...are we done here? No, seriously, are we done here? Have we, at last, reached the limit of how fucking ridiculous light novel names can get? Was it not enough to inquire after the morality of picking up girls in a dungeon? Were the rascals not satisfied by dreaming of bunny girl senpais? Didn’t we all suffer enough on the death march to the parallel world rhapsody? Must we now be tormented by this ungodly amalgamation of letters and symbols arranged loosely into some perverted fascimile of a descriptive title? What’s next? Are we going to start throwing in parentheses now? Percent signs? @ symbols, dareI ask? How deep does this rabbit hole go? When does this nightmare end? When do we wake up? WHEN DO WE WAKE UP?!?!?!?!
*sigh*
Anyway, let’s talk about the latest Fate spinoff, henceforth referred to as Detective Waver because fuck me if I’m indulging this bullshit any more.
Gripes about the title aside, if there was any way to get me genuinely excited about a Fate side project, following the life and times of Waver Velvet would be it. The snot-nosed brat’s journey to maturation and humility was one of the best parts of the original Fate/Zero, telling a fantastic coming-of-age tale in the skin of the most enjoyable buddy comedy this side of Death Note. His story had tragedy, humor, heart, genuine pathos, all the building blocks that make this bloated franchise work so damn well at its best. And best of all, he was a character who still had so much to explore. Who wouldn’t want to follow this blubbering dork into adulthood and see him try to put everything he learned from Iskander into practice? Who wouldn’t want to peel back his psyche even further and explore how the boy he was influenced the man he became, and how deep those connections might run? Who wouldn’t want to see Waver Velvet move on, find closure, grow and evolve while still being the same lovable punching bag he always was? Honestly, I can’t think of many better places for a Fate spinoff to go than this.
So it’s a real shame that it ultimately doesn’t work. And the problem, sadly, is simple: it’s a property in the Fate franchise, with all the frustrating, bloated baggage that brings with it.
Structurally, at least, there’s a lot of promise to Detective Waver, which sees our favorite son inducted into the El-Melloi family as a way of repaying his debts to his mentor Kayneth, who you may remember as the least interesting part of Fate/Zero. Now a member of high mage society, Waver must balance his personal pursuits with the politics and backstabbing of the countless ruthless factions vying for power and influence. By day, he’s taken on Kayneth’s role as academy professor, but his real profession, as the name suggests, is acting as the Sherlock Holmes of the Fate world. The first half of the series is episodic in nature, each episode focusing on a new magical mystery that Waver is called out to solve. Meanwhile, a larger plot builds up in the background, eventually taking over the second half of the series for a massive, six-episode whodunnit. Accompanying him in his sleuthing are a handful of Fate crossover characters that you thankfully don’t need to be familiar with to enjoy their presence here (Luvia the wrestler is an absolute peach), a couple students from Waver’s class who enjoy tagging along his missions, some political wheelers and dealers, and Gray, a mysterious hooded girl who considers Waver her master and is easily the best part of the series. Seriously, she strikes such a great balance between adorable, goofy, badass and haunting, and every time she was on screen was a delight.
In fact, there’s a lot I liked over the course of this show’s first half. I liked the overall aesthetic and animation, which does a damn fine job replicating the hazy grandeur of Ufotable’s Fate properties (Troyca in general is a damn fine animation studio). I liked the camaderie between the characters and how willing this show was to lean into the goofier sides of the franchise. I really liked Waver himself, who, while still recognizably being the Waver of Fate/Zero, has matured and taken on some incredibly interesting dimensions. There’s a running undercurrent of PTSD metaphor, how Waver’s obsessed with finding some way to speak with Iskander again and reconnect to the greater Grail War mythos, despite it clearly having a negative impact on his mental well-being. It’s a damn well-realized portrait of someone grappling with the past, trying to figure out where their place should be in the world now that they’ve decided they want to be part of it. For the most part, it was what I always wanted from a Fate spinoff. It was enjoyable, it was lighthearted without being devoid of weight, and it legitimately fleshed out the parts of the mythos I had emotional investment in.
And then it got to the second half, and the whole thing fell apart.
See, as much as I was enjoying myself in the first part of the show, there was one aspect that wasn’t clicking as well as everything else: the detective stuff itself. Which for a detective show is kind of a problem. See, because this is a Fate spinoff, all the detective stuff that should be the draw in any good mystery show- the clues, the misdirections, trying to piece the evidence together for yourself alongside the characters- is tied up in the mechanics of the Fate world and its magic systems. And I’m sorry, but let’s be frank here: Fate’s magic is bad. It’s a convoluted mess of pretentious-sounding phrases and ideas with no set rules outside of “whatever the fuck we want it to be”, which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if it weren’t for this franchise consistently trying to build so goddamn much of its structure out of it. It’s impenetrably dense, unfairly obtuse, and you need a PhD in bullshit lorekeeping to even begin to understand it. And every single mystery in Detective Waver, from the murder weapons to the motive to the sleuthing mechanics to the reveal itself, is built out of that bullshit. Thus, there’s no way to get invested in solving the mysteries, because there’s no way for you to actually solve them, because the answer to any question is always just whatever magical bullshit sounds cool to do.
Still, this wasn’t too annoying in the first half of the show. Because the adventures were all so episodic, it allowed the stories to flesh out the characters and have fun beats in between all the magic stuff, focusing more on the actions the cast took en route to the mystery than the mystery itself. They were character pieces that just happened to have dumb, nonsensical mysteries rolling around in them, and it made it easy enough to just enjoy the emotions driving the plot while appreciating the cool magical bullshit for what it was. But once you get into that six-episode mystery plot, everything collapses under the weight of too much bullshit. The obtuse mechanics and unreliable lore completely take over, shoving the characters to the sidelines as the plot piles on complication after complication, each question making less sense than the one before and each answer raising a million more questions in its wake. It gets bogged down in complication, and the easy charm of the first half is lost in favor of exhaustion and boredom. Even as Detective Waver tries to keep the character beats flowing, they’re squeezed out by the sheer amount of disconnected stuff this plot throws at you. So in the end, once again, the greatest weakness of a Fate spinoff is that it’s too bogged down by Fate Stuff(tm) to relax into being it’s own thing.
Look, I’m a huge fan of the core Fate timeline. What Ufotable did in bring Zero and Stay Night to life wasn’t just epic, it was the kind of awe-inspiring urban fantasy that truly captures the grandeur and majesty this genre is capable of. But these classics weren’t built on mechanics and lore. They were built on characters and themes, emotions and hope, triumph and despair, stories of people with dreams and desires fighting to realize them in a world that sought to stamp them out. It was epic not because of the convoluted rules holding everything in place, it was epic because of the stories it told within those rules, the people that brought those rules to life. Detective Waver could’ve been the spinoff this franchise deserved, a story that truly did justice to the heart and humanity of Fate at its best. Instead, it gave into all of Fate’s worst instincts yet again, leaving crushing disappointment in its wake.
LeLegendAqua
September 28, 2019
Mixed Feelings
For Want of a Nail... Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note is really a who's who of Fate characters especially if you'd seen OR played from the Fate franchise but for the most part it focuses on Waver Velvet or Lord El-Melloi II taking on supernatural cases while still being a teacher in the Clock Tower. It's not until halfway that the "Rail Zeppelin" comes into play and gives us an entire arc which focuses on Waver's main focus and goal come into play. So for the first half of the anime, we see Lord El-Melloi (can we just call him Waver fromthis point?) takes on isolated supernatural cases. The only thing these separate cases does is to introduce characters, be it cameos from previous Fate installments or show off what the "Waver team" can do while tackling the supernatural case, he of course has some rivals like Hishiri Adashino voiced by Yuko Minaguchi an officer of the department of Policies of the Clock Tower and is the polar opposite in terms of investigations thus her clash with Waver.
The second half is a little more focused and changes the plot structure to be more like an arc focusing on Waver's prized possession of Iskander's cloth being stolen and this thief now boarded the "Rail Zeppelin", something like a ghost train to the dead BUT holds an invitational auction selling and "buying" Mystic Eyes and it's up to Waver to find the thief and of course...murders and strange occurrence happen while on board. This arc does by all means gives us alot of development of Waver as well as his apprentice Gray voiced by Reina Ueda but once again gives us even more cameos from other installment as well as those cameos doing thing sin the background that has links to all the incidents happening in Rail Zeppelin.
Waver and his want of a nail is pondered as well as tested against with the thief and the strange occurrences in this arc while Gray having a mild crush on her master while other characters test and is intrigued by her "status" is brought upon as well. In terms of characters...most of the main cast is developed and a bit fleshed out but oddly enough LA's favourite character is actually a cameo character from a previous Fate installment..that of the wrestling Mage Luviagelita Edelfelt voiced by Shizuka Ito from both Fate Illya and Fate stay night unlimited Blade Works, she was just a fun character and Reines El-Melloi voiced by Inori Minase was similar to Luvia as well as always was interesting when she was on screen.
Now as for the mystery element of this anime, well it's mixed to say the least mainly for the fact that the first half's isolated mysteries don't give us the audience much if any hints and how the mystery unravels itself is all kept until the end with Waver's deductions thus we can't really connect with these mysteries as well, the only exception for LA being the shopping mall mystery as the hints were there. As for the Rail Zeppelinn arc, well since it's an arc with tons of foreshowing as to who the culprit of the entire installment is, the mystery though rather convoluted since the mystery tries to bring light to MAGIC but for what's it's worth they didn't exactly handwave it away...but likely will confuse you with the magic mumbo jumbo and how it all connects, the mystery at worst is confusing, at best is barely manageable as a mystery and of course Waver has EVERYTHING prepared and hid it away from the audience until it's needed. So yeah the mystery element to say is mixed and it doesn't do the anime any favours and much like Higurashi trying to unravel magical phenomenons into rational real notions killed the mystery, Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note does it to try and enrich the Fate lore but at the expense of making a rather magical mystery even more magically confusing....it's Fate guys...it's Fate.
If your wondering how many installments have links and cameos to Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note...well Fate Zero, Fate stay night Unlimited Blade Works, Fate Apocrypha and Fate Grand Order and no you DON'T need to watch these in order to understand what's going on in Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note, though it more or less hints that THEIR roles from that installment in question instead. In a ways it seems that Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note is like a codex for the Fate franchise to keep up to speed with the Fate lore or know more about it.
The animation done by TROYCA was actually very well done, form the crisp character designs to the great backgrounding as well as the magical effects of this anime was great in all respects. Even though Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note is something of a spinoff from the Fate franchise, TROYCA still put in the leg work in terms of animation.
As for the voice cast..well we have a large cast but LA might as well do the standouts MVP's and for LA...Shizuka Ito as Luvia (of course), Reina Ueda as Gray, Inori Minase as Reines, Yuko Minaguchi as Hishiri and finally Daisuke Namikawa as Waver.
As for the final villain, he DOES tie things not only the Rail Zeppelin arc but some of the isolated mysteries as the man behind the man in orchestrating everything and thus the rest of the final episodes of the Rail Zeppellin focuses on stopping the final villain, he or more or less his Servant, Hephaestion is actually the more interesting villain oddly enough all due to her screentime and presences all the while the final villain is the cackling "world dominating" villain that Waver needs to take care off, while Gray fighting Hephaestion is the highlight of the Rail Zeppelin arc.
If anything along with what LA thinks that Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note is a codex for the Fate franchise, LA ALSO thinks this will maybe' get people up to date for the Fate installment coming up, mostly Fate Grand Order Camelot and Babylonia...but that just may have been LA.
LA thinks Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note tried to be so many things at once, one part magical mystery anime, one part Waver's story after Fate/Zero and one part a codex for Fate and became a jumbled mess of what it really wanted to be and let's not get started on the mystery element that did itself no favours. If this was JUST an anime about Waver wanting to reunite with Iskander then it'll be fine heck throw in the mysteries in but when it tries to be a pseudo Holy Grail War while being in a murder mystery genre then LA thinks Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note failed to notice what it was trying to be, it crossed the boundary if anything. Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note was a jumbled mess of a mystery anime but an even bigger crisis of having an identity and piggybacking off Waver to achieve it's overly complex convoluting confusing plot.
Waver deserved better...
CrCrusaderElly
October 12, 2019
Mixed Feelings
Awww! What a shame! I was so hyped by the idea of a miniseries that was cannon and followed Waver Velvet from Fate/Zero. A nice little detective show with more background on the clock tower and characterization; no need for much fighting, just cool deductions and Waver being Waver and squeeaaa! ^_^ And y'know Waver was real cool. Glad to have his original voice actor back. It's amazing to hear him do the old-Waver (very fitting), but also still be able to do the young version every now and then where needed. I also love Waver as a character. He's bitter, filled with regret and guilt, hardto make friends with, calculating - but when you do get close, he's a real nice guy who's trying to do the right thing. So much so, he takes on debts that aren't even his'! And I love how he solves his (and others') issues.
But!
In the end, the show didn't work for me. Art and sound was fine. Loved Waver and accepted Gray. I enjoyed it somewhat just because I crave Fate, but I also missed a whole bunch.
Basically, the crimes are too convoluted or filled with mumbo-jumbo that I just don't get any of it. Maybe I'm just dumb; but it feels like the show expects you to know the entire nasuverse, high-end astrology, and a whole bunch of weird rituals to have just a vague idea on what's going on.
I didn't understand the villain or his plot, I didn't understand the fights, I didn't understand the motives or methods, I didn't understand the noble phantasm, none of it. And that made it all just a blur..
On top of that, most characters aren't great. For one, I think the show expects you to have seen several spinoff series, or otherwise be heavily invested in Fate/Grand Order and the like. I recognized a few characters, but most I didn't. And all of them get far too little time, so that I don't know who they are, or their motivations, or really get a feel for them. Which is a shame, because some of them had real promise. I liked the 'filler' episode in the mall, which actually focuses on the three girls hanging out, and allowing us to get to know them. Wish there was more than that!
Finally Gray - she's a new character and she's a Saber-lookalike because reasons. Now, the reasons are actually fine enough, with a bit of head-cannon. I also think she's different enough as a character, to actually be a character. That said, I think she had more potential. I feel like she was only there because we needed another Saber-face, and some action scenes. But I think there was no need for the weird fights, and thus no need for her. If only there was more time!
She's pretty cool tho.
So yeah! Waver's cool. If you're a total fan and/or you know everything about F/GO and all that stuff, go for it! But I can't advise it as a standalone series, to my sadness. :'(
