English Dub Review: Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia “Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia”

Overview

Ritsuka Fujimaru and Mash Kyrielight are sent back in time to ancient Mesopotamia, to vanquish the last Singularity that threatens the fate of humanity.

Our Take

As someone who has not really played the game that this anime is based on, I found myself a little bit lost. The show does do a small amount of introducing the basic premise and trying to catch people up to speed on where we are in the story’s so far. As someone with general knowledge of the Fate series, and a few encounters with some of its entries, I feel like I’m barely scraping by on comprehension. That said, this is the seventh chapter of the game’s story. This show is clearly intended for fans of the game and is probably not the best jumping-off point for newcomers. 

With that said, the pacing of this first episode is a bit strange. The first third of it moves at an expedient clip, probably to skip past the parts that most of the target audience is already familiar with. Our main characters, Ritsuka and Mash, are very quickly sent back in time and injected right into the action. The rest of it is an odd mish-mash of slow character scenes and fast battle sequences.

The character-driven scenes in this episode feel very sluggish. The first real bout of dialogue, where our main characters are introduced to a mysterious young woman, is particularly stagnant. Upon the first secondary character arriving, one would think this would be where they spend time introducing them. But none of the interactions Ritsuka and Mash have with her are very productive. It felt mostly like a display of cliche secondary anime character traits. We come away from the interaction with little learned and a lot of time felt wasted.

The rest of the conversations are simply exposition. We meet our next character, Enkidu, who is supposedly a super important character. We receive a lot of elaborate titles and analogies about him, but not really a glimpse of who he is. For now, it seems his only purpose is to take Ritsuka and Mash where they need to go. Though with how much they extoll him I imagine he’ll pop up again soon enough in a more prominent role.  

The far more compelling parts of this episode are the battle scenes. The level of detail on display during the battles is a little rough around the edges. But the range and fluidity of the movements the characters make are dynamic and, for the most part, quick and clean. The momentum of battle slows down a little bit whenever a weapon is swung or an energy blast is shot. Perhaps this is done to give a sense of weight to these elements, which is a valid method of showing impact. But the deliberate slowdown during these moments feels a bit too slow for me, and it clashes with the very fast pace of the rest of the action. 

There are a few other odd things that stick out. There are a few uses of 3D in the action, mostly for the monsters that just populate the background. It’s acceptable, but obvious 3D usage like that will always be a little jarring. Additionally, while this show does have a fair smattering of fanservice, it did pop up in a couple of intrusive places. During some of the action shots featuring the female characters, the camera would pull slightly away from the action and park right in front of their butts for no real reason. I’m not saying you can’t look at some ass every now and then, but I think there are a better, less obnoxious time and place for it. 

While it did feature some competent animation, this “real” first episode feels like we’re still being slowly introduced to what’s going on. Moments better spent learning about characters feel like poor excuses to ogle them. I feel like they could’ve trimmed a lot of that fat off and we would’ve learned a lot more, instead of being slowly dragged to where we should be going. But the way it ends sets up what will hopefully be a productive second episode. Here’s hoping we can really get this show on the road.