Fate/Extra: Last Encore - Illustrias Tendousetsu

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.

After watching those 3 episodes I can now say it for sure.

This is a great anime that that only has one downside...the fate fandom.

I don't really view it as a perfect 10 but I just had to give that rating to do my best and even out what was ruined but what seems to be a bunch of ungrateful fans that for some reason are not able to accept when something different is good.

The story was good until the very end and Shaft did an amazing job in bringing their stile to fate.

I can only confirm what I said in my other review on the ... first 10 episodes but this is a great anime that you should only watch if you are not what would be called a "normie"...and by that I mean the kind of person that wants more of exactly the same fate as the well known ones. Because it looks like most people here just can't understand what they've actually watched.

It has been some time since an anime moved me that much and the fact that all you can find on mal are haters complaining about whatever they can come up with just makes it seem unfair.

Even if this seems more like a complain about the fandom at this point I just wanted to make this review as a way for people who read it to understand that most of what you will find on mal about this anime is actually just people being salty for whatever reason and not real reviews so if you don't consider yourself one of those people just give it a watch cause it actually is good.

ill say it here and now, the art style and the composition is for the series is extremely well done
i garuntee you that most of the people who disliked this are hardcore type moon otakus with ridiculously high standards and really this series is fun and i like the mc and Nero, i wouldnt say its the best thing ever but i really enjoyed it. id say if youve watched fate stay night give this a try. and if its not for you thats fine just dont leave hate comments discouraging people to watch a work that was well produced.
Positives;
Music; the music seems to really ... fit in every area that the charaters are in and there even some cool motifs here and there
character development; the main character definately undergoes some interesting changes by no means would this carry the series but its a standard shounen character progression and thats always nice to see

Negatives;
-fanservice; ill say this is a both positive and negative depending on the reader but i do feel red sabers design is just a little oversexualized, but i still think shes my favorite saber over regular and alter.

-rushed;
this is by no means the series fault and was because people flamed the series for no reason, i would personally love to ahve seen parts in the story get some more attention

Overall;
one of my favorite parts in the fate series i rate this 8-9.5/10

NB; shirou emiya is the goat and we arent argueing about this

Hey it's Fragments of 2030 guy - Every FGO Player seeing this

UMU UMU, the last encore finishes and the curtains closes in the confusing yet highly thematic installment of Fate/EXTRA Last Encore.

Fate/Extra: Last Encore - Illustrias Tendousetsu is the conclusion of Fate/LAST Encore, following Hakuno, Red Saber and Rin to the seventh floor and to their final destination, The Mooncell Automation.

The seventh floor focusing on Leonardo Bistario "Leo" Harwey voiced by Romi Park and his servant Gawain voiced by Takahiro Mizushima as their ideals are put up to the final fight, one fighting for stagnation, the other fighting to change the future for good. The ... seventh floor by all means is just to give Hakuno another push into his resolve to restart the Mooncell Automation and gaining yet another ally as it were for the final boss, Twice Pieceman voiced by Hiroshi Touchi.

As an aside, these final episodes did give us why Hakuno and Red Saber aka. Nero Claudius were just meant to be, Hakuno being the embodiment of anger, hatred and death fits historically in line with the real Nero, as due to his extravagance gave rise to the Romans seeing Nero in a negative light with compulsion and corruption and he was condemned to death as a public enemy. Hakuno and Nero's thematic relationship speaks volumes to say the least, but that is just LA.

So Twice, his entire battle was executed rushed to be completely honest and what with the last episode being extended to 40 minutes to pull of this finale and LA still saying it was rushed is telling but nonetheless, it was climax, akin to the typical "save the world" scenario. Ideology-wise, Twice is the opposite to Leo, as he wants to destroy the world as humanity had it's chance. Yes Twice put up a resistance and put up a spectacle to say the least but it's the final moments and Twice's actions or rather inactions that kinda dulled the experience (though Twice's flaws kinda made sense considering what he turned into but still) but a rousing final speech by Nero at least to cap the conclusion to this confusing cavalcade of Fate/EXTRA Last Encore.

The animation and voice work hasn't changed, besides the new characters introduced in Fate/Extra: Last Encore - Illustrias Tendousetsu being Romi Park as Leo, Takahiro Mizushima as Gawain and Hiroki Touchi as Twice. Again, LA's faovurite voice actor easily goes to Sakura Tange as Nero for the reasons LA said in LA's original season review and the animation is typical SHAFTiness.

Fate/Extra: Last Encore - Illustrias Tendousetsu is a highly thematically-entrenched anime and even for new audiences who haven't even played Fate/EXTRA can only grasp the surface level plotline towards what happened, not only from Illustrias Tendousetsu but the entire anime series as a whole, you gotta REALLY research this stuff up to get all the lore and characters to get the full experience but "surface level", it has a basic template of a "player" going up the tower, defeating Masters and Servants, getting to know the "player" character and Nero with ideologies thrown left right and everywhere only to solidify the main protagonist resolve to save the world at the sacrifice of himself, surface level sounds simple, but Fate/Extra: Last Encore just somehow managed to make it much more complicated and headscratching when it didn't need to, but this IS a Akiyuki Shinobu work so gotta be thematic and mindbending as possible.

Fate/Extra: Last Encore was LA's wild card but as the curtains closed, it left as the Joker...smiling all the way (take that statement like you will).

I will be honest I'm not the best at writing reviews but I will do the best I can here. I do feel like this show is pretty underrated. So let me go over what, in my opinion, is good, bad, and confusing about this pretty decent series.

THE GOOD:
So the plot was actually very enjoyable. The whole idea about characters in a digital world and being self aware of that fact is a hard thing to pull off. A lot of originality existed within the plot.

Clichés left to a bare minimum you almost never saw something that you have seen a million ... times before.

Character development was actually done magnificently. The concept of a main character being driven by hatred and develop in such a good way isn't easy to do. It's especially difficult to do in such a fluently progressive manner. The rest of the characters stick to the personalities that they establish quite well too.

The art style is unique. And I liked it.


THE BAD:
Although the plot is done really well it still has some major flaws. Sometimes the characters are explaining how something works and they stop halfway through. The worlds rules are never really established in a concrete manor.

Some of the episodes had scenes after the credits for the next episode but not in the next episode. This type of move can really confuse people and hurts any kind of consistency.

"And then I Died"

This quotes was so overused for certain characters that we already had suspicion weren't going to last. And they would have half episode long explanations as to what happened to them. Like a simple flashback in the middle of the situation would have flowed much better and keeping it more simple wouldn't have hurt the process of establishing the characters.


THE CONFUSING.
So there were multiple instances of something happening and being done well but still leaving you confused. A certain character popping up out of nowhere to give exposition that only made the situation more confusing. Flashbacks without context. And the most confusing part was the ending, or should I call it an epilogue since it was shown after the credits? I don't know I'm confused.


CONCLUSION:
Overall I would say this show, as I stated in the introduction, is underrated. It's definitely worth a watch (if you have seen stay night) I give it a solid 7/10. Nothing spectacular but not nearly as bad as the people seem to think it is, in my opinion at least.

P.S. I didn't know the proper place to put this so I will footnote it. I think a lot of people get mad at this show because it acts like it's audience has seen stay night. And to that I say it's their own fault if something like "Extra", "Encore", any number of 2 or more is in the title it should be immediately assumed to be a sequel and sequels always act like the viewer has seen it's predecessor.