suppose it will also depend on your enjoyment of action anime as such, but since you’re here, reading this, I’m kind of taking that for granted.

When and how should you watch this? Whenever and however you want. Where does this fit in the larger Fate continuity? It doesn’t. Fate/Apocrypha is a completely separate timeline. ... It is its own thing. This can be the very first Fate show you watch or the very last. It makes no difference.

Fun fact, apocrypha is a religious term that is the antonym of canon. So, something like the names of Jesus’ apostles would be canonical content, whereas the names of the various archdemons of Hell would be apocryphal. It’s essentially the original religious word for what we call filler.

The premise here, like in any other Fate show, is a battle royale between 7 magical Servants representing historical or mythological characters in order to win the ultimate prize, the Holy Grail, a magical device that will grant the winner any wish. The Servants each fit one of the 7 classes, Saber, Lancer, Archer, Rider, Caster, Berserker, and Assassin. However, also like in any other Fate show, that basic premise gets instantly violated and turned on its head. This is a trope consistently present as a manner of through line in every Fate show, which is the notion that the basic premise is fairly straightforward and simple to understand, but simultaneously there is not a single Fate show that actually holds to the outline drawn by the premise.

As much as we like to think of the Holy Grail War as a battle royale between 7 heroes of one kind or other, it is vexing to think about the fact that there isn’t even one solitary Fate incarnation that actually is that. Every one, without exception, has to subvert it somehow and inject all manner of contrived shenanigans into the mix. Before long, all rules established at the outset are invariably thrown out the window and the whole thing degenerates into a trainwreck. Hilariously enough (though you may just consider it lazy writing, depending on your point of view, and you would be completely justified in thinking so), one character explicitly voices this frustration: “All we wanted was a graceful fight of skilled magic and summoned Servants!”

F.

In any case, the basic outline of the plot is as follows. As it turns out, a certain mage family has already somehow taken possession of the Grail, but their ownership of it is somehow not legitimate, so the Heroic Spirit Summoning Ritual is somehow modified to allow for 2 sets of 7 Servants to be simultaneously summoned, so rather than a battle royale between the 7, it’s a war between the 14 Servants of the 2 factions. On top of that, the Grail summons an additional Servant of a non-standard class, Ruler, to serve as the impartial arbiter of the conflict.

Depending on how well you remember 1st grade math, you might at this point be thinking to yourself, hold on, the 14 Servants, plus their Masters, plus the arbiter, that makes for a total of 29 characters to keep track of. How will you ever manage to remember all of them??? The truth is that you don’t have to. The simple fact of the matter is that most of the Masters – with the exception of maybe 5 of them – are either not memorable or just not relevant in any way, shape, or form. You needn’t bother to commit them to memory.

If you feel like even 14 Servants are too many to keep track of – which they aren’t, but just in case you still feel that way – then let us assuage those concerns, as well. On the one hand, they’re all a lot more unique-looking than their Masters, so even if you won’t necessarily remember all of their names, which is fine, you’ll still remember them visually as the guy/chick who did/said this, that, or the other. On the other hand, not all of the Servants are strictly speaking relevant, either. Some will get killed fairly early in the conflict, whereas others don’t even have proper combat roles, so they mostly exist on the sidelines. Point being, you don’t really have to commit all of them to memory, either.

Nevertheless, the natural main point of attraction of any Fate show is the Servants. We all always get excited to see what new Servants get revealed and what they look like. Unfortunately, Fate/Zero is just about the only Fate show out there that features a cast of entirely non-cringe Servants, that is to say no “UwU, Attila the Hun is actually a cute tan loli with a rainbow lightsaber, teehee” bullshit – Artoria herself is just about the one exception we’ve all come to accept as a given.

As such, your mileage with most Apocrypha Servants will vary. The good news? Since there’s 14 of them, so you’re bound to like at least some of them. The bad news? Loads of them have cringy and uninspired designs. We are once again dealing with genderbent characters. There is one Servant that is canonically a centaur, but “chooses” to appear as a regular human for convenience’s sake. What? What do you mean? How? You mean to tell me you guys can arbitrarily change your appearances? Isn’t the notion that your appearance can give away your identity, and as such your weaknesses and abilities, one of the main conceits of the franchise? Isn’t that why you never reveal your True Names? So, if you can freely change your appearances, why doesn’t every Servant do that all the time and become completely unrecognizable? One major mythological Greek figure is turned into a cat girl, whoop-dee-fucking-do.

I will say, though, that Apocrypha succeeds in doing something no other Fate show has managed to do. It offended me. I’m not joking. I don’t use that term lightly. Again, whether you find the gay character designs palatable or not is up to individual tastes. Some will love cute girl Frankenstein’s Monster, some will find it lame – whatever. What I found offensive was Apocrypha’s portrayal of Spartacus. I’m not going to spoil anything about the character or the role he plays in the show. Suffice it to just say that I found his portrayal to go way further than just a difference in vision. It was downright disrespectful to a real person who actually existed and one of the greatest heroes of human history. To my mind, his treatment in the series is way beyond the pale.

Still, I can’t pretend that I did not enjoy the fact that the entire conflict takes place in my own country, Romania. The city the story is set in, Trifas, is fictional, but it is essentially based on the city of Sighișoara, with loads of places and vistas from the show being replicas of real life locations. It is also worth noting that Sighişoara is also the birthplace of Vlad III, also known as the Impaler. To those not in the know, he’s the one that Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula is believed to be based on, and in popular mythology, he is accepted as the de facto identity of Dracula.

As such, it should come as no surprise that Vlad the Impaler is one of the Servants in Apocrypha. Was I excited to see him? Yes! Was I excited by his portrayal? Ehhh. He was nice enough and I really enjoyed the way his temperament and personality were described – certainly a portrayal an order of magnitude more respectful than that of Spartacus. Unfortunately, I was not massively pleased by his visual design. His clothing was not overly impressive or visually striking, I outright disliked the way his spear looked, but by far the thing that bothered me the most was the way his hair seemed to be dyed a different color from about his jawline downwards. I don’t know who thought that dark turquoise color would look good on him, but we clearly do not see eye to eye.

As for why Apocrypha doesn’t just use the name of a real Romanian city, that I’m sure I don’t know. It’s not like they’re trying to be all cloak and dagger in order to avoid making any direct references to real life places and people. The story explicitly takes place in Romania and Vlad is explicitly one of the main characters. Add to that the fact that Sighişoara literally exists in the story as a separate city. Some limited events happen over there. It’s acceptable for all these real life references to exist, but the central setting of the story is where we draw the line? We can turn a blind eye to some of your plot taking place in the real city, but the bulk of the story needs to take place in a separate fictional version of that same city? Weird, but ok. I’m not mad – I’m just confused.

Now, just in case you’re unfamiliar with the Saberface concept, allow me to educate you. Saberface, referencing Artoria's class name of Saber, originated from Takashi Takeuchi's fondness for drawing variations of Artoria, and over the years it has become something of a tradition for works in the Fate series to include a Saberface character. One of the two resident Saberfaces of Fate/Apocrypha is Mordred, her daughter. Yes, yes, I know, the show will constantly describe Mordered as “his son”, but they’re both women, so she’s her daughter. Before you go any further, though, please, for the love of God and everything that’s good and holy in this world, do not read up on the Wiki about how Mordred was conceived. I beg. Don’t do it.

So, how is Mordred? Pretty cool, I’m not gonna lie! For starters, her armor looks a lot cooler than Saber Artoria’s. I know a lot of people are deeply in love with Artoria’s design. That’s fine. I’m not the biggest fan. Mordred’s looks meaningfully cooler in my view. Is it as unique? Is it as well thought out? Is it as expressive? Bro, I don’t know and I don’t care. I just like it better because it looks cooler. It’s as deep as a puddle.

Her personality is a different matter altogether. For what it’s worth, she has some interactions early on in the show that are absolutely hilarious, but she’s not otherwise given much to do throughout the show, and since action is where she shines, not standing around and expositing, she ends up being somewhat annoying at times. Regardless, whenever she’s given the opportunity to throw down, she’s a joy to spend time with and she receives a moment of glory towards the end of the show that is truly glorious.

Mordred is voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro, who is easily my favorite voice actress, but this is one of her more unimpressive performances, with the exception of the aforementioned moment of glory.

In addition to Mordred, the main Saberface of Fate/Apocrypha is Joan of Arc. I know a lot of English speakers, and even the official English subtitles, call her Jeanne d’Arc, like the Japanese source material, but that doesn’t make sense. The Japanese call her Jeanne because that’s what she’s called in Japan. They just take the French spelling at face value. There’s no reason for us to follow suit. Joan of Arc already has an anglicized name, namely Joan of Arc.

I’ll keep it a buck fifty with you, chief. Joan is pretty fucking fantastic. Again, like with Mordred, I know she’s supposed to be a derivative of Artoria and a lot of people consider her to be a cheap copy, but I don’t know, man. I felt like she was the better, improved version. She had all the best traits of Artoria, without the rest of Artoria – none of the angst about trying to present as masculine while being a woman, none of the cucking clown fiesta with Lancelot, none of it. She’s a perfectly feminine waifu and has no problem presenting as such, whilst simultaneously kicking ass on the rare occasion when she’s called upon to do so. She has her own angst to deal with insofar as Gilles de Rais is concerned, but I didn’t find it nearly as obnoxious as Artoria’s character arc with Lancelot.

Her powers are more oriented towards protection and healing, rather than offense, which meshes seamlessly with her character building. Her one big offensive move (you’ll see) makes a surprising amount of sense on a viscerally intuitive level as an unbelievably destructive manifestation of femininity.

Additionally, again, I know she’s conventionally considered to be a knock-off of Artoria, but once more I must confess that I like her visual design significantly more than Artoria’s. Joan’s attire is perhaps some of my favorite battle maiden regalia in all of fiction. She’s simply all-around wonderful. There are no two ways about it. She’s best girl.

I suppose the fact that, unlike Artoria, she has huge tits also doesn’t hurt her case.

Far and away my favorite Servants were Siegfried and Karna, the former being my absolute favorite. They unfortunately do not get nearly enough oxygen, which is an inevitable consequence of a bloated cast, but even in spite of an incredibly disappointing event that happens as early as episode 4, which nearly broke my heart, they still manage to shine so bright that they stand head and shoulders above everyone else in Apocrypha. I would love to say more and gush about them, but I really can’t without spoiling.

The animation of episode 22 has been the target of a fair amount of controversy – different animators were hired for it. As I’m given to understand, the animation was outsourced to CloverWorks’ team that made Fate/Grand Order: Absolute Demonic Front – Babylonia, but don’t quote me on that one, for I’m not sure it’s the case and I cba doing the research. It’s also not relevant. What is relevant is that it looks markedly different from every other episode with animation that is a lot more fluid, to the point where it looks bad in some instances. I’m not saying it reaches the heights of ridiculousness of Naruto vs. Pain, but it comes close at times. Point is, I have my own axe to grind with the episode, but in spite of everything, the final duel between Siegfried and Karna is literally one of my favorite anime fights of all time and objectively one of the most spectacular.

There’s not much here in terms of an OST, but the main battle theme, known simply as Fate/Apocrypha OST I, is nothing short of fantastic. Every time I listen to it in the car (yes, I listen to anime OSTs while driving, don’t @ me), it takes me on such a journey of emotion and hypes me up like few other songs can. As is to be expected, since there’s not much of anything else available, this main OST gets abused to hell and back during every single even remotely tense moment in the show, much like You Say Run in HeroAca, but it’s great nevertheless. Honestly, it’s much better than this anime deserved.

The only really vexing aspect of the show's audio presentation is the overuse of ear rape audio glitches for explosions. I assume this was done in order to oversell the magnitude of the explosions and the impact of various physical and/or magical hits, to suggest that they are so powerful, they literally break the limits of the show's bass and treble. Yeah, I get what you were going for, but this ain't it, chief. It was just irritating and exhausting to listen to. It really took away from my enjoyment of some otherwise great fights.

As far as the de facto protagonist of the anime is concerned, I hesitate to talk about him too much, because he is not part of the narrative from the beginning, and his reveal is a twist of sorts. What I will say, however, is that he is probably my favorite Fate protagonist to date – with the exception of Fate/Zero. It is somewhat of a tradition that Fate protagonists have to invariably be some kind of a blank slate or other with no dreams, goals, personalities, or thoughts of their own, so a big part of their character arcs is always the journey to find themselves, to develop a personality, to distinguish their own thoughts and dreams from those of other people, to learn who they are in the first place, etc. – again, Fate/Zero is the exception. My frustration with this string of self-insert protagonists came to a head with Fate/Extra: Last Encore’s Hakuno. All of that criticism and frustration is still valid in Sieg’s case, but he is honestly the best of a bad bunch.

His journey to become an actual character is not obnoxiously long, and after that, he becomes genuinely likable. I’m gonna take a shot in the dark and suggest that the reason huge swarths of the fandom hate him as much as they do is because Apocrypha romances him with their favorite virgin waifu. Deal with it.

When all is said and done, loads of interesting things happen in this show, but the overall plot is just a mess. There are any number of interesting events, but it is fairly transparent to me that Yuuichirou Higashide, the writer of Apocrypha, simply had no idea how to make them all connect into one cohesive narrative, so he... didn’t. As such, the build-ups to the various climaxes and pay-offs are either non-existent or just disappointing, which is why, depending on your expectations, you might have a miserable time watching this anime. If, however, you go into it expecting exactly what it is, a mess of dumb fun with cool shit happening on a fairly consistent basis, I guarantee you’ll have a good time.

Again, it all comes down to nothing more than your investment in- and love for the Fate franchise as such. This is not necessarily the worst entry, but it is also not the best. I would never recommend this as one’s first foray into Fate, but if you’re already sold on the concept and would like to see more Servants and cool fights, then I warmly recommend you at least give this one a try.

P.S.: Waver Velvet, Iskandar's Master from Fate/Zero, makes a cameo appearance in this show, though unless you look up what he looks like as an adult, you'll never recognize him.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Nov 14, 2024

YourGallbladder

Mixed Feelings

It really sucks to give this a six, considering how great some of these episodes are. For every compelling character, beautiful fight scene, and interesting exchange, there's also a lot of boring material. There are simply too many characters here, many of whom are poorly written and drag down every scene they take part in. (Not to mention Jack the Ripper, whoever did that character design is a damn pedophile, and the character itself sucks too). Astoflo, Achilies, Chirion, Siegfried, Mordred, and Kairi are the lifeblood of this series, but their potential, and the whole work itself, are squandered by poor writing.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 1, 2023

AJ2814

Not Recommended

A friend of mine warned me that Fate/Zero was an outlier in the Fate franchise and that I was probably not going to enjoy the rest of it. I should've listened.
Fate/Apocrypha is essentially a check list of shit I either hate or find exceptionally boring in anime. Dozens of interchangeable "I can't believe its not isekai" character designs, writing attempting to cover dark topics like slavery and child soldiers with the depth of of a sixteen year old's first fan fiction, and dull super combat moves that are rarely more than big laser swords and explosions.
Its so bland, repetitive and interchangeable with every other basic ... action shonen that it may be the thing that finally kills what momentum I had with the Fate franchise.

Plot: The Yggdmillenia family stole the grail with the Nazi's help fifty years ago, and the church doesn't like that. So they fight. Simple and hypothetically effective, if only this had been twelve episodes instead of twenty five.

Characters: I can't tell any of the Yggdmillenia apart. They all wear the same uniform and have basic anime hair. Some have glasses, one's in a wheelchair. It's fine, none of them really matter, the summons and the little homunculus kid are the characters who actually matter.
Sieg is a boiler plate anime protagonist, he wonders about his personhood, devotes himself to his friends, has to save his people. Blah Blah Blah, its all the same shit on repeat.
Frankenstein's monster, Jack the Ripper and Mordred are all the usual anime gender swap's done to appeal to pedophiles. But Mordred is particularly frustrating after how well written Arthur was in Fate/Zero
Atalanta is the funniest character in the show. She's not supposed to be, but having a fox/cat girl having a melt down about Jack the Ripper's child servant's/meat shields was hilarious and her spending the rest of the show screaming "WHY WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!" while attacking any other named character, kept me going long after I should've given up on the show.
Vlad the Impaler was cool while he was around. His powers being rooted in defense of Romania was interesting, and his power system being influenced by public perception of him, in a way he resented, was definitely the most interesting thing the show did with any of the summons special moves.
Shakespeare was fun, if unimportant. His writings altering reality, and his own summoner having to have his own defenses from Shakespeare writing his own tale as a tragedy was interesting.
I can see why Astolfo caught on in the anime fandom. He's the exact manic pixie dream boy that everybody loves.
Everyone else was so forgettable that I have forgotten that they were in the show.

Animation: It's by A-1 pictures, so it doesn't really have much of its own style or identity. The fights are rarely interesting, usually just characters hitting each other with big ol' anime swords, followed by a big explosion. I don't think there's more than one fight that I will remember. All the dialogue scenes are a characters standing in flat environments monologuing to each other with very basic shot composition, so it was very easy to dissociate out of whatever was happening.

In the end, was watching it worth it? No, it was a waste of time, and it failed on every front from Type-Moon's business perspective. I don't want to buy its light novel, it didn't make me want to buy lootboxes/rolls/whatever it is in Fate/Grand Order, and it didn't make me want to buy any officially licensed merchandise. It was a complete failure of capitalism.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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