Fate/Grand Order: Zettai Majuu Sensen Babylonia

A.D. 2016, the foundations of humanity have been incinerated by the Mage King Solomon. Chaldea, a secret mages organization with the mission to preserve humanity's future, foresaw mankind's extinction in 2015. Thus commenced the operation to repair the Singularities in history caused by Holy Grails dispersed across time and space—Operation Grand Order.

Using the Rayshift time travel technology, Chaldea's last master Ritsuka Fujimaru and his demi-servant Mash Kyrielight have traveled to and resolved six Singularities. Now, they depart for their most dangerous destination yet: a civilization in the Age of Gods, B.C. 2655 Mesopotamia. Ritsuka and Mash soon discover that Demonic Beasts roam the land, attacking people and towns. Amidst chaos and terror lies humanity's last defense—Uruk, a fortress city that acts as the frontline for the battle against the beasts. The battlefront is commanded by none other than King Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes, who sought aid from Heroic Spirits and took on the role of a mage to protect his city.

Along with Gilgamesh and the summoned servants, Ritsuka and Mash must protect Uruk against the magical beasts' onslaught and defeat the Three Goddess Alliance who aims to eradicate humankind; all the while, a greater threat looms over Uruk, preparing for its awakening.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Gilgamesh Main

Seki, Tomokazu Japanese

Kyrielight, Mash Main

Takahashi, Rie Japanese

Ishtar Main

Ueda, Kana Japanese

Merlin Main

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Fujimaru, Ritsuka Main

Shimazaki, Nobunaga Japanese

Ana Main

Asakawa, Yuu Japanese

Ereshkigal Supporting

Ueda, Kana Japanese

Enkidu Supporting

Kobayashi, Yuu Japanese

Ushiwakamaru Supporting

Hayami, Saori Japanese

Quetzalcoatl Supporting

Endou, Aya Japanese

Takeuchi, Takashi Producer, Original Character Design

Fukushima, Yuuichi Producer

Kurosaki, Shizuka Producer

Akai, Toshifumi Director

Reviews

Sep 26, 2024

clockworkEntropy

Recommended

Enjoying something doesn't necessarily mean that that something must be good. The Fate franchise has dozens of entries between anime, video games, manga, OVAs -- enough to make you lose track, and 90% of those are, frankly, not very good. So why do I like Fate? It's simple. I am a simp for a specific handful of characters, which makes me willing to slog through hours of middling content just to see those characters get their moment to shine.

However, I can definitely say that FGO: Babylonia is ACTUALLY, objectively, a decently good anime that is worth watching. And my simping for Gilgamesh has surprisingly little ... to do with it (though it helps.)

I haven't played the original FGO, so I only have this anime to go on. You also don't need to have watched any other Fate anime to understand this one, as it's a fairly self contained story.

This show is basically just a series of well thought-out, beautifully animated, battles. That's really what it's about. And it works. The fights are a treat to look at, they are fluid, dynamic, and each character has unique and interesting abilities to make each of those fights feel distinct from one another. The sound effects and the BGM also add a lot of impact to the fights, as well. There's really not much more I can say about this; if you are a fan of shonen battles, stop reading and go watch this, you don't need the rest of this review.

If that's not enough to convince you... err, nothing else might, considering that like I said, the battles are the main selling point of this anime. But let's talk about the rest.

The story is nothing crazy: it's just an excuse to show off the characters, both their fighting capabilities and their personalities outside of battle. It's really not about the main characters, Ritsuka and Mash, but rather the people they meet on their journey. And said journey is really simple. Our heroes get dumped into the past and have to prevent a catastrophe from happening. They are thrust into side quests, adventures, and battles in order to move closer to their goal and recuit allies. There are a handful of plot twists, but nothing particularly shocking. There is a big, seemingly undefeatable enemy at the end of the anime that has to be defeated. Nothing that hasn't been done before.

Yet, it's effective. It's easy to follow along, but not boring. The pacing feels good; the show alternates the battles with scenes of downtime where the characters get to relax, know each other, and give us, the audience, a chance to know them, too. There is a consistent level of tension throughout, and a satisfying opponent as the final enemy to defeat.

Although not every characters has the same amount of screen time (obviously) it felt like most of them get sufficiently fleshed out. By the end of the series I felt like I understood all those characters, and while none of them have an incredible level of depth or development, I still found them enjoyable. Some of them are kinda stereotyped, but then we are shown different sides that help make them feel more rounded out. Ishtar is a textbook tsundere for example, but she has other qualities, too, like being surprisingly compassionate and kind. Gil is Gil, but he gets a ton of characterization that really defines his character outside of what we are shown in Fate/Stay night. Quetzalcoatl might look like an unserious, smiling fool at first, but she has a very thoughtful side too. They even made me like the obviously joke character Taiga expy.

I'd say Ritsuka and Mash are the only characters I found kind of bland, but they are not truly the focus of the story, so there were plenty of other characters to keep me entertained. And altough they are pretty bland, they are quite sensible and not actively annoying, so they don't offend me like some other main character in the franchise does, whose name starts with E and ends with Miya Shirou. But I don't want to name names so let's move on.

The themes of the story are, again, simple but well-executed. You can find stuff like the power of not giving up, coming together to overcome a threat, power of friendship, of being compassionate of the enemy in front of you, the struggle of understanding oneself, etc. I especially appreciated the "resilience of humanity" thing the show has going on -- the whole of Uruk fighting and persevering, despite knowing they have no chance of winning. Again, it's nothing that hasn't been done before, but it's still executed in a surprisingly enjoyable manner, with some genuinely emotional moments along the way.

The dialogues are also decent. It's not high art, but it is, at least, a far cry from some other stuff you can find in the franchise. At least here they don't tell me that people die when they are killed. Which is a low bar I know, but the point is, none of the dialogue made me groan or crige in pain, some of them actually made me laugh, and the voice acting was pretty damn good too.

While it's an anime and it's going to have the classic anime tropes, they weren't overdone to the point of being annoying, so that's another plus. There is a good amount of fanservice, for example with some of the girls being basically half-naked and having several panty or ass shots during the battles. Normally I hate this in an anime and severely dampens my enjoyment of it, but for some reason it didn't bother me much this time. It probably has to do with the fact that many of the guys are in a similar state of nakedness. It's hard being angry at being shown Mash's panties when I can clearly see Gilgamesh's underwear in every scene as well. Seriously, what the heck is he even wearing. The guy is basically naked. I am not complaining though, if anything, I think every anime should equally objectify both women AND men. I am bisexual and this is equality! Ahem. Anyway.

I already mentioned this but the art and animation are top notch. There are some parts that use CGI that are a bit of a hit or miss, especially the last boss looks pretty bad. But overall it's really good. The music, voice acting, and sound effects are all excellent as well.

I ran out of things to talk about so this is the end of the review. TLDR; if you like shonen battles, watch this. If you like Fate, watch this. If you like to see hot men and women half naked, watch this. If you like well-animated series, watch this. If you are a Gilgamesh simp, also watch this, though you probably already did. If none of that applies, eh. If you're really bored you might still enjoy this, who knows. Give it a try! Bye!

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Feb 3, 2024

Godslayer27

Mixed Feelings

This season of fate/grand order (if i can say that considering that is the first format series adaptation being the previous ones ovas or movies) starts basically with the wrong foot obviating literally 5 of 6 singularities with the exception of Fate/Grand Order: Shinsei Entaku Ryouiki the sixt one, like went straight to this cutting like half of the content and even if im not aware of the game in which this is based off was a HUGE skip story wise and some might ask but was maybe an decision to go in the juicy part and i would say not really and gonna try ... to expand a little forward.

The premise in general of this series i must say from all the series of fate that i have seen so far is the most ambitious and the scale itselft feel bigger than previous ones with that being said has so many shortcomings that overshadow the few good ones.

Starting character wise i cant say much just because there almost nothing to talk about the protagonist Ritsuka Fujimaru is just the cclasic sterotype, copy-paste character that have all isekai the same applies to Mash Kyrielight the chemistry between these two is also the same predictable formula and the fact that just with these two the complexity is more flat than my cutting board just says what yield on the treatment for the rest of the cast that leaving just a couple of them the rest are dull and boring.

Makes you lose most of your interest and how the story is followed because is imposible to carrying it in a intersting way with such poor characters (especially the protagonists who are the ones encompassing most of the screen time) which for even worst starts becoming slowly a freaking harem discreetly wihthout you realizing, with even some sexual planes on middle of some serious moment that just makes you asking what in the name of god the person in charge of this series was thinking are just mere fanservice without any goal besides subtract more points to the experience, such poor and conveninent approaching throwing so much potential good ideas and resources just to ending up on the same path like most crap series.

This is an sugar-coated series that might fool you at first with beautiful animations, some kinda simple desings (that many times i found being unnecessarily revealing just for the sake of maybe appeal to more simps), settings that are intersting, sound effects that were pretty dope not gonna lie serving well on the action, a choreography on the fightings that are almost always amaizings and on the other hand we have characters that are horrible to say the least and really just that weighs down all the rest.
The series tries to being serious sometimes but it just cant even when some interesting dialogs happen just dissapear in a sigh due to all the aformentioned.

Now with all the said you might think so this is a bad series and my answer would be maybe :? i will say this if you are into this kinda of formula with characters that are mediocre because that is what really are, some fancy and flashing fights here and there, fanservice and a predictible story (notice how i say it) the premise sounded good in paper but was bad not only executed but handle and directed then this is for you.
From all the fate series that i have watched this is the worst and i can see how many people could like it if you are not so demanding but for me i was hoping to get something decent which wasnt the case sadly.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jan 8, 2021

jaerockets

Not Recommended

Funny

What makes an anime good? Well, we can answer this by asking what makes a story good. There are many aspects to a story. Characters, dialogue, world building, originality - the list goes on. There are also many aspects of a story that are only present in visual media - specifically animation. While it is hard to pinpoint what makes animation good, "you know it when you see it" is a pretty good rule of thumb.

I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that Fate/Grand Order - Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia fails on every single level of story telling. Allow me to explain why.

First, ... let's talk about the plot. Saying that this animated adaptation of the Babylonia singularity of the popular "Fate/Grand Order" gacha game has a plot is like saying that a piece of white bread has flavor. Technically, by the literal definition of the word - yes. It's true. Fate/Grand Order - Demonic Front: Babylonia consists of an endless series of inane events that make me question if anyone working on the project gave a singular planck length of a shit about it. I anticipate this review will be quite lengthy, so I will not bore you with the details. The entirety of the story can essentially be summed up in one sentence. "3-5 bland protagonists fight a gigantic, oversexualized female villain with gargantuan breasts." I shit you not, about 90% of this series fits this exact sentence. The other 10% is filler. This filler consists of

{figure 1}

• People walking
• People talking
• People walking while talking
• Female sidekicks blushing while talking to the male protagonist

That's pretty much it. You could watch the 21 + 1 episodes of this, or you could read the above summary and understand the entirety of the program.

Now that we've got that out of the way, I'd like [like is a strong word, prefer would probably be more appropriate for this context] to talk about the dialogue. This should be a rather brief talking point. Pretty much every piece of dialogue in this god-forsaken script fits in one of three boxes.

{figure 2}

[1] Refer to bullet point 4 of {figure 1}
[2] Characters saying a load of garbled nonsense while fighting each other
[3] Characters saying a load of garbled nonsense while not engaged in any particular fight

I can't stress enough how insufferable the dialogue of this adaptation is. To be fair, this is probably an accurate representation of the experience one endures while reading the dialogue of a virtual novel gacha game written by developers that know that >99% of players will not read a single line of dialogue - and those who do are already spending hoards of money- I mean virtual currency that holds no tangible value on the game. In most Fate anime adaptations, there's a standard amount of weird anime dialogue that sounds kind of cool and meaningful but is really just fluff when you think about it for a few seconds. In this, it's the whole thing. No line in this entire 11+ hour slog holds any significance, whatsoever.

Author's note: The length of that section was unfortunate.

Let's take a brief detour to discuss the world building. Luckily for the writers, this takes place in a pseudo-historical setting! Looks like the work's been done for them. Unfortunately, this is not quite the case. While even the most amateur of writers could utilize a historical setting with a modicum of competency, the writers of this anime defy the odds, and fail to do so. I wouldn't even know that this was set in Babylonia if it weren't for the title of the series, in addition to the slew of historical names and locations they drop in. There is essentially no tangible trace of the fascinating history of this period of human history, or the geographical details of this specific story's setting. >90% of the scenes take place in generic dirt fields, or inside buildings that vaguely conjure an image of ancient civilization. Would it really have been that hard to throw in a famous monument here or there? Not to mention the historical figures, which are as stock standard as they come. The utter incompetence of the writing team is baffling in this department. Pseudo-historical ancient civilization is one of the easiest tricks in the book. Yet they bungled it.

Originality? It's Fate/Grand Order. Come on now.

Before we get into what is regrettably the longest section of this review, I'd like to briefly touch on the animation. In the handful of reviews I've read for this series online, I've seen several claims that this is some of the best animation that the Fate series has to offer. Reading these reviews genuinely made me question my sanity. It's hard to convey with words how fundamentally incompetent and incohesive the animation is. There are moments [however brief], which are genuinely good looking. However, these moments of beauty are overshadowed by the gargantuan mountain of canine manure that is everything else. It's important to understand that there are essentially three different styles of animation, all of which occur [for the most part] simultaneously throughout the course of this adaptation.

{figure 3}

[1] Normal animation. I won't pretend to know how anime is made, but if you watch any anime from the last decade, you know what I'm talking about. This style is reserved only for the protagonists [with a few exceptions] and looks the best.
[2] Static backgrounds. As far as I know, Static backgrounds are a fairly standard implementation in modern anime. However, the backgrounds of this series are reminiscent of the kind you would see in a mid-2000s children's show, such as Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters or GX. This art style is utterly incohesive with the first, and sharply detracts from the experience. The colors are much less vibrant, and the details less specific than the style used in [1].
[3] 3-D models. These are god awful. Most of the swarmy demon enemies are animated with this method, and holy fucking shit is it distracting. The first style of animation looks like it's somewhere around the 24 frames per second range, which is completely normal for an action anime. This style looks like interpolation on steroids. It is impossible not to notice it. Every time you see something that is animated like this, it draws your attention away, as your eyes are attracted to areas of the screen with higher frame rates. This is incredibly distracting, as I don't want to be looking at the swarm of enemy demon tigers while the protagonists are supposed to be the subject of a given scene. This style is also often used in tandem with even more vibrant colors, along with a sort of shimmer.

While this description is not nearly sufficient to relate the visual experience of this series, I hope that it provides the reader with some sense of how incompetent the animation was.

Alright - one more thing I'd like to touch on before getting into the long part. The fucking sound design. Every single sound effect just sounds like someone took a fart and boosted the base and reverb. It adds to the unending list of things that take you out of any semblance of an experience that the show possessed, and reminds you that you are watching an anime based off of a gacha game based off an erotic visual novel that is old enough to engage in consensual intercourse.

Ok. fine. I'll talk about the characters. My entire review for this was initially just going to be a paragraph on each of the characters [more specifically, why they suck], but I decided to lengthen the review to include a few other topics after the excruciating experience I had to sit through. If you don't want to read about each of the individual characters, I suggest that you scroll down to my summary. I promise this is the last section.

Ristuka Fujimaru - The most bland and uninteresting protagonist to ever grace the world of anime. And yes, that includes Shirou Emiya of Fate/Stay Night [Studio Deen adaptaion]. Holy fucking shit is this guy boring. I don't even have anything to say about him because there literally isn't anything. His only personality trait is that every girl wants to fuck him. I guess it does well at catering to the male incel weeb target audience. Every lonely weeb with no personality loves these sort of characters.

Mash Kyrilight - Do I really need to say anything? Play Fate/Grand Order for 2 minutes and you'll know the entirety of her character. The most interesting thing she does for the first 9 episodes is flash her panties during her fight scenes, but after that point she doesn't even do that. She shields the other characters from getting zapped a couple times, and gives weird uWu looks at Fujimaru, but other than that she's pretty useless. Her boobs also look like water balloons which is pretty funny. I like her crotch window too, super cool costume design.

Ana - Proxy Illiya loli bait. Looks 8 years old and ties people up while wearing a leotard that says "stare at my crotch you horny incel." I liked it when she died.

Archer [Ishtar] - She's literally just Rin in lingerie without a personality. Out of all the main cast, she probably does the most cool stuff during fights [kind of like being the fastest snail], so that's cool I guess. Oh, did I mention she's wearing lingerie? It's a really cool character trait. I like the parts where she hits on Fujimaru and shows her panties to the screen. Super interesting and original. Breaking new ground for the Fate franchise. One of the main antagonists is her alter ego except by the point that they introduced that plot point I had literally 0 investment in the show so I can't say I payed all that much attention to whatever the fuck was going on.

Avenger [medusa?] - My favorite character. Her tits are funnier than a Chris Rock comedy special. She's literally just an 800 foot tall tentacle serpent lady with absolutely GARGANTUAN boobs. Like it's not possible to describe how gigantic and funny they look. I think her scenes were supposed to make me horny but all they made me do was laugh. She also dies like 3 times.

Caster [Gilgamesh] - Never in all my life have I seen a more beta version of Gilgamesh. He only uses his weapon wall thing like twice and it looks like shit both times. He gets merc'd by exhaustion somehow by Ishtar's alter ego shithead, which is fucking pathetic. His mongrel count is shockingly low - I don't think any other adaptation of him has said it this few times. He has absolutely no presence and is a disgrace to the Gilgamesh name. Even the Deen adaptation did a better job than this.

Enkidu - I have no fucking clue what was going on with this character. They had some sort of plotline with Gilgamesh and being a fake or something but I honestly couldn't give less of a shit. Their fight scenes were all really lame and their dialogue was flatter than my chest.

Fou -

Lancer [Ishtar alter ego] - She shows up a couple times before her fight scene when Ishtar switches to her. I think I was supposed to be intrigued by it but I was just mildly confused. During her fight scene she's a cgi skeleton for some reason. Looked kinda cool in the opening shot but after that was dinky as all hell. When they defeat her she returns as her normal self and every time they do an Ishtar pantie shot they also do one of her, which is also in addition to mash, and Ana - that episode was like 90% panty shots.

Leonardo Da Vinci - Big forehead. Is just kinda... there [during the scenes with Roman]

Merlin - He's kind of cool and surprisingly not very horny, even though he's an incubus. Looks pretty neat and isn't oversexualized. 5/10 character.

Wetzel Pretzel [Rider] - Another horny girl with no clothes on. Shocking. She looks like a clown because of her costume design, and her voice actor is mind mindbogglingly annoying. Every scene she appeared in made me want to peel my eyes out and my ears off.

Romani - The best character in the entirety of the Grand Order universe by far. Has some cool lines and doesn't annoy me. Looks neat. 6/10.

Tiamat - Literally looks like a Pokemon. I don't know how they animated her this poorly. Basically just a more cgi looking version of Avenger. Big tits, not interesting, funny as fuck. Her horns are kind of cool. Maybe would be a cool Yu-Gi-Oh! card.

Welp, that's it. That's my review of Fate/Grand Order - Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia. In summary? Don't watch this. If you're horny, just watch some hentai. This is that weird in between where its only appeal is horny stuff, but it isn't hentai so why bother if that's what you're looking for. It also perpetuates anime stereotypes of submissive women that are only viewed as sex objects because that's what the target audience wants. 0/10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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	Poll: Fate/Grand Order: Zettai Majuu Sensen Babylonia Episode 21 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Mar 21, 2020	188 replies	by Guiqml »» Aug 28, 9:25 PM
	Poll: Fate/Grand Order: Zettai Majuu Sensen Babylonia Episode 18 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Feb 22, 2020	187 replies	by KingSlowDown »» Jul 12, 9:21 PM
	Poll: Fate/Grand Order: Zettai Majuu Sensen Babylonia Episode 20 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ) Stark700 - Mar 14, 2020	221 replies	by _Einzbern_ »» Jul 2, 6:12 AM
	watch order Strat2005 - May 17	9 replies	by n7pidgey »» May 20, 11:59 AM
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