Fate/Extra: Last Encore - Illustrias Tendousetsu

After defeating the various Floor Masters of the six prior levels, Hakuno Kishinami and Saber arrive at the top floor of the Moon Cell. Their opponent will be Leonardo B. Harwey—the strongest Master in the history of the Holy Grail War and the current fan favorite, following his previous victory.

As they reach a field of flowers among floating isles, Hakuno, Saber, and Rin Toosaka come across a hooded man tending to the blossoms. Saber immediately draws her blade before the cloaked figure, who reveals himself as Prince Gawain: the Platinum Saber and Knight of the Round Table. However, when Gawain insists that he has no interest in fighting, the four discuss the infinite possibilities for the Holy Grail, with Hakuno determined to return the Moon Cell to its original form.

Their discussion ends with a clangor from afar, ringing through the skies. The threadbare Gawain, knowing its significance, informs the three that not much time remains for their lives. He beckons them towards the final battleground, where the two Sabers shall duel once more to determine the future of mankind.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Saber Main

Tange, Sakura Japanese

Kishinami, Hakuno Main

Abe, Atsushi Japanese

Toosaka, Rin Supporting

Ueda, Kana Japanese

Gawain Supporting

Mizushima, Daichuu Japanese

Kishinami, Hakuno Supporting

Ishikawa, Yui Japanese

H. Pieceman, Twice Supporting

Touchi, Hiroki Japanese

Harwey, Leonardo Bistario Supporting

Park, Romi Japanese

Harwey, Julius Belkisk Supporting

Hatano, Wataru Japanese

Miyamoto, Yukihiro Director, Episode Director

Okada, Kenjirou Episode Director

Koga, Kazuomi Episode Director

Kurosawa, Mamoru Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Sep 2, 2018

eralterg

Recommended

I’ll be a special snowflake here. I think it deserves a 7.6/10 based on just the 3 episodes. Including the whole show, it would be a 6/10. Shaft's direction and art-style never ceases to amaze me. They insert weird shots of characters moving their lips or eyes that you just don't see coming, to the point it can kind of freak you out, and I'm saying that as a positive. It's not often you get these dynamic camera shots, and Shaft is one of the few that loves doing those. I love it; maybe I'm a masochist viewer. Also, I guess I like reading a ... philosophical diatribe (I watched this subbed). This one really doesn't hold back on the talking, or the Nasu-talking philosophical rants, which I found very fascinating. Who cares about hack and slash anime when you can watch this and feel enlightened about the simple things in life. But yes, it is extremely boring leading up to these final 3 episodes. And that is the main weakness of this show. The lack of explaining things while pouring a psychological mind-****ery on you is kind of bad combination, so I would say going into this anime from the very first episode with the expectation it will be like the other fate anime is a huge mistake. You have to go into this with the mind set that you're entering a lecture with Nasu about existential nihilism. And as I said before, the animation was beautiful, like OVA or movie quality. The fights in these final few episodes was worth the time. The ending is like "wtf" and kinda leaves you thinking what the hell was that? At the end of the day, I gave this a high rating because it seems like a lot more thought was put into this than your typical-kind of anime. It was just executed in a way that turns off people with a short attention span.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Aug 21, 2018

MarlyTT

Mixed Feelings

Fate/Extra Last Encore is basically what happens when you put the IDEAS GUY in charge of everything rather than working on the project as a group. Nasu clearly had a story that he wanted to tell, but it wasn't done in a way that was fun to watch or easy to understand, making the show seem like a convoluted mess at a first glance. While they claimed that Last Encore was written in a way so that people who are familiar with Fate/Extra's setting and people who aren't could enjoy it equally, the outcome ended up being the complete opposite. Where did it all go ... wrong?

One of the major issues is that the setting is completely unfriendly, especially so for people who are familiar with Fate's normal setting. The only vaguely similar thing is the concept of Masters and Servants, but no one's going to know what Moon Cell or Angelica Cage are. They're supposed to be on the moon as some computer programs or something, but I'm sure at this point most casual watchers already lost interest and moved on to watching something more highly intellectual like Overlord III or something.

The show, for all intents and purposes, and regardless of intent, assumes the watcher is familiar with Fate/Extra's setting, which shouldn't even really be a necessity if you want to produce a show that reaches out to as many audience as possible instead of the small group that may have played that one PSP game nearly a decade ago. The problem is that it can't deliver the setting very well without resorting to an overly expository dialogue, so it ends up wasting a lot of time that could be spent for something better- Though looking at the mediocre battle scenes, I guess there wasn't anything they could do other than scrolling through the classic Shaft's Google background Powerpoint presentation.

But while the expository dialogue is a problem, the bigger problem is the show underexplaining whatever is happening on the screen. Basically, Nasu spent so much time explaining the setting to familiarize the new watchers that it didn't have the time to properly explain what was actually happening on the screen. I guess it does raise a question about how much explaining is "too much" or "too less", but this show really does feel like the latter when it comes to the actual story it's trying to tell. It's completely fair to argue that maybe the show was just 2deep4u and that it's the viewers' fault for not figuring it out, because technically, everything does make sense in this show. There are also some genuinely good cases of foreshadowing, and there are some really nice visual cues that clue the viewers in on why something is happening.

One of my favorites was when Hakuno meets Pieceman in the first episode in the trash chute below the school, he briefly sees a vision of a city in flames reminiscent of Fuyuki from the 4th Grail War- But later in the last episode you notice that this is actually city Pieceman died in during his life on Earth. This is significant because Hakuno doesn't have a memory of his own, so it has to be a memory of someone who was down there with him- And he just so happens to meet Pieceman immediately after the vision, foreshadowing the later twist in the last episode.

There are many other cases of neat visual cues and foreshadowing like that if you look for them, but all of that just gets buried under really uninteresting setting, the characters' interaction, and generally awful delivery of the plot as a whole. While Hakuno does eventually get character development, he's just a really boring main character, and the character interaction in the show ends up being very limited in general due to the whole "monster (master) of the week (floor)" format that the setting had going for.

The animation, as mentioned above, is pretty subpar- And doesn't really get very good until the last part of the show with Gawayn. While Shaft tries to manage by cramming in as many expository dialogue as possible, when it gets to the battle scenes, it really shows that the budget for the show wasn't very high. But while the animation itself isn't very impressive, some of the scenery and the storyboard that doesn't involve animation can look pretty good, so visually it has something going for it. The soundtrack is also notably good, but that's about to be expected from the composer.

Summarily, Last Encore technically isn't a bad show at all- But unless you're familiar with the setting, like the characters, like the series, and basically go out of your way to TRY to enjoy it, you will very likely not enjoy it. So in terms of delivering a palatable show that's friendly to the viewers, it has completely failed. Most people aren't going to attempt to understand a show they can't comprehend easily if they don't like it, because that's supposed to be the show's job in the first place. This is something that would've worked much better as a novel or a visual novel, and it really shows.

While some people might say this show is a "cash grab", it really doesn't feel that way at all once you look at all the stuff they managed to cram in the show. There was definitely passion put into this show- But instead of the hugging you gently kind, it was the shoving the big dong into your mouth kind.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jul 31, 2018

KanonDE

Not Recommended

It is finally here the continuation of the Fate/Extra trainwreck anime that no one wanted, but of course japan won't disappoint us and still releases it.

Story
I think it actually has a story, but the anime does a terrible job at it and it is nearly impossible to understand what is even going on and they tried in the second half of this special to throw in some explanation, but this ended only as some info dump and in the end it didn't helped at all to understand the story.

Art
The Art in the anime is one of the worst artstyles I have ever seen and it ... even hurts my eyes to watch the anime, but it was at least nice that they used some of their non existent budget for this special at the end and it looked actually decent in some scenes.

Sound
The OST is not so bad and pretty fitting (especially in fight scenes) and the opening song is actually good too.

Character
Nero is my favorite Saber, but the anime ruined her and it is sad to see that she is basically just a fanservice object even in this special, but SHAFT knows of course that the saber face sells so they pander with it. The special didn't do a good job with the other characters either and most of them are pretty forgettable.

Enjoyment/Overall
The Anime is a mess and the most fun one can get from it is if you're only watching it for some horrible Nero Fanservice and tbh my rating of 1/10 for this feels still to high.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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