Oh Fate/Stay Night. With the Heaven’s Feel Route Trilogy now underway, we’ve pretty much come to an end with interations of the original Fate/Stay story…you know unless Ufotable wants to redo the Fate route too. So now we’re starting to delve into alternate realities, ones where Grail wars take different turns, feature new servants and masters and have their own twists, turns and textbooks full of dialogue that will range from epic to just downright tedious (depending on who’s talking). Earlier this year we had Fate/Grand Order and I could barely get it started without context. Now, Fate/Apocrypha has arrived in the States and has been hailed one of the more fun titles of the year. Is it really?
I’ll freely admit, I’m not a die hard Fate/Stay fan. As much as I loved Fate/Zero and most of Unlimited Blade Works, I have never been tempted to track down any other titles or dig deeper into the lore surrounding this epic tale. That being said, I’ll just say right now that I don’t think Apocrypha will be a title for me. It starts off as most Fate/Stay entries usually do: an epic battle sequence showing us characters likely to play large roles in the main narrative while the animation studio (Studio A-1, the group behind Sword Art Online) proves that they can pull off the franchises epicly awesome battles. After that, that’s where I got a little lost and a bit turned off. Going into a Fate/Stay series without Rin and Shiro might not be a bad thing (especially with Shiro) but someone a bit more familiar within the cast would have helped ease me in. Now, we do get, who I assume, is Waver from Fate/Zero, grown up and a teacher of the mages association (he even looks like how we glimpsed him in his special cameo at the end of Unlimited Blade Works). Plus there are alternate versions of Saber and Shirou (ill get to them). But all this newness is a bit much, especially when there’s a lot of it.
At it’s minimum, there are at least 28 characters to keep track of right out of the gate: 14 mages and 14 servants on two different teams. Even with a series at length of 25 or so episodes, that’s a lot to keep track of. We spent more screentime with the Yggdmillenia family than anyone else and yet their time felt so brief between clan members I can barely tell you who is who and who their servants are. It almost makes Fate/Zero’s intro look simple by comparison. For all of it’s complexity, Fate/Zero I was at least remembering who everyone was by the end of the first episodes, masters, servants and all. There were a couple of stand outs in Apochrypha’s cast. Mordred, the daughter of King Arthur, is the big Saber class and she reminds me of a hybrid of Saber and Gilgamesh. I thought that would be a problem but she grew on me quite a bit. She’s cute enough but I love her bad ass battle armor that she can summon and retract like a mecha. There’s also Ruler, who appears to be some reincarnation of Jeanne D’Arc. We didn’t spend much time with her but I can tell she’ll likely be as close to a central character as we get on this show…if we can take time away from all the team prep drama to take her in. I also mentioned Shiro. There is a version of him here and I’ll tell ya, it’s so scary to see him named Shiro Kotomine (related to Kirei from the main series?). As much as I cant stand the kid, the idea that Shiro became a dark lackey for a homicidal priest doesn’t sit well with me.
There are much bigger fans of Fate/Stay Night out there
and, if im honest, I’ll probably look to them for further advice on whether or
not I should stick with this one. The
large cast is tough to keep track of (even if I have favorites). The new rules to the game make the Grail War
more complex than ever. And, I do miss
my Fate/Stay mainstay faces (especially Rin).
As epic as this series sounds, it just might not be one I can continue
with or finish…no matter how cute Mordred and Ruler both look (seriously is
there some Fate story with the two of them plus Saber and Rin? I’d watch the
hell out of that no matter how confusing it could be).
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