Fate Apocrypha: First Impressions

Fate Apocrypha is an anime within the Fate Universe taking place after Fate Zero and Fate Stay Night. I loved Fate Zero and disliked Fate Stay Night–So where does Fate Apocrypha stand with its predecessors?

The Fate series is about wizards summoning heroes from history and legend into the present day to fight for the Holy Grail.
Participants of the Holy Grail War are divided into wizard Masters and summoned heroic Servants. The Servants are divided into seven classes: Saber, Rider, Lancer, Berserker, Archer, Caster, and Assassin.
Each of these Servants has a superpower based upon their legend called a “Noble Phantasm”.
Masters have tattoos on their right hand called “command spells.” With these tattoos the Masters can give up to three orders that the servant must obey even if it conflicts with their personality.

THE BAD
The scenes involving a boy homunculus gaining consciousness tend to drag. It’s hard to empathize with a character that has no memory or motivation. He’s innocent, but that’s all he is. The first episode is all exposition that makes no sense to anyone who hasn’t seen the previous series.

THE GOOD
Fate Apocrypha has doubled the roster of awesome characters. Some stand-out Servants include: Mordrid, Jack the Ripper, Frankenstein, and Shakespeare. The action scenes are abundant and flashy. I remember watching Fate Zero on a low quality anime-streaming site. Now with Netflix I can see the duel of Sabers on my HD TV!

THE VERDICT
This series may be hard to follow for new viewers, but it plays like good fan fiction. The edgiest, sexiest, and darkest characters are finally being animated and fighting each other. I don’t think the plot or characters arcs will “wow” me like in Fate Zero. But at least the characters are more fun than in Fate Stay Night. I’m having a blast watching the anime, so that’s all that really matters.