English Dub Review: Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia, “Welcome to the Jungle”

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Ritsuka and the company receive a mission from Gilgamesh: to venture to and report on the jungle city of Ur. There they come upon many questions, some more discreet than others.

Our Take

We’re now finally starting to get a little bit of what we should’ve received earlier; character development for our protagonist, Ritsuka.

This arrives in the form of him reminiscing about his past adventures and the failures and regrets he had with them. At first, this is a form of further exposition on past events, though it does eventually serve as a lens through which to view Ritsuka. We see a man burdened with the lives he couldn’t save. This isn’t very much to chew on, but it is something for now and this aspect of him does get tested at the end of the episode.

Along with this small insight into Ritsuka, we also gain a smidge more insight into his partner, Mash, as well. All we really see is that she is his dedicated partner and she trusts him more or less completely. This isn’t a big surprise as they’ve clearly had several past adventures together. The only reason I could see it worth being brought up, other than to reiterate it, is to keep it in mind that this trust may be tested.

Now with all that aside, let’s address the true “star” of this week’s episode; Jaguar Warrior.

From a design and personality standpoint, Jaguar seems like just a big, dumb joke. This show has had plenty of humorous moments, but this character far exceeds the line drawn in previous episodes. The fact that she’s clearly a young woman dressed up in a modern tiger onesie carrying around an oversized cat’s paw staff would tip you off that she’s a gag character. But as it turns out, she’s tantamount to a god and has been demanding human sacrifices from a helpless village. There’s ridiculous and then there’s Jaguar Warrior.

Honestly, at this point, I’m just not going to question why she’s like this anymore. She’s just somebody’s lackey and the show is clearly just going to run with her. Questioning her at this point seems futile and I’m fine with that.

Though she may be very obnoxious, Jaguar Warrior does bring one very good thing to the table; even more fantastic battle animation. Even the best yet. We’ve seen these high-speed battles before and we’ve seen battles where one person overpowers the others. But this battle is truly something quite different. And I think it can all boil down to one aspect of the fight; Jaguar is the first melee fighter the crew has encountered.

Up until now most of the fighting has just been magic blasts and long-range weapons flying about and tearing things up. This has been fun to watch, but all of these battles have had similar elements and they’ve fallen into a similar cadence as well. Bad guy initiates the fight with a ranged blast, Mash defends Ritsuka from it, Ana goes on the offensive from afar, Mash steps in a bit to back her up, blows are exchanged from a few yards away. Sometimes a powerful opponent will just deflect everything and smack everyone down.

Jaguar disrupts this style of battle simply by merit of having a melee weapon. She has to move more and run towards our heroes in order to attack them and with that brings more motion into the animation. But Jaguar is not simply content with running, she does much more. Jumping attacks, lithely jumping from surface to surface, sliding around, falling down and sweeping herself back up again quickly. She has such a wide range of movement and traversal that even just watching her move alone is dynamic and fun. Her attacks are just as dynamic as well; using her staff as a blunt weapon, using it as a fulcrum to throw Ana’s chains off-balance, throwing it around like a boomerang, throwing it like a javelin. Jaguar’s fighting style is scrappy and vigorous, she carries the same powerful energy into combat that she does into her goofy dialogue. She may be disruptive to the plot, but at least you can say it’s never boring.

Jaguar is kind of a mixed bag, but what fun she does or does not bring has very little effect on the plot. Though further conflict has once again been delayed by a decision to retreat, this thread still does move the story forward a little. After our heroes reconnoiter, we should see them move ahead to try to stop this forest goddess.

And whatever advancements this may bring to the plot, what I want to see is advancements to the development of our main characters. It seems at almost every opportunity for someone to have a moment to be fleshed out, it always goes to whatever new character pops up. Some small moments were had in this episode, but it hasn’t been enough so far. I’m curious to see if Ritsuka and Mash will succeed, but deep down I’m not sure if I really want to see it.