English Dub Series Review: Fate/Apocrypha

The Greater Grail War becomes a struggle to decide mankind’s salvation.

Overview (Spoilers)

In a parallel timeline to the seminal anime Fate/stay night, mages fight a war to acquire the Holy Grail to grant their fondest wishes. This is no ordinary magic vs. magic battle, as the mages summon heroes of history and legend to aid them. In this timeline, the Grail went missing after the third Grail War, which was covered in Fate/zero. Since then, a group called Yggdmillennia took hold of it and seceded from the Mage’s Association. When magi are dispatched to retrieve the Grail, they are quickly routed. This, however, activates a rarely used bylaw of the Grail War: The Greater Grail War.

While a normal war consists of seven mages, each with their own Heroic Spirit as a servant, the Greater Grail War allows each of the two factions to summon their own set of seven. The Black Faction, Yggdmillennia, supplement their mages and servants with artificial humans called homonculi. Not only do these serve as ready-made soldiers, but as magical batteries. The Red Faction, the Mage’s Association, hires mercenaries and those of proven skill and power to serve as their masters and, to prove their legitimacy, bring a mage from the Church, Shirou Kotomine. To help adjudicate things, a human girl comes to be possessed by the Heroic Spirit of Joan of Arc, assuming the role of Ruler. She can fight as any of the servants can, but can also grant masters the seals that are used to command and empower servants.

However, partway through the war, a single homonculus from Black Faction’s herd splits away with a mind of his own. Inspired by his struggle for freedom, the Black Saber (Siegfried the Dragon-blooded) and Black Rider (Astolfo, Twelfth Paladin of Charlemagne) fight to defend him, despite the express orders of their masters. In the process, the homonculus is mortally wounded. Siegfried sacrifices himself, placing his heart in the boy’s chest and giving him new life. The boy calls himself Sieg and also gains some of the power of Siegfried. He joins Ruler and Astolfo in their attempt to reduce civilian and homonculus casualties.

The war takes a strange turn as Shirou manages to take control of all but one of the Red Faction servants, and steals back the Holy Grail. While this would normally be the end of the war, Ruler goes to confront Shirou about his intent. Realizing he intends to use the Grail to forcibly ascend all of humanity into beings of pure thought, Ruler musters the remaining forces of Black and the rogue element within Red to assault the flying fortress Shirou’s servant created and prevent his plan to “save” mankind!

Our Take

This recent entry into the Fate franchise is the largest one yet. Unlike the previous twelve episode entries into the franchise, this one goes for twenty-plus episodes and contains roughly twice the normal number of characters. This dizzying array of people is a bit hard to keep track of, to see who is on which team and what their motivations are. You spend most of your time wondering who to root for until Shirou steps up as a villain. Fortunately, the first season does a chunk of work to make it easier to keep track. Pretty quickly, they take out the Berserkers from each side and removes Black Assassin from the main roster. Season two no longer has Red Lancer, who I found interesting, as it was a version of Vlad the Impaler who hated and resisted his legend as the vampire Dracula.

This series was imaginative in ways that excited me. The interpretations of the heroic spirits followed the same thought patterns of the previous series in the franchise, while not simply parroting what came before. For example, Astolfo is portrayed here as extremely effeminate. We, as well as the rest of the cast, are led to believe that Astolfo, like Arthur in previous shows, is a girl. Early in the second season, however, we discover that he is merely a crossdresser with a girl (Faye Mata) for a voice. I’m glad they took this course with Astolfo since the concept of going Rule 63 on loved myths is already played not once, but three times in this show. Frankenstein’s monster is now a lady, and I take no issue with their interpretation of her as Black Berserker. The design is great, resembling a wedding dress. I didn’t like that she got voted off the island so quickly, but that doesn’t mean her character was wasted. Jack the Ripper is a novel reinterpretation of the character, an evil, murderous loli who was the avatar of the suffering of children.

Finally, we have Mordred, who was the nephew/illegitimate son of and a traitor to Arthur in legend. Since Arthur was turned into a girl/pseudo-guy for Fate, why not his/her son/nephew/daughter/niece/this-sentence-got-weird-fast? I have no prob with Mordred as a girl. I liked the idea of Arthur as a lady. However, they did so with little to no change to the myth, which gave me more than one moment of “Huh?” A woman we are lead to believe is Morgan Le Fay is Mordred’s mother, who raises Morded as a boy and tells her that Arthur is her father. Take a look at Arthur. I mean, really look. Look at Mordred. While the idea of them being female could easily vanish with time as their legends grow, nobody looking straight at either one of them is going to buy that Arthur, who obviously has lady parts, is the FATHER of Mordred. I’m sitting there watching as Morgan explains to Mordred that Arthur is her father and shouted at the screen “BUT YOU’RE ALL GIRLS! THAT DOESN’T WORK!” It would have been interesting if Morgan le Fay created Mordred magically as a clone from Arthu… Wait, according to the wiki, that is almost exactly what happened. So, how did this information not come across in the anime? Is there a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bit? I don’t know.

The voice acting in this show is phenomenal. I especially loved Atalanta (Red Archer) when she was going absolutely berserk. It was a stark contrast from her typically serene nature, and Allegra Clark made her positively chilling. Speaking of Allegra, this hard-working woman also plays the voice of Jack the Loli Ripper and her “mother”/master. Each of them sounds distinct enough from each other that as I listened to an episode that featured all three heavily, I still couldn’t tell. Erica Mendez plays vastly different roles as Semiramis (Red Assassin) and the ill-fated tyke Roche. Again, Couldn’t tell they were the same voice. Zach Aguilar wasn’t bad as Sieg. He did have a solid emote range, despite the character having little gone on for most of the show. Mami Okada did some great work here as the casting director for the English adaptation through Netflix. The lady knows vocal potential.

This brings us to the last thing, which has always been amazing in Fate and this is no exception: Animation. Ooh-da-lale! This show has incredible frame rates and spends its (obviously considerable) budget well to create battle sequences as epic as the heroes themselves. This time around, there are literal demigods, deific avatars, and vampire lords in the lineup, and the animators kept step. Art errors? Son, don’t even mention that in these parts. Going off model? You obviously talking about another show. If there is a fight here, I was on the edge of my seat. That put my face awfully close to that screen, and I didn’t see a pixel out of place that I blame on anyone but my ISP. The absolutely gorgeous art style and unique character design make it easy to tell who each character is supposed to be, even if there are so many characters to keep track of.

And did I mention that Shakespeare is one of the heroes this time around? Shakespeare. As in, wrote stuff second only to the Bible in circulation rate. He’s the Red Caster. Brilliant.