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

 

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The demonic beasts begin a large-scale assault against the walls of Uruk. Ritsuka and the crew are tasked with scouting out a fortress city north of the warzone.

Our Take

The episode starts with some more background information on the previous events of the story. This time, it’s a brief primer on the main antagonist behind these singularity conflicts: the Mage King, Solomon. There’s a lot of jargon tossed around, but the gist of it is that Solomon has no regard for human life at all, like many of the powerful god/god-like beings in this series. This by itself isn’t particularly interesting, but this theme becomes a bit more relevant later on in the episode.

The big conflict this time around is that the demonic beasts have begun an all-out attack against the north wall of Uruk. It seems like the bad guys got tired of waiting for Ritsuka and Gilgamesh to start a fight. And after all this time just wandering around, I can’t blame them. 

The majority of the fighting in this episode is humans and servants fending off the demonic beasts. It isn’t much of a fight though, as the humanoids swiftly slaughter any beast they come across. Though there isn’t any of the traditional back-and-forth combat, seeing beasts get deftly dismembered is still kind of fun to watch. There are a variety of different ways our heroes slice and dice through these hordes of chimeras on display. And the purple sprays of blood they emit are oddly satisfying if you like that kind of splatter in your combat. 

The battle animation is mostly on point here, which is par for the course for this anime so far. However, they do make one big misstep this time with a shoddy implementation of 3D animation. A lot of the beasts are 3D models, as they have been before, and this is honestly fine since they already look kind of weird. But there are a few scenes where the big platoon of soldiers that marches across the desert is comprised of 3D humans. This looks completely obvious and awful, especially in the scenes where the 2D protagonists are placed right next to them.

Ana and Merlin partake in a conversation the night before the crew sets off to investigate a fortress city. Ana contemplates telling Ritsuka and Mash who she really is, as she has grown so close to them that she does not want to lie to them anymore. Merlin appreciates that Ana wants to be honest, but cautions against telling them the truth. Evidently, revealing her true identity, that she is not human, may compromise their relationship. It seems continuing to lie is the better option if she wishes to remain friends.

It is somewhat frustrating that, despite this honest conversation, they still want to keep secrets from the audience like this, this far into the show. Ana’s true identity is going to have to be some sort of major plot twist to justify keeping the wool over our eyes for this long. 

But with that said, this conversation is effective at providing a good contrast with the rest of the non-human entities in this anime. As we’ve been reminded of at the beginning of this episode, all of the god/non-human characters we’ve encountered see humanity as worthless and want to destroy them through elaborately cruel methods. This exchange between Ana and Merlin, both of them non-human, serves to highlight that not all non-humans hate humanity like the rest. There are some gods who appreciate and even rely on interacting with humans. Though this moment isn’t that compelling, I still feel it’s noteworthy. The openness and honesty here bring further attention to their characters and the significance they may play later on.

Ritsuka and the gang set out for a fortress city to the north of Uruk, where a den of demonic beasts is threatening the citizens. When they arrive there, however, they find all the citizens have already been killed. And who else could do such an asshole move other than Fake Enkidu? It’s like it’s impossible for this guy to not ruin everyone’s day. 

The citizens were fed to the demonic beasts as fuel for the process of evolving the demonic beasts into a more fearsome form. While this certainly sucks for all those innocent people, it is cool that we get to see a different type of beast other than the lions and weird dogs we’ve constantly seen before. Unfortunately, this new evolved apex beast is just a bigger version of the lion things we’ve seen slain countless times before. And it doesn’t put up much more of a fight, as Ana and Merlin easily dispatch it together.

The plot picks up the pace right at the end. Enkidu captures Ana and it seems we may finally get to see who she really is. However, Fou, the cute little animal creature who was basically a mascot up until now, uses some magic to save her. Hopefully, the show will take the time of day to explain that one like they’ve done for so many other things before. 

And then right after that, a gargantuan hydra woman named Tiamat erupts out of the fortress. Apparently, she’s the real big bad guy here in Mesopotamia, as the mother of all demonic beasts and leader of the goddess alliance. The situation quickly becomes dire and just as quickly leaves us on a big cliffhanger. Though the ending is abrupt, I’m glad for it, because we’re finally in a confrontation that Ritsuka can’t just conveniently run away from. If it takes a giant snake lady to get him to actually do something, then so be it.  

At this point, there are probably as many antagonists as there are protagonists. It isn’t too many characters, but it’s still a fair amount of heads to keep count of. But fortunately, it looks like the plot might be moving at a more than nominal pace next time. I hope it stays that way for at least a little while.