Lord El-Melloi II-sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note Special

If you liked the Lord El Melloi series, probably you will want to watch this special, and I think is very worth watching. The story shows what would happen if Waver Velvet were to be that 19 year old from the past again. He and his Servant Gray try to discover who it was that made him what he was before, and for what purpose. I really liked this special because, it showed more of Waver's life in the Clock Tower as a student and his beginnings as a mage. The art looks a little bit better than before but the animation is the same.And the soundtracks from Yuki Kajiura are goated as always. Overall, I think this was a pretty good special to wrap up the year 2021. If you are a Fate fan and want to see more of Lord El Melloi then I strongly recommend it.

Its been a while since I watched the anime so I have no idea if this applies only to this special or to the entirety of the series but here I go anyways. Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note - Tokubetsu-hen is what you get when someone tries to cram as many ideas into a story as they can without taking the effort to flesh any of them out. The explaination of the primary magic used in this special was lackluster at best, making me confused on what was going on, especially with the way that it twists what kind of magicprojection magic is. And as someone who has fallen way to deep into the fate rabbit hole, many of the uses of magic seem completely unfeasable in the magnitude of their power. The story is also extremely rushed, as many of the characters are only fleshed out from small snipbits of their lives which stops one from truly getting to know the character other than the most basic info about them. Like there is only enough information given to have a prelimilary understanding of the motives of many of the characters, but thats all that they have. The anime expects its veiwers to piece together what kind of person each character is, but not enough to make the characters actually seem human. Plus there is kind of a reliance of tropes in the story, as many of the main plot points in it are as generic as they can be. but hey tropes are tropes so i can let it slide a bit. overall, Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note - Tokubetsu-hen could have been a much better story if it had a longer run time in order to fully flesh out many of the characters, but being limited to being a special stopped the story from ever expanding its roots and becoming something other than a pretty basic story.

I am baffled by the high ratings for this special. I really enjoyed the main season but this was just not it. The story just felt rushed and roughly put together. I felt like the cases in the main show, even some of the ones lasting just one episode, flowed better than this one. Here, details were skipped explaining why certain aspects were happening or who some people were. And the “reasoning” of the “antagonist” was just overly exaggerated and not properly dealt with at the end. Apparently, one would better understand the end if you’ve watched some other Nasuverse shows. Overall, very disappointed. At least the artwas good.

Merchandise

Links may contain affiliate references

Studio

Themes