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Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia


Shiroe

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I caught up to the two episodes of Fate/Grand Order: Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia. This is the seventh singularity of Fate/Grand Order, and is considered to be pretty good by the people who've played it. I wouldn't know though, I'm still on Okeanos.

If you don't know anything about Fate/Grand Order or Fate in general, here's a blurb for you.

Spoiler

The Fate series was original a visual novel by Type-Moon in the form of Fate/stay night. This had three routes depending upon the psychology of Shirou and what girl he would romance: Fate (Saber), Unlimited Blade Works (Rin), and Heaven's Feel (Sakura). Overall, the visual novel has heavy themes of idealism, reality, and selflessness of an individual. It's a huge time sink, and it's heavily debated how to watch the series if you don't want to read the visual novel.

Fate/Grand Order is a mobile game spin-off of Fate/stay night that focuses more on historical figures and interactions rather than themes of the individual. The story is pretty up-and-down, but I've been enjoying it overall so far. In the first main story of Fate/Grand Order there is: Singularity F, the Seven Singularities, and the Final Singularity. Babylonia is the last of the Seven Singularities, so you're going to be missing out on 6 of the chapters. Nothing too important has happened so far, but you do lose some build up.

It seems like the only thing you need to watch before Fate/Grand Order: Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia is Fate/Grand Order: First Order. There's some fan-pandering to the original Fate/stay night fans, but you don't need to watch Fate/stay night to understand Fate/Grand Order. First Order is an hour long movie of Singularity F.

There's also Fate/Grand Order: Moonlight/Lostroom, but that's actually way AFTER Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia, so don't touch that.

TOO LONG; DIDN'T READ: Watch First Order, then watch Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia.

So far, I'm liking this anime. I honestly can't tell if I like the pacing or not, but the animations scenes so far have been top-notch. It seems like studios other than Ufotable are finally able to handle the Fate series (CloverWorks). 

 

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27 minutes ago, The History Kid said:

What are you talking about?  They only just started to animate the series...there's only even 3 episodes at an hour a piece.

I said they are not animating the whole game just the last arc and if you haven't played it you won't get the story.

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Watched episode 3 yesterday. Yeah, the pacing is definitely off, but I can't put my finger on it. I'm still enjoying it, though.

On 10/19/2019 at 11:31 AM, BurnsyCEO said:

I said they are not animating the whole game just the last arc and if you haven't played it you won't get the story.

To be fair, that's just Fate in a nutshell. If you haven't read the legend of King Arthur, you won't get the full story of Saber. If you haven't read the legends of Cu Chulainn, Diarmuid, etc.

But you don't really need to read those to enjoy Fate for what it is. Fate/stay night did place some relevance on those stories, but it was never really about them. Like I mentioned in the OP, Fate/stay night was about criticizing naive idealism and selflessness, and you didn't miss much from not being an expert of Arthurian legend.

(This isn't even mentioning the fact that Fate/stay night is meant to be read first, but takes place AFTER Fate/Zero and The Case Files of Lord El-Melloi II and mentions events from those series.)

Similarly, this entry of Fate doesn't really rely too heavily upon the past arcs. If you've seen First Order, then you get the gist of Fate/Grand Order. But if you feel like you'd be missing out on too much, then hey, you don't have to watch it. Personally, I like mysterious shows anyways, but everyone has their flavors.

Edited by Musuko
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  • 1 month later...

Just watched the first episode and feeling a bit underwhelmed. Not expecting it to be as epic as Zero, but still felt pretty lightweight even compared to First Order and the prequel episode. Biggest complaint is that it feels like the characters aren’t so much talking to each other as explaining things to the audience. Though I guess that’s to be expected given that they are skipping over scenarios. Biggest appeal at the moment is the character designs for the female characters (don’t judge me :P ) This is just a first impression though, so will see how things go from here.

Edited by Ohiotaku
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  • 4 months later...

I'm a month late, but I finally finished it. These characters are amazingly fun to watch, and I had a lot of fun finally seeing these awesome abilities and personalities come to life.

I'll give the show an 8/10. Like Ohiotaku said earlier, it's lightweight in comparison to Fate/Zero or Fate/stay night. My biggest complaint about the show is that it doesn't spend enough time on the serious moments, making it constantly feel like it's in happy mode.

Now for some fanboy moments.

Spoiler

I was spoiled that the mysterious old man was First Hassan, the Grand Assassin, but I was still HYPED to see him. DOKODA BEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM

(Sad I didn't roll First Hassan, though.)

Holy shit, it's Archer Gilgamesh. He fucking did the Enuma Eilish. This is probably the only time I've ever seen a humble Archer Gilgamesh.

 

RIP Enkidu. I'm still not exactly sure what Kingu is, but RIP.

 

I LOOOOOOOOOOOVED watching the sync between Lord Camelot and Garden of Avalon. Still sad I don't have Merlin, but that's fine; I have all three variations of Gilgamesh.

 

Quetzacoatl was fun to watch, but she definitely overshadowed Jaguar Man. Interestingly enough, I rolled an Ozymandias last week, who is head to head with Quetzacoatl for the best Rider position. Achilles is still best Rider in my heart, though. I think Ozymandias is in Camelot, so we'll see him there in the upcoming movie.

 

I'm still not a fan of Rin, but Ereshkigal and Ishtar made me like her a little bit more. Maybe it's the Stockholm Syndrome. I didn't get to see Ereshkigal's Noble Phantasm, but Ishtar's was pretty cool.

 

I don't have much to say about Ana and Gorgon. While the animation for the Gorgon sisters was phenomenal, I don't know what else to say for the actual Ana character. She's cute, that's about it.

 

One thing I also noticed was that there were some projection-like (?) Noble Phantasms. Unlike Emiya Shirou's projections which seem to be pure replicas, the projections in Babylonia were translucent, like glass. This was pretty cool for Thermopylae Enomotia and Lord Camelot, but I'm still not actually sure what Thermopylae Enomotia actually DOES. Same goes for Benkei and Ushiwakamaru's Noble Phantasms.

Even with my hype, I'd say this show is pretty bad for Fate newcomers. If you're new to Fate and don't know where to start, please read the original Fate/stay night visual novel. This show also doesn't make a lot of sense if you've skipped over all of the previous singularities, so you may have to read them or play the Fate/Grand Order mobile game.

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