Back to QuasiTwo's Profile QuasiTwo's Profile

Could have been one of the best animes, but dropped the ball.

Let me start off by saying that this is one of my favorite animes and it did an absolutely amazing job at everything up until the very end of the anime. I believe that everyone should give this anime a watch as it also gives a great amount of lessons on how to write an amazing story. In this review, whenever I refer to something based upon writing, I try to keep it objective anything else will be my subjective opinion.

First off, this anime may be marketed or said as an action mech ... anime, but if you are for the action and mech what not, although there are a big part of the story, it uses it as a medium in order to focus on our main characters.

The positives:
The world building is probably one of the best I have even seen. It amazed me how within the first few episodes of the anime, they were able to set up the worldbuilding while focusing on our main characters. As the story progresses, so does the worldbuilding. New episodes add layer and layer onto the world, with unique landscapes and settings that also reflect the emotions and all serve a purpose into not just the plot, but what the anime is supposed to portray to us. Often, films or animes that focus hard on worldbuilding neglect the characters within it, but somehow this anime focuses on the characters, and builds such a deep world in the background (no pun intended). There is also great use of symbolism through both subjects and cinematography work, in which ties into the main story so nicely. Very subtle but it adds the immersion of anime. Probably the greatest part of this anime is the character dynamics, more specifically with Hiro and Zero Two. Although Hiro started off as a rather cliched anime protag, I rolled my eyes to the "I have no purpose" inner conflict as it is one of the most laziest conflicts to give your character. However, somehow they got it to work when Zero Two came into the show. I like how despite Hiro being portrayed as the "main character" and the person who we are supposed to be following as our guide through the show, the real main character is Zero Two. The "show don't tell" is done absolutely perfectly with Zero Two to display both the figurative and literal buildup of her conflict. Giving us probably one of the best character arcs in anime. For once, flashbacks and expositions are done incredibly well, usually they are to roll your eyes at, however they do such a good job about keeping you in the dark and creating questions that you actually are invested into the flashback, despite moving back in time to display memories, it actively moves the story forward. The supporting characters do well as supporting characters, nothing groundbreaking, but they all represent a different idea and theme about "growing up". The soundtrack is also spot on, being able to heighten any emotion that wants to be amplified in the scenes, with reoccurring themes in different compositions.

The negatives:
Sometimes the fan service breaks the immersion and becomes too much. It blows my mind how they are able to create such a deep atmosphere then throw fan service in it that just makes no sense. Secondly, the biggest problem is the ending. I have never seen a series go from having some of the best writing with deep atmosphere and symbolism to getting thrown in the absolute dirt. The ending abandoned every bit of buildup in order to create a "big CGI fight" as I would say if it was on the big screen. The theme and meaning that the anime carefully built up is thrown out the window for some cheap action. There's nothing else to say.

"Oh it's evangelion and gundamn" I bring this up, because no. It is not nearly. Completely unique anime.

In all, I would say give it a watch, it is a great anime and still gives you a unique experience.

It seems that the Fate curse strikes again. I personally love Fate animes, and this is no exception, but in an objective view this has many problems with it that may affect how good of a viewing experience this is. It has a really good premise like most Fate installments do, really good choice of characters, and top notch animation. However, like most Fate animes, the more you watch, the more it falls apart. In the first half of Fate Aprocrypha, it was solid, but it gets really iffy going through. Im going to try to keep this spoiler free so I wont be able ... to touch on most things in this anime:

The Positives: Great character interactions and it is following the "Holy Grail" format very nicely but with a little twist on it. The character interactions are great with almost every character, especially Saber of Red and Sisigou. There is also a few good "questions" they present that makes you want to keep watching. Just like other fates, despite working with such a large cast of characters, they are able to display each character as unique and add a bit of depth to them. The fight scenes and designs, again are amazing as Fate installments are.

However many problems start to arise. The pacing becomes really all over the place, jumping all over the place with exposition to fight scenes to exposition. The main character "Sieg" is a cliché and boring character who we have seen a million times in terms of writing, any sort of deep or emotional scene that there is around him makes me just want to sleep. The main drive for his character is also so bland and set up so incredibly poorly, then it expects us to really care about the impact he is making. Despite not even setting up the conflict what so ever. There are two "love relationships" that are very forced and end up feeling short and very shallow. It also has very odd placements and the characters who it would make sense to have one, doesn't have, but the characters that make no sense with 0 setup is put into it. The immersion with "hierarchy" is also broken, it becomes a jumbled mess because of the relationships between the characters, it is just odd. The entire conflict and scenes with "Jack the Ripper" could literally be removed and nothing would change in the anime. Like it feels like there were two drafts of this anime, and they tried to mash them into one. It adds nothing to the story. (Plus the character design choice is very odd). It makes it become very confusing because now there are a numerous amount of conflicts that are becoming solved in lackluster ways, making you think why did this is happen in the first place?

Subjectively, the thing that saved it for me and kept it a decent ranking is the characters and premise. When it stuck to the original premise, it was good. Any of the character scenes with Mordred, Sisigou, Chiron, Karna, Achilles, and Atlanta were great, the character interactions with them made me stay interested and see what was next with their characters. Other characters had good scenes, but I didn't include them just because 1) They were not shown enough 2) They also had bad scenes or writing problems.

If you really like Fate installments, I think you would like this. If you like cool designs and character moments, then you would like this. If you think the premise sounds good and also like good writing, then I would say give this a skip. I would recommend for you to watch Fate Zero. Wish that the Fate series would stop repeating the same mistakes, they make a good first half and start doing whatever and blow up the anime