The worst anime of the year so far, and I say that both as an incredibly mad fanboy of fate who hates this mockery of a series he loves, but also as a man who finds shows this utterly poor in every way to be outright offensive. There are obviously some mixed opinions on this show in this review section, but unlike the other reviews I will now proceed to explain to you what the ACTUAL problem with this show is.
Let’s get started with the most contentious point, the animation. No, this is not good animation, I’m sorry, but if you think its good animation I suggest you go watch a show with actually good animation. This show came out in 2017 you guys, and it’s using all the same tricks and tactics to avoid animating as much as possible as the original Fate anime from Studio Deen back in 2006.
Are there a large amount of frames in this animation at times? Sure, sometimes. But every. Single. Frame. Is drawn horribly. Characters in fights manage to be off model almost the entire time. “B-But Rahk, those are just in-between frames of fast moving action scenes!” No, they’re not, they all stay on screen far too long, showing how badly drawn they are in full view. Also, here’s a secret, in-between frames have to be… in between something! A fight scene of all inbetween frames ends up looking like a mess where the characters are literally melting, which is what we get here.
Outside of the animation quality itself, the directing in the animation is also terrible. Shots cut too fast, too slow, angles change at complete random with no flow. For god’s sake, in an early episode a shot starts at an isometric angle from behind characters walking from behind them on the left, only to cut five times and end up behind them on the right facing up. That might not sound like a problem to you, but it breaks… let’s see, all the rules of visual storytelling? In fight scenes, the camera never stops moving in A-1 pictures patented “give the viewer a headache” style of fight choreography, as seen in such shows as Aldnoah Zero and Birdy the Mighty Decode. Never giving the viewer a chance to orientate themselves to the scene in a hope you can’t see how bad everything looks. Characters won’t stop spinning, why won’t they stop spinning in fights the other Fate anime don’t do this why is this one doing it?! It doesn’t look cool or make them more badass it makes them look like stupid cosplayers making a fan film.
But you must be thinking “surely at least they can draw still shots of characters talking well?”, ha, hahahahahahaa, ahahahahahahahaha! You fools, did you think they wasted any of their precious effort on scenes of characters not moving? Think again. An entire scene goes by with an entire FOUR frames of animation, characters faces not even drawn on so they didn’t have to animate mouth flaps. I’ve seen defense of that scene as not having faces give it a horror atmosphere, but such a naïve defense shows a complete lack of understanding of the show they’re watching, there wasn’t anything remotely creepy or scary about that scene except the horror of watching a 25 second scene made out of 4 still frames.
Three paragraphs on the animation? Time to expose the truth about the SOUND DESIGN. I was, honestly, shocked to learn the sound director of this show also worked on Unlimited Blade Works, as that show suffers none of the following issues. Was he drunk when he came into work for this show, what went wrong? In short, the sound design was crap, but let’s get into why.
It’s so LOUD, the sound effects are tuned for max headphone blowout. In an attempt to make everything more epic and impactful, they made all the sound effects sound like your speakers are breaking. Sounds are over compressed with far too much bass, so they all sound like somebody taking a wet fart into a recording microphone from walmart. I’m not sure about you but the majestic, epic image of a fight between two legendary heroes doesn’t sound like this. When sounds aren’t doing this they have less impact than a wet tissue does when thrown by a small child. The music is all horrible, hardly ever fitting the scene. Songs start too soon, end too soon, and just don’t work. And good god, who greenlit that opening song? It was possibly one of the worst songs I’ve ever head in my life, I shudder just thinking about it.
You might have noticed I haven’t mentioned anything about the story or characters yet, to which I will respond with: Apocrypha has a story? We’re seven episodes in and there has been a lot of setup, a lot of setup for events. You might think I’m crazy for saying this, but events happening is not a story. The story you see, connects the events together and makes you care about the events. Without a story to make you care, you’re basically watching a bunch of character designs fight for reasons that don’t concern you.
The story should be a struggle of two factions trying to best the other while the members of each fight within their own ranks for the right to win the holy grail war. But somewhere along the line everybody in this war forgot to bring their motivations with them and the majority of the cast is here entirely to look ‘cool’ and die later.
In Fate/Zero, the FIRST thing you learn about each Master is what they want out of fighting in the holy grail war. In apocrypha after 7 episodes we’ve learned… the characters names? Sure that one girl wants to fix her legs, but that’s literally the only one. In a plot that should have 14 characters on each faction at LEAST, we know the motivation of one character. And don’t even say Darnic’s motivation is known, he has the default “win cause that’s what magi do” motivation, it literally doesn’t count.
Characters… let’s see, is there anything to say about these bland, soggy crackers that make up the cast?
I’m actually struggling to come up with things to even complain about here, because every character is such a big nothing in terms of characterization. They’re one note at best, and zero note at worst (sieg)
Sieg… Sieg, Sieg, Sieg Sieg SiegSiegSiegSiegSiegSiegSiegSiegSiegSiegSiegSieg SIEG!
I hate Sieg like Shiki Tohno hates chairs, every aspect wrong with Apocrypha’s character writing is personified in Sieg. He is a character with the most uninteresting character design, no personality, zero motivation for anything… he is awful. His existence actively makes the show worse, every scene with him is automatically ruined because of how terrible he is. So I’m sure glad he was the secret main character of the series who slowly takes over the plot! Thanks!
Just… just stop. There are so many great anime out there, this show is like a cheap drive-through hamburger, you think you want it but after eating it you regret it. I’m so extremely angry that this show is even remotely popular, just the same as I get mad when I hear somebody say how great The Big Bang Theory is. The more you support shows like this, the more the industry thinks that they can get away with this utterly subpar garbage.
Is Fate/Apocrypha the worst anime I’ve ever watched? No, not really. But it is the show that’s made me the most angry, even more than Psycho-Pass 2. In a time where such highly refined productions as Bones’s Boku no Hero Academia and Madhouse’s One Punch Man, Apocrypha manages to feel utterly devoid of passion, of soul.
It doesn’t feel like a production the staff loves, but just another job, like most all of A-1’s shows really.
You deserve better, Fate deserves better, than this cheap cash in that harbors none of the original spirit of the series because it knows it’ll sell if they put a new Saber on the cover.
