Contains Few Spoilers
Fate/Apocrypha suffers from a fundamental issue that most of the Fate Animes have which is, run time. There's not enough time to develop 20+ unique characters in a 25 episode anime. It's just physically impossible to give meaningful screen time to that many characters and have them in anyway shape or form fleshed out to an acceptable degree. Anyone who has attempted to write stories would know.
That said, I personally think that the anime did an alright job with what it was likely given for a script. Plot was pushed at a somewhat acceptable pace but certain events still did not feel like they had proper buildup or felt improperly transitioned into.
Certain aspects of the story are somewhat nonsensical and feel forced. Seig's character is the perfect example of having a cool idea but not actually taking the time to connect all the points as to how the character finds himself flowing into the story. He is absolutely thrusted into the story and given more screen time than he really deserves. Why? Because he is the Shirou Emiya of this story unfortunately. He's a Mary Sue most likely due to being a "blank slate" type of character. That said, I don't understand why they chose to develop another Shirou Emiya style character when they have a perfect example of a character who just works for this style of Fate Anime: Kiritsugu. Doesn't require much effort to introduce as his skills and actions do the introductions for him.
Certain parts also lack proper screen continuity. The side that is attempting to infiltrate the flying fortress is using airplanes to get close. Jeanne gets blasted and wrestled to the ground off an airplane then magically teleports onto the fortress minutes later (Why even bother with the airplanes if you can get onto the fortress no problem?).
Animation is absolutely eye candy at certain parts. Character designs are sleek and fit (most) of the cast. Overall is very consistent but coloring becomes off in certain action scenes in the last stretch (Likely ran out of time, money, or both).
What this anime did achieve was:
1. Make me appreciate the Karna I pulled in Fate Grand Order over a year ago that I have sitting in my character bank at level 60.
2. Make me an Astolfo fanboy.
3. Wish that they just figured out a way to make a 50 to 100 Episode anime for a Fate story that was affordable and paced well enough to make me enjoy and care about the cast that's present. The story suffers so much from the 25 episode screen time constraint.
