Reviews

In first season, or first half, I found genre really off putting. I was here for Urobuchi, but what I got was a lot of excuses to throw flashy fights, kinda reason why I dropped Fate/Stay Night, except this really is way way better in every way. Even flashy fights were amazing, but I found their context and consequence really annoying. I guess I was hoping it would tackle the Free For All conundrum in a new and interesting way, kind of like Mirai Nikki at least tried. But Fate/Zero wasn't really interested in that, in first season it really looks as classical overuse of fights to death consistently ending with excuse to off put the fight for later. Excuses felt a bit dishonest, as if only here because plot demanded it. And plot does demand it, plot goes on to expand the character cast and introduce a lot of things, little by little. Well, little by little was my problem with it, there was seemingly too much fighting minus consequences, and too little what I've come to expect from Urobuchi. I had to wait till second half, episode 16 to get to the Urobuchi goodness.

It's then, in second season, or second half, that characters and world views start to get explored in detail. Where shit starts going down. When stuff starts mattering. Like it genre shifted from shounen into psychological thriller. There are some goodies in first half, as well as some baddies in second half, naturally. It's part of what's keeping this from being a masterpiece in my book. Another part of it, now... Hulk would smash me for this, but another part is plot logic. The fantasy magic setting just felt overused as a cop out sometimes, where you aren't supposed to question stuff really. I just can't respect that as much as plot that pulls everything off with super solid logic. Maybe it's just my aversion towards magic in serious works. And this is very very serious work.

Even though the plot logic feels clunky at places, storytelling wise, second half really does tell a very compelling story, that left me staring at credits screen at the end just being overall impressed. Though part of it was not being sure what exactly went on, and/or pondering how I should feel about what went on. I disliked the brutality, it was his most brutal work I've seen yet. Some of those scenes... just NO... just fuck you no! I'm also slightly annoyed that one plot thread never got explored, even though it's not exactly a plot hole as possibility of exploring the thread died together with the character. I was at first very impressed anime decided to tackle the thematic, just to see it completely ignored later. I guess its point was only to further characterize one of the characters, but even so, it's somewhat unforgivable to me as I really looked forward to see how it would be handled. It goes without saying how deep and nuanced characters are, along with their philosophies that get examined really nicely, though there is little of it in the first half. Funnily enough, second half/season also has far superior OP/ED, though mostly music wise.

Ufotable is the studio behind the production. It means production quality is ''holy shit how much did this cost?''. Ufotable visuals will surely help you get through the first half, definitely helped me.