Fate/Extra: Last Encore

When it comes to what makes the Fate franchise what it is, some will might say it's the very well-made fight scenes while others will say it's the dark psychological tone that it has. While all of that is definitely true, what really makes the Fate franchise what it is; it's the interesting philosophical dialogues between the characters and that is really, what Fate/Extra Last Encore succeeded at most. Fate/Extra Last Encore is a studio Shaft's adaption from a game and it serves as an alternative setting to Fate/Stay Night's. The concept of the story is pretty much the same as you can imagine, there arechosen masters that summon a servant each, each servant and master are fighting together to be on top and get a wish granted. The big difference is that it's happening in a tournament in the far future, year 3020 where not a lot of humans are alive. It's hard to get any deeper than that in the story because otherwise, it will be a spoiler. I also don't think you came to check this anime out thinking it will be very different than the original series story anyway. What is very different is that compared to Ufotable's adaptions of the Fate franchise, Fate/Extra focus more on the philosophical dialogues and less on the flashy fight scenes but it has those as well. As I mentioned before a lot of twists will be discoverable later in the story but I will not mention them to not spoil, just so you know that there are a lot of other interesting differences. The downside of the story category is that it doesn't explain the settings really well. The characters are easily the most interesting part here. There is the protagonist, Hakuno who seems a bit uninteresting at the start but don't worry they made sure he will be interesting, there is a lot of focus on "who he is?" which make the character a lot more interesting as the story goes on. For the face of the series, it's obviously the Saber "UMU" Nero, she will get a lot of focus, even more than you imagine which is a good thing in my opinion since she is probably the most fun character to watch (Red Saber>Original Saber, fight me). Rin also gets a lot of shine here, she is more badass than the usual herself. Besides that, there are the other servants and masters, I will assure you that they all have an interesting unique design so you might enjoy watching them. Well for the art it's really a matter of opinion, those who are familiar with Shaft's works like the Monogatari series and such will welcome the art easily and would even find it great and suiting, others might despise it, as it doesn't look like ufotable's art and flashy animation. I personally belong to the group who are familiar with Shaft's works and finding the art great even though ufotable is my favorite all-time studio. The one thing that most fans will most likely won’t admire shaft for, is the different character designs for the characters that aren't new to Fate like Rin, Sakura, and Shinji. Overall, the art and animation style is a plus for me as I think it's really suited for the psychological and mystery tones of Fate/Extra. For the music part of the series, the opening ("Bright Burning Shout" by Takanori Nishikawa) is amazing, it's rocky and catchy, really suiting for this series, it took my favorite opening spot this season (Winter 2018). Visually it only shows Nero fighting with different hairstyles, take that however you want. (Fun fact: It's the first time that a male sings the opening song for a fate series). For the ending ("Tsuki to Hanataba" by Sayuri), I think it's quite suited, don't sure if I love the song but I do like it, what I love is the visuals, they are showing the connection between Hakuno and Saber while also showing the Master and servant they are currently fighting, I really liked that. For the voice acting there is, of course, the umu so enjoy it. The ost has all kinds of tracks from futuristic to emotional, nothing crazy but I think it's very suited. Summary: Pros: - Characters are fun to watch. - Interesting philosophical dialogues. - Great and catchy opening. - Suited animation style. (Makes the dialogues more psychologically interesting) Cons: - The art style might look weird to some. - The story isn't explained so it'd be easy to understand. Fate/Extra Last Encore isn't for everyone, that's for sure and that's why I wouldn't recommend it if you aren't a huge Fate fan. Because if you have only watched Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night [Unlimited Blade Works] then you have nothing to do with this series, you wouldn't enjoy it. However, if you are a huge Fate fan who have read the original visual novel, watched all the anime adaptions or of course, if you played the game then watch it, it was made for you.

Fate/Extra is yet another installation in the popular Fate franchise. Being a fan of the series, I went into this anime with some expectations, especially considering the fact that Studio Shaft, the one who took on this project, is one of my favorite anime studios. Now I've never played the source material, so I came into this anime with no knowledge on what it would cover. Unfortunately, by the end of it, I still wasn't entirely certain on what it was about. The biggest issue that I had with this anime was it's convoluted story. Now while I feel that Fate/Extra is somewhat underrated, I haveto admit that the plot left more to be desired. I honestly tried to understand what was going on, but so much of the story and details around the characters were left vague or entirely unexplained. This problem can be partly attributed to the short supply of episodes, but that still isn't a good enough excuse considering the fact that many short anime are able to succeed. There were several intriguing plot twists, such as the origins of how protagonist Hakuno came to be, but even they were a sort of double edged sword. Because while they shed some light on the story and characters, they also opened the door to many more questions that were usually left unanswered. I sadly couldn't enjoy each episode to the fullest because I was constantly trying to make sense of everything that was going on, and based off of what I've heard from others, this problem plagued many who watched the anime. The second and final significant issue that I had was that aside from the main characters, the rest of the cast received very little development. Now don't get me wrong, I actually liked a lot of the characters. The servants were pretty interesting, with my favorite being Nursery Rhyme. However, the anime decided to have several two episode arcs featuring the protagonists vs a master and servant pair, and after the heroes prevail, they move on and the losers are forgotten. Now let's briefly analyze how Fate/Extra's sister anime Fate/Zero went about showcasing it's characters. In the entire 12 episode first season, only ONE out of the 14+ participants in the Holy Grail War perished. This allowed for every master and servant pair to develop over the course of the first season, making them much more fleshed out and letting viewers more easily connect with them. Fate/Extra on the other hand barely dedicated any time in developing it's supporting cast, which resulted in many otherwise interesting characters being quite shallow. Now that we've got the boring critical analysis out of the way, it's time to talk about the good stuff. UMU! Let's go! First of all, the visuals are stunning. Shaft's animation techniques can be a bit of an acquired taste and aren't for everyone, however I think that they're amazing and really creative. I particularly loved the visuals used during the Alice and Nursery Rhyme arc, because they were similar to the inventive and unsettling animation used in segments of Madoka Magica, one of Shaft's most iconic anime. Another great aspect of the show was the soundtrack. There are several great tracks in this anime, with my personal favorite being the ending theme song by Sayuri. Let's address the star of the show. Who is this stunning person you may ask? Why Saber of course! Since it's not immediately revealed in the anime, I'll keep her true identity a secret. Now I've seen complaints stating that the anime is just Saber fanservice and has no depth to it, but I'd have to somewhat disagree. Yes, the anime does dedicate a lot of time to Saber's antics, cuteness, and naked body. But she is also used as a device to dig into the mentality of Hakuno, the true protagonist of the story. The pair have many a philosophical conversation throughout the course of the anime that provide insight on each of their beliefs and conceptions of the world and themselves. These talks are oftentimes quite deep, and actually end up being the highlight of each episode for me. I don't think there's anything quite as intriguing as studying the psychological state of a character, and the anime really succeeds at gradually providing insight into Hakuno's thought process and his eventual spiral into despair. Saber herself is oftentimes full of inspirational advice that not only touches Hakuno, but can even reach out to the viewers themselves. This isn't an anime about cool and flashy action sequences. In fact, the fights showcased in this show are generally quite lackluster, especially when compared to others in the franchise, and I believe are one of the prominent reasons as to why this anime has generally low ratings. However, this isn't a show about fighting, but about people, as most good Shaft anime usually are about. And if you recognize this, then you may just realize that Fate/Extra isn't really all that bad. You know, I sorta enjoyed this anime. Despite the confusing story and underdeveloped side characters, there was still so much to like about this show. The cast was still fun to watch, the presentation was fantastic, it was intriguing, and just a simply entertaining viewing experience. Oh, and it had Saber in it. Bonus! Now as the actor's take their final bow and the curtain closes, it seems that many in the audience left the theatre unimpressed. I, however, overall enjoyed the show, and I hope that it satisfied you too.

“I am not a fake, I will forge my own identity” There is a saying that goes between the Ufotable Fate series purists, that “Any Fate not made by Ufotable is shit” and that statement was usually right from what I've seen, Fate Loli was as mentioned all about Lolis, Fate Apocrypha was a laughable joke to most and then we have this anime, Fate Extra Last Encore that was made this time by Shaft. The Fate series is popular enough to be adopted by almost every studio and this brings either positive or negative results, and fortunately unlike other non-Ufotable Fate anime series, FateExtra did not disappoint as much. Why? It had a main character even better than Emiya Shirou. And that's saying something. Based off the game of the same name, Fate Extra introduces us to a character named Kishinami Hakuno who is betrayed by his friend Shinji (oh Shinji you are there every time) but escapes death and is chosen to participate in the Holy Grail war, not before getting the most powerful servant of them all, Saber (yada yada same introduction as all other Fates) but this time Saber isn't an elegant King of Knights, oh no, this new Saber is a busty mainly-for-fanservice character whose sole purpose isn't just to attract horny teenagers to get a Saber Figure but this Saber also plays an important part and thankfully unlike Unlimited Blade Works, her backstory is given a proper explanation in a later episode, further fleshing her out as a character (no pun intended). Even though we had 10 episodes we didn't see much action, it was mainly build-up, discussion, backstory and meetings. This Fate wasn't the action Fate, if you want that go to UBW, this Fate’s focus was more in world building and character introductions like Rani who play an important part in the Fate Universe (although she plays a small part in this anime). One of the things I didn't like much about this anime was that mostly adopted a 'villain of the week’ Shounen trope and to be honest it didn't bring as much development as I had hoped, although it’s portrayal was better than many Shounen anime out there it still felt somewhat lacking, either due to my dissatisfaction with the trope or because it wasn't done well. On the other hand the plot progressed smoothly, thankfully the episode number was increased from 6 to 10 mid-season this meant we got much more development especially for our main character Kishinami Hakuno. Many times (or actually every time) it is the male main character who defines an anime for what it is, Emiya Shirou defined the storyline for Fate UBW, Kiritsugu defined Fate Zero, much in the same way, Hakuno defined Fate Extra. Although he had little to no personality in episode 1 (please note that he was still better in character than Shirou, at least to me) the focus and improvement noticed in the second half is what made me appreciate the show a little more, Extra just felt that good that it felt better than UBW and to a lesser extent with Zero (Fate Zero is best Fate, fight me :P). As for the other characters Saber was quite the focus as well even though her relationship with Hakuno felt more like Saber was teaching Hakuno everything instead of them both working together equally (although I must say that also changes later on) but the important fact here is that Nero got her backstory while Arturia didn't. Or at least it was much more explored. So overall for the main characters development was excellent and elegantly done. Now where does that leave the side characters? Unfortunately they didn't get enough screen time or development. Tohsaka came at convenient times and although her fight with Berserker and another friend-turned-enemy (I'm not spoiling it, watch and understand) was amazing she had little or nothing to do with the plot progression which is unfortunate since she could have done much better given the chance. Other than that I could only find Rani a recurring character that too only because she came for 2-3 episodes and not 1-2 for the villains and she didn't get development at all. Her story as well was very brief and felt like an afterthought. As for the other characters we have the villains, only some of which got development and the cameos by Shinji and Kotomine Kirei in the first episode. Pretty disappointing for the side characters but amazing for the main ones. Disappointing and amazing reminds me of the confusing yet amazing yet somewhat disappointing art style of the anime. Animated by Shaft (you know, those Monogatari people?) I made a huge mistake by expecting Ufotable-like art style and instead got an animation below average. It felt horrible at first and I couldn't get used to it at all in the first episode. Fortunately the staff themself might have realised and fixed most of the issues and after episode 3 or so the art improved considerably, especially so in the Dream Land. The Dream Land arc was my favorite since it was so dark and intriguing not to mention mysterious, the Dream Land arc might as well be the only reason Fate Extra is so amazing. If the main characters don't impress you, there's a high chance the Dream Land arc will, so I won't gloss over it much and move on. Something you should gloss over is the soundtrack, because that is amazing and my favorite part about Fate Extra apart from the main characters. As a nod to UBW, the OP started off a lot like Brave Shine and the song itself was just as amazing not to mention the visuals used. Meanwhile something I found much better was the ED sung by none other than Sayuri who sung Tsuki to Hanataba and all you need to do is to go on YouTube, search this song and listen for yourself the amazing power of Sayuri’s voice, if you haven't already heard Sora wa Sore wa Chiisana Hikari no Youna from Boku dake ga Inai Machi (ERASED) and fallen in love with her voice. On the other hand the background music used was unsurprisingly excellent, why unsurprisingly? If you've watched the Monogatari series you'll realise. All in all Fate Extra is an anime that although falls short of beating Fate Zero it does pretty much equal UBW in many aspects which says a lot about it's quality since most other Fate anime made by non-Ufotable studios were either flawed or garbage (very rarely did we see a good non-Ufotable Fate) but Fate Extra has its shortcomings and they measure up on the scale as well. Although this was a show I enjoyed a lot, I can't ignore it's flaws as well, side characters, art style and villains were problems Shaft couldn't fix for the anime and so I felt disappointed to a certain extent but also was amazed too since this quite literally is the best non-Ufotable Fate we have (apologies for repeating non-Ufotable so many times) so we can move forward. What will the next Fate be? Will it be better than UBW (arguably the most popular Fate)? Will it surpass Fate Zero in quality? These are questions only the future can answer so all we can do is wait and see what happens. As for now, enjoy this beautiful anime.

Born directly from the father of Type Moon, Kinoko Nasu himself, Fate/Extra: Last Encore is a fascinating title in the franchise of Fate, and the Type Moon universe at large. Despite Nasu’s attempts to inform everyone about the intentions behind this anime and how everyone would be at an even playing field here, mass confusion broke out. It is only loosely based on the game, and due to the unique circumstances of the show’s narrative, it has been deemed unfit as a start. Perhaps this explains the disgustingly poor reception of this wonderful show. Such a shame, since this anime is a sheer, flooring spectacle. Itdoes not stop. It explains as it goes along, showing the sheer brutality of its style and depictions of events. Regrettably the blitzed pacing makes us ask questions in order to connect how characters figure things out or otherwise do something important in terms of progressing the narrative. Thankfully it is the only severe problem with the narrative, as all other questions you ask slowly get answered. The anime should let itself breathe more, as its crammed tightly with exposition that moves at a lightning pace, whether that be exposition about the setting or about a character. It clenches you by your wrists and never lets go, as it flies off into the hellish world it wants to show you as it unfolds before your very eyes! A disorienting start that gives you an oppressive, dreadful vibe, and never lets that vibe escape. It is ubiquitous throughout this precisely crafted, chaotic spectacle of a series. The series gradually pieces itself together like a puzzle. The information we learn shows is that this is no ordinary Fate anime; this technological nightmare of a system the character's life in is equal parts bewildering and horrifying. The more you learn, the more crushing everything feels, as the setting is nothing more than an automation of atrocity in which mankind has no hope beyond one last chance at survival. Nearly everything makes sense in broken context of this ravaged, now disorganized world of the frightening future, despite how brisk the pace is and how convoluted things can be regarding the floors and the vile, disturbing setting. The visions Hakuno has are largely an exception, excluding visions of the past. Sadly, that alone makes this a daunting choice, no matter where you are in terms of Fate expertise, and what makes or does not make sense will not only be difficult to explain, but will likely be lost on you regardless. The excessive flashbacks do not mitigate this issue either. The scenery is a glorious feast for the eyes, and the directing conveys this omnipresent sense of dread masterfully. SHAFT and the main director, Akiyuki Shinbou, as well as an added director, Yukihiro Miyamoto, mastered their craft perfectly with the most brimming of creative architecture your ever-pleading eyes can consume. An interesting idea that helped sell the distorted and discomforting feel of the events and setting was how often times, certain parts of the images on screen would distort as if it were a static channel on a TV or a moment of poor connection. The fight in the opening alone is proof of their luscious visuals, even if the fights in the show itself are a bit more into the territory of clumsiness to an extent, depending on the fight. Said fights are certainly far superior to Apocrypha, however, as all of them have the lovely styles and kinetic movement to rival the 22nd episode of that series. The designs are wonderful as well; everything blends perfectly with the fascinating, layered, brisk, and intense nature of the show. It is every bit as beautiful as this show’s incarnations of Rin and Sakura, and Saber herself. The rose petals and all of the attacks look majestic and vibrant, almost as much as the aforementioned architecture. Locations like the school, and Wonderland, are distinct and mesmerizing for the eyes, with such beauty only being comparable to the uniqueness of it all. The only issue is the occasional tampering of brightness that has no purpose. Other than that, the visuals are beyond exemplary. The music, while not able to be as much of a pleasure to the senses as the visuals, is still wonderful and interesting. The Opening, "Bright Burning Shout" by Takanori Nishikawa, is fantastic, perfect for a series of action, given how adrenaline-pumping it is. The Ending, "Tsuki to Hanataba (月と花束)" by Sayuri, functions in mucha similar way, with a more emotional tinge to it, though the vocals may prove bothersome to some. The background music works well for whatever scene it is in, blending in wonderfully with the mind-bending environments and the crystal clear mood of every scene. Each smaller setting within Last Encore has its own music, so aside from the opening and ending, if you hear a track in one primary location, it will almost never be played anywhere else. Think of it like video game level music, almost. None of these tracks are absurdly memorable but are ultimately nice accompaniment. What is most raw of all is what it says. People are full of desperation. They cling to survival to the point where they forget what makes life meaningful in the first place, regardless of any conflict or glory or despair. People can lose a sense of purpose and identity, a sense of life. They can be swallowed up by hatred, by confusion, by pettiness and vanity. People must always have a drive to make their lives fulfilling, finding out the meaning in things and what purpose they wish their life to have. They cannot let fear or hatred hold them back, let alone consume them as they proceed to make pathetic and ruinous decisions. They must make their lives truly have value, even with the inevitability of death, as the dead leave a legacy of decisions and worth for the living to interpret. The protagonists and each master servant pair each convey this in their own fascinating ways, with standouts aside from the beautiful and boisterous Saber and the unnerving and interesting main protagonist with his nightmarish powers that haunt him most of all, including this show’s fascinating and visceral incarnation of Shinji Matou, and other masters. Each master has a strong desire, far more than the main protagonist, and it can be fascinating and even disturbing to know what they’re in for, particularly due to the magnificent presentation of each of these, courtesy of Shinbou whose directing is phenomenal. Other characters, such as Rin, are merely there for other narrative reasons, but are entertaining nonetheless. Saber, however, is the ultimate joy, and Hakunon is fascinating to see get pieced together, at least for now. It's up to the finale special to determine if this was worth it, and I feel the original message I found slipping away by the end here as is. Fate/Extra Last Encore is arguably the most fascinating of the franchise's installments. It is a sheer spectacle in a completely different way to its brethren, and what it attempts to convey is far removed from what installments such as UBW and Zero wanted to tell, and what concepts works such as Apocrypha and Grand Order failed to properly explore. Does that make it the best? Not necessarily, but it is the most intriguing. It is the most terrifying and somber, next to Zero, the supposed holy grail of the franchise itself. Yes, UMU; it's such a fascinating work in so many respects deserves the respect it sorely lacks! Incomplete work or not, this work is a sight to behold. As I bid you adieu and await the continuation, I implore for this series to get the respect it truly deserves, as it is a passionate risk that pays off surprisingly well.

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