Fate/Extra: Last Encore - Illustrias Tendousetsu

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.

The crowds have stationed once again. The blazing curtains rose one more time. The long-awaited final act has arrived at last. Who could have guessed, once the pieces were finally put together, once everything clicked, that this play would be covered in rotten tomatoes?

These new and even returning adversaries are pure dirt in comparison to the more fascinating ones faced prior. The main lead himself proves to be a waste as well this time around. Even the production, which shined beautifully at first, slowly degraded as everything began coming apart at the seams as everything stops moving! The director of this performance no longer had ... anything interesting to present. Despite the answers to questions asked prior making sense and the puzzle of the world-building and scenario of the setting finally clicking without a hitch, nothing that happened along the way made any sense! Beyond the final minutes that leave a satisfying conclusion, reveals and outcomes were as underwhelming as the elements pulled out of nowhere here were absurd. The final 48-minute stretch is especially guilty of this offense. Such a dreadfully dry and elongated final outing this turned out to be. How, despite having a perfectly reasonable path in sight, did they stumble so hard? It should have been easy to write this finale, but now the once terrifying and interesting scenario has become as ridiculous the Last Order and Apocrypha installments that had brought shame in yesteryear!

Not everything collapsed, however. Despite the props showing their unfinished nature at times towards the very end, the production is as, if not even more stellar than before, with beautiful movements between the spectacles of this act's early half that surpass the previous installment. Even in the disaster of a finale this act had, the visuals still burned beautifully (along with the script). The new music choices were as complementary and well-done as ever. Nero herself was as delightful as ever. Still, this already bewildering play has finally burnt to ashes, much to my despair.

Rin: Leo is the strongest Master to ever participate in the Holy Grail War
MC: LeO iS tHE sTrOnGeSt MaSTeR tO eVeR PaRticIpAtE iN tHe hOLy GrAiL wAr

Hey I'm MC, I defy all logics, power scales, and everything else. I can get absolutely decimated but thanks to my special ability "MC" I can survive and come back 100x stronger, literally. Getting absolutely pubstomped 10 mins ago only to booty clap the same person 10 mins later.

Get outta my face with that. The only thing that was slightly enjoyable was the action that happened for 1 min. Power scale is god awful in this particular series, giving ... MC the special treatment to best anyone just because he's the main character, that's it. No real reasoning or anything else besides that.

There is one thing that hurts any viewer more than watching a bad conclusion to a show. And that one thing is waiting months to watch a bad conclusion to a show. What were they thinking?

Fate/Extra Last Encore - Irusterias Tendousetsu is a writing disaster, not even when the topic is the story in itself - the script is also a headless, footless monster.

Shaft has again proven itself to prefer visual scripting rather than anything else. The show looks good. The visuals are well-constructed and the camera angles are nicely presented. Heck, even the animation is better than the prequel. Visual presentation is only ... the wrap of the present though, and when the present is smelly poo, you know something's wrong.

Nero's relationship with Hakuno is super confusing the whole show because Hakuno is a super confusing character. What were they thinking naming him the same as his girly counter-part? Whose idea was it to portray him as the memories of this girl we know and care nothing about? The show explains Hakuno's character a million times and it STILL makes no sense at all. And this absolutely ruins the 'climax' of this conclusion.

Character creation and development is horrendous in this show.
Nero is an overpowered otaku-bait character that serves as the main plot-advancing device. She has no character development at all in the whole series.
Rin is a pointless character that shouldn't even be there as she bring nothing to the table and her connection to the storyline is minimum.
The side characters are interesting but get no valuable screentime.
Hakuno is a disaster.

The story seemed to be reinventing itself every minute. There was always a coma, always a "but". When you think the main characters are going to get in trouble fighting Harwey, Hakuno pulls off the stupidest "rabbit in the top hat" to progress the plot further, defeating Gawain while Harwey just stand there like "uh-oh, he got me folks!". Then they get to the top floor and meet the main villain, that goes on to have an absolutely meaningless monologue for 20 FREAKING minutes. The rest is history, as the damage had already been done.

Shaft made a huge mistake by jumping into the Fate Bandwagon. While this IS a case of bad scripting, the source material must also be a trainwreck for the show to out turn THIS bad. Fate/Extra Last Encore makes a very strong case to never be touched again.

Reviewer's note: This is my 18th entry into the Fate franchise and this review encompasses all 13 episodes.

✪ Genre: action (swordplay, gunfights), contemporary fantasy, magic (spellcasting), RPG, seinen, (superpower) with elements of sci-fi (artificial intelligence, post-apocalyptic, dystopia, virtual world)



✔Positive Aspects✔

◧ Animation: even though this series was created by Shaft, the design standards fit the same mold that previous studios followed - a combination of colors of moderate to low saturation/medium to high illumination, with the environment and landscapes, urban, natural and surreal, being comparably more "muted".

◧ Soundtrack: cool soundtrack, mostly dominated by slow and medium tempo orchestral music, whereas, and more infrequently, new age ... and medium temp electronic music is used.

◧ Character development: probably the best aspect of this title, since every single episode devotes significant time into explaining the motivations, intentions, and personal histories of the protagonists and/or deuteragonists and/or respective antagonists. On the downside, significant filling out of the protagonists'/antagonists' background histories took place during episodes 8, 9, and early 13, instead of taking place throughout the series in an even manner. Lastly, I found the regendering of the protagonistic servant a very interesting touch, especially given the unlikeliness of such a figure occupying that high of a position of power during his respective time period.


✘Negative Aspects✘

◧ Plot: spin-off titles tend to retain the premise of the Fate franchise, with magicians battling each other in order to acquire the omnipotent magical artifact called "Holy Grail", but reinterpreting it in a way that diverges enough to create a standalone product, and this title is no exception. However, this title reimagines the premise so radically that it moves into sci-fi territory, leading to a fairly convoluted end result. The entire series is largely incoherent until episodes 8 and 9, and 4 minutes into episode 13, and, even then, I can't say that I finished it without any head-scratching questions.

◧ Action sequences: they tend to escalate and finish up quickly, while being fairly generic, even for the genre. Previous studios, especially after Ubisoft's groundbreaking releases, followed a specific approach (various camera perspectives, different camera 'heights', quick zoom-ins/outs, etc.) that produced pretty satisfying fight scenes. Unfortunately, Shaft chose not to follow said approach.


Overall: This is a pretty tedious and confusing title. Usually, I go through a 13-episode series in a day or two, but I was not able to finish this in no less than 5 days.


P.S. For further reviews of the Fate franchise, please take a look at my profile.

This is the ending of Fate/Extra: Last Encore.

The good news is that it does provide some of the answers that were left unanswered by the "main" series.

This time we get a little bit more action but it's a shame that it doesn't make sense. SPOILERS. We have a servant capable of unleashing his Noble Phantasm twice in a row and another servant gets a huge power boost out of nowhere... just because.

The final episode had no climax at all, in fact everything was dragged to the bottom of the ocean. We already know the story, we already know the characters, we already ... know what needs to be done, we already know who needs to be defeated and how... but for some stupid reason everything happened slower than a snail moving in slow-motion.

SPOILERS: as if Rin Tohsaka would EVER be romantically interested in our DeathBoy without personality AND THERE'S NO WAY IN HELL SHE WOULD EVER DYE HER GORGEOUS BLACK HAIR BLONDE. GET THE HOLY GRAIL OUT OF HERE WITH THAT BS.

This gets a 4/10 from me.