Monday, June 15, 2020

Fate/Apocrypha Part 4 Episodes 13-16


The Battle of Yggdmillenia Castle has ended and the war between the forces of Red and Black Factions has ceased in an unexpected outcome.  Shiro Kotomine seizes control of almost all of the Red Factions servants, though Mordred continues to resist, putting him in the ultimate position to complete a 60 year old plan.  Meanwhile, with their leader dead and most of their servants either betraying them or destroyed, the remaining Yggdmillenia members find themselves forming an alliance with the last person they ever expected.  The game has changed but the goal of attaining the Holy Grail remains the same.  Will it go to the last Servant of another war, one of the survivor of the present conflict, or a young Homunculus looking to liberate his people?

I’m happy to report that my concerns over whether or not Fate/Apocrypha could sustain its amazing momentum and story beats have been both surpassed and justified.  While we did get some nice clean up on the midseason cliffhangers and changed the status quo a bit for the team dynamics, one particular storyline is still failing to justify its existence and Im wondering why it wasn’t handled much sooner than now (and even then it’s still not wrapped up).  Overall though, the second half of Fate/Apocrypha got off to a pretty solid start considering just how much hype it has to meet now.

So both Red and Black Factions have been completely shaken up.  The Yggdmillenia group has lost about half of its mages and the Red Team was whipped out by Shirou without so much as a word or defining character trait for either of them.  What’s more, Red Team is basically just Shiro as the ultimate master with Yggdmillenia’s Caster Servant, Avicebron, turning on his team, killing his master and joining up with the remaining Red Faction Servants…save for Mordred who is committed to kicking all of their traitorous butts in any order.  With Yggdmillenia low on Servant power, its interesting that they’d elect to form an alliance with both Sieg and Kairi.  They all have a common enemy in Shirou and I think that Fiore will take the Yggdmillenia Clan in a more sensical direction than former head honcho Darnic.  But Kairi and Mordred are after the Grail first and foremost.  We even got a rather sad backstory for Kairi learning about how he tried to adopt a kid and share his magic, only for it to end in the kids demise.  Mordred wants to prove she’s a good King and Kairi wants his families legacy to live on past him, solid motivators if you ask me.  Sieg, meanwhile, is getting the surviving Homunculi the respect they deserve as living beings and not tools.  While I couldn’t stomach Gordes and all of his bellyaching early on, I’m glad that Shiro and that pink haired, and thus far nameless, girl Homunculi were able to get him to open up about how he had more nobler aspirations for how the war was supposed to play out and the fact that its gotten so out of control, its eating him up.  Gordes opting to help the Homuculi develop a bit more to survive is a nice change for him…though he still complains a lot. 

Mordred might be still be using some of that degrading Gilgamesh talk but she gets a ton of points back this week following her decapitating Astoflo’s insane Master. This freed up a chance for Sieg and Astolfo to enact a pact, you know since Sieg is now a Master who can change into his own Heroic Spirit.  I’m happy these two have been paired up and it’s fitting since Astolfo was more key to beginning Sieg’s journey to personal self discovery before Ruler took over.  Astolfo cares a heckuva lot about our zero to hero Homuculus and it’s fun to see her treating him a lot like a little brother.  That leaves Jeanne as the clear love interest option in this core trio of Sieg, Jeanne and Astolfo.  I forget sometimes that Jeanne’s heroic spirit essence is inhabiting a cute French girl but apparently they can commune subconsciously and Laeticia is telling Jeanne to go for it, even if Jeanne doesn’t want to admit she has feelings for Sieg.  And what better way to handle some much need team building exercises than to have Sieg, Mordred, Jeanne, Chiron and Astolfo all take on Avicebron’s Adam Golem all at once?  This kind of reminded me of the Avengers style team up in Fate/Zero when Saber and her fellow Spirits took on Caster and his Master and their Akira style monster.  Seeing Sieg activate Siegfried and use his powers in combo with Mordred to bring the giant down was nothing short of stunning.  We’ve got a solid crew of heroes on our hands to root for.

But before we can get back to Shirou and his “I’ll bring humanity salvation” plan, we need to deal with an annoying elephant in the room that really should have been handled far earlier than now.  Yep, I’m talking about Jack the Ripper, the tiny, inappropritatley dressed murder machine who has done next to nothing to further the plot other than fill out the seven Servants of Black category.  And now she’s gunning for Fiore?  Does her “Mommy” have a grudge against Yggdmillenia that we don’t know about yet?  What purpose does this serve other than to let things simmer a bit before the next big round of the Holy Grail War?  Speaking of Servants who haven’t faired well in a series with an otherwise stellar cast of Heroic Spirits, I still think that Archer of Red, Atalanta, is the weakest of the Red Team Servants.  She hasn’t done a lot to stand out, nor has she gotten any real quiet time to try and develop as a character unlike her counterparts.  It’s a shame, I know she’s a popular character, especially in the cosplay community.  Maybe she’s better in the Fate/Grand Order mobile game?

This weeks next step was about resetting the board with new teams and new missions and Fate/Apocrypha succeeded mostly in both regards.  The Yggdmillenia/Sieg/Kairi Alliance might have to deal with the wild card nusciance that is Jack the Ripper first but I’m hopping that detour doesn’t last too long.  In fact, I feel a bit certain Jack will be at the top of the to do list next week as Fate/Apocrypha carries on.  See ya then.

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