I’ll not deny it, A-1 has given us some of the most popular shows in the last decade, but there are several shows by this studio that simply follow the mainstream of anime- throwing in terrible story writing with half-assed animation along with a popular title that draws in an audience. It’s disappointing at the least that studios don’t even try to satisfy the audience who watch their shows.
Why is Apocrypha a fiasco? To start it off, let me tell you that the show does follow the basic foundation of the Fate universe, but instead of the usual seven masters and seven servants, Apocrypha has double the number of characters as the original Fate. It’s set in an alternate timeline where the Grail was seized by a clan of mages after the third Holy Grail war. They then announced their possession of the Grail and left the Mage’s Asssociation. Yggdmillennia, the aforementioned clan then declares war on the Association and each of the sides have seven servants and masters each who fight against each other as two collective groups.
I know what you’re thinking. “Well, that sounds interesting!”- yes, that’s what I thought, before I actually watched the train-wreck of an anime that Apocrypha is. The basic problem with this anime is the number of characters in it. There are twenty four characters that play a significant role if you count the masters and the servants separately. I kid you not- twenty four characters! Now, the original Fate gives its characters a tragic backstory to get the viewers to sympathize with them. This works because there are a limited number of characters and each character’s backstory is explored separately by the anime, while in Apocrypha, instead of focusing on one particular character, the anime simply shows us a glimpse of someone’s backstory and then jumps to another scene even before the viewer has fully taken in the previous scene. I simply felt no emotional connection with any character whatsoever. Even though the anime fails in character development, I still expected a few intense action scenes. Nah, why would an action anime need those? Almost all action sequences in Apocrypha are lazily animated. They are dull and boring. Nine out of ten scenes are a complete snooze fest. An abysmal story combined with terrible direction. That is what Fate/ Apocrypha felt like for a majority of its episodes.
To add more to the farce, most of the characters seem like they’re from some stupid fantasy game. There is unnecessary fan-service because why not? The character of Jack The Ripper being a loli speaks volumes about how carefully the production team thought about each character. I’m presuming the conversation during their brainstorming sessions went something like this:
“I wonder how we can get the audience more involved with the characters.”
“You know what? We should add a loli. People love lolis!”
“Done.”
“Wait if we’re adding lolis, why was my suggestion of adding Traps rejected?”
“Ugh, fine. We’ll add a Trap too.”
“Oooooh, we should add a yandere too then? Make her like the Trap’s master maybe?”
“Oh my god, best idea ever! There should be a few scenes where she licks him for no apparent reason too. People will like that.”
“We rock.”
“YEAH!”
Yes, that was totally a great idea. Should have added some smut while they were at it. Great job, A-1 Pictures!
There is no comparison between the animation and artwork of the original Fate series and Fate/Apocrypha. It’s god awful. As I said the battle sequences look terrible and there is one particular scene where the Rider of Red does not even look like himself. At this point I was just laughing at the ridiculous job the animators had done. The only battle which actually felt intense was the sequence in Episode 22. The fight between Karna, the Lancer of Red and the Homunculus kid whose name I forgot was pretty well made. Episode 22 was undoubtedly the best out of all 25 episodes. It has a really long battle scene and some great Sakuga sequences. I was quite surprised when I saw this after 21 episodes of foolery.
The music is forgettable. The Opening and Ending themes were dry and unappealing. They could have used some great music during the battle scenes, but again they didn’t. The overall animation and sound was far below my expectations.
To tell you the truth, towards the end, I had this faint feeling where I felt like the anime got back on track. After most of the characters were dead, they were able to focus on the remaining cast and it made the story far less confusing than it was at first. As I said in the last paragraph, there was also a decent action scene in Episode 22. Then there was this concept of “humanity and salvation” but I felt as if the idea wasn’t presented clearly. It seemed like a vague concept introduced for the advancement of the story because they couldn’t think of anything better. Again, it could have been much better. There was so much space for improvement, yet A-1 decided to give us an anime that is easily forgettable and which would disappoint any fan of the original series. I wouldn’t recommend watching Fate/Apocrypha. Its fails spectacularly as an anime and even more so when compared to Fate/Zero or Stay Night. I would give it a rating of 4 out of 10.
