Back to _Aeterno's Profile _Aeterno's Profile

It's been a year or so since I tried watching it the first time (can't remember exactly). I forgot where I stopped the last time, so I rewatched it from the start and finishing it whole thing in one sitting. My impression of this adaptation didn't change that much, so everything I may have said somewhere else still stands. This is still not the worst Type-Moon anime that there is, as expected.

Having this anime be one of the 2 only Type-Moon shows I haven't fully seen until this far had my head full with many parallels to compare it to other Type-Moon adaptations. I have ... finished the first half of Tsukihime Remake in 2021 and been stalling on finishing this anime until now. I have read the Tsukihime manga not too long after finishing the OG Tsukihime timeline before going into the Remake timeline, and this anime is my 4th time experiencing the story of Tsukihime.

This show had me conflicted. It had me going from 5-6/10 territory to 6-7/10, and then back to 5-6. The end result is as you can see. Route-mixing was pretty horrible, I admit, but it wasn't nearly as bad as in Deen Stay Night. Some of the changes highlighted how different the route-mixing was here compared to the Tsukihime manga, and this anime doesn't compare to it at all. Some original scenes were reminding me of Case Files or UBW from ufotable for its seeming necessity in speeding up some story beats. On the other hand, it also reminded me of UBW movie from Deen that was basically a highlight reel version of that route. You can go on and on about how everything was made worse, but I don't feel like going over all of it here. The crux of the issue here is this anime is 12 episodes long. A lot of stuff would've been better if it had twice the runtime, which made me compare it more to Deen Stay Night.
Despite the surreal insanity (which I still cannot believe happened) near the end of Deen anime being much worse than anything in here, Deen Stay Night was still more whole compared to this due to it having 24 episodes to follow its original route more properly than this anime. If this Tsukihime adaptation had just as many episodes, it could've been paced better, and it could follow the original story without having to cut as much stuff as it did. More of its soundtrack could be utilized, too.

People already said pretty much what I've been feeling to go in-depth about it.
Yes, this anime makes sense only if you're read the source material. You cannot see each anime addition in larger context through this show alone. Yes, turning down Nasuverse lore stuff might have served to improve some stuff, but it also failed to present everything in a coherent way and ultimately failed the story. You don't feel like that this is a world that would live on without you looking at it, the pacing of the story often was too forced for it to feel this way on top of that. You feel like what was left of the lore was so underdeveloped, that the whole idea of turning down the lore on some level doomed to fail the story from the start.

Let me say that I really liked the vibe of this after coming back and getting through the slow beginning again. I felt like the soul of Tsukihime was preserved in this anime, despite it being overtuned, but the content couldn't utilize it fully due to short runtime.. Me coming here after the original, and then the remake series with its sparkly style and somewhat different-feeling Arcueid, I was so happy to see more mature-feeling deceptive onee-san design with its original narrative philosophy hidden within it, that I was kinda starting channeling those people who say the remake Arc is worse than Tsukihime anime Arc. I missed her original style so much and it made me once again realize that we will never have a good Tsukihime anime with original Arcueid.

I like Tsuki:Re voice acting a lot more than in here. Even when comparing this anime to original Melty Blood series or Carnival Phantasm, they will still have better performance than in this anime. Some reviewer said that voice acting here was Ghost Stories dub level of quality, but I couldn't feel that at all. Some outright hilarious moments are there, for sure, but not as many as you'd think after listening to those people. I thought the voice actors were pretty good to alright, except some weird scenes here and there. I was kinda disappointed they didn't do more things with Ciel. Her lines could've had more life in them, but I suppose this isn't Ciel route for her to shine a bit more (this could be said for every main character, I suppose). When I first listened to Ciel here (whenever it was that I decided to watch the show the first time), I didn't overfixate on her or anything. But after finishing Higurashi VNs earlier this year, Ciel's anime VA burned into my brain ever since, so I couldn't help but pay extra attention to her this time. Arihiko was pretty good for its time here and the contrast to his remake VA was interesting, and so was in this Yumizuka's case (who is here as "Yumitsuka" for some reason). Some of the more shaky stuff was to me, to start with, Shiki himself, I guess? He was 50/50 for me. And then not having Jouji Nakata as Nero Chaos was simply not doing it for me. Chaos overall had been done pretty dirty in this show, which is just sad. Aoko having completely different overly mature vibe to how she would be in her every other iteration was surreal. I get that it was somewhat deceptive in the original VN and you needed to get through Melty Blood and subsequently Mahoyo to realize Aoko's true character, but here it felt a bit too deceptive. Although it was fascinating seeing how the oldschool anime style of Aoko differed. Made me think about what "could've been" Mahoyo anime in that style, at least.

What they did with Yumizuka was a bit unexpected (although it wasn't much), it made me come up with new theories about how her new long-awaited route in the remake might go when it releases. Just wanted to say that somewhere before I conclude.

My disappointment after this anime was more melancholic than anything. It didn't bore me to death, making me stare at the screen in silence instead of watching it, like some of the Case Files' episodes did. It didn't frustrate me as much about having the anime being insultingly unnecessary to the original source, like CANAAN anime was. First half of Camelot also made me more disappointed at the lost opportunity of having a proper adaptation. And I probably hated watching Strange Fake special more than any of the aforementioned Type-Moon anime yet, with how physically sick it made me (the whiplash of light novel experience vs anime was way too great for me). Tsukihime anime's reputation made the experience way more bearable than any of those for me. Once again, I do not think this was the worst Type-Moon anime that there is. I'd wager that after Kara no Kyoukai, even some of the normie anime-only Nasuverse fans who don't have a stick up their asses about watching old anime could enjoy it to some degree (people who were able to do that without any source material are still the weirdest to me, though). What is left for me now is to watch Prillya anime fully someday. I was and still am firmly certain that you should leave that beast until you really are finished everything else on the Type-Moon timeline. I'd probably need to catch up to every single FGO manga adaptation out there before I start feeling so down in the dumps as to start watch goddamn Prillya anime (Maybe by the time I get to Prillya anime in full, the fucking manga finally ends. We barely see a few chapters per year now, and I can't tell if the story fell off or not reading the new chapters with this slow as hell release schedule. Hiroshi probably works on the anime production more than the manga at this point idk, or they stalling so the timing for both mediums' releases matches up or something). Whether that be the worst Type-Moon anime for me or not remains to be seen, but it's not Tsukihime for me. CANAAN is probably still rocking that number 1 worst spot. Maybe if I wasn't avoiding this anime like a plague, and have tried watching this right after finishing the manga or even (god forbid) the original VN, I would've been way more angry at it like some people in here. But thankfully, I had more foresight than that. If I were to go into something as seemingly bad and hated as Tsukihime anime, I need all the context in the world to judge it from every angle I possibly could (I like to try tearing apart hated things objectively, even as I try to enjoy myself, and still always being open to the majority's opinion being potentially wrong yet again). Every parallel I could see by experiencing more of Tsukihime outside of this anime, or Type-Moon in general, I need to be able to draw (all except Prillya anime lol). But more importantly, Type-Moon has so much more worthwhile stuff to catch up on than this anime, that being one of those people is just ridiculous to me, and it should be to you as well. Keep this anime on the backburner even as the biggest Nasu fan ever, is my advise to you. Even when red garden routes of the remake series come out, don't rush into this anime even after finishing them all. I'm confident that even if Tsukihime 2 comes out someday or maybe the Remake anime becomes real, and you're going through Type-Moon timeline somewhere in the future in preparation, you should ignore this anime until who-knows-when. Despite how annoying that stale as hell "Tsukihime anime doesn't exist" meme might get sometimes, you definitely should pretend this anime doesn't exist until the right time comes. That's my take on it, at least.

"Readers are not interested in how you came to watch the work or how the anime made you feel. They are interested in whether they will like the anime and are using your review to decide this."
This new vague warning before writing a review seems so odd now. My review will not satisfy people who want that kind of review. It is more of a review to see after you're already done with the show and more. I will have some concrete things to say and a lot of opinions based on feelings, but I expect every single person who reads my take on CF ... anime series to finish not only the anime, but a hell of a lot more.

Story: -/10
Characters: -/10
Animation: 8/10
Music: 8/10
Enjoyment: -/10
Overall: 5/10

Many aspects of this are wildly different depending on the episode and I can't give this thing a more precise rating. But even being very generous with my rating, 5/10 is the absolute maximum overall score I can give it for now. You should not watch this show if you haven't read the source material and then some. You have been warned.

I've searched for any novel readers having the same impression on the show as me in the review section, but couldn't find anything sufficient. This review will probably be boring at first, as I like having everyone who reads this being completely in tune, and understanding where the nuance in my experience may lie to the best of my ability without spending too much time as my big handicap. Thus, I'll be repeating my path through the Nasuverse as many times as it takes on each review that I feel needs it.

Now, without being overly detailed about everything and without including nearly any databooks or bonus stuff that does not seem to be overly-relevant, an oversimplified part of my journey that's relevant to Case files looks something like what you see below. I'm sure the ones who "know" will understand my reasoning instantly as well as some potential flaws near the end of this path. Do forgive me if some memory error occurs.

FSN VN > FZ LN/manga/anime/ova/cd dramas > UBW anime > FHA > GoA chapter 0 (the rest was read later) > Prillya manga+prequel movie to compare how certain events were handled > Apocrypha Unbirth > FSF 2008 > FA vol 1-4/anime/manga/(vol 5 and SoS was read somewhere in the early fgo timeline) > Notes. > KnK LN/movies/manga > Tsukihime VN/Plus/Kagetsu Tohya/Melty series/tale/talk/Prelude/Tsukihime manga/Tsuki no Sango/MnH/Carnival+Hibichika/AATM/Koha-ace vol1/etc > HF anime+cd drama 2 > unlimited codes > Fate/Extra > searching for more GoA translations on BL forums and reddit (this was still before the full translation dropped, but I managed to piece it all together with finding Chinese TL to carefully translate) > Fate/Extra CCC (all routes) > Tsukihime remake routes 1-2 > Mahoyo+first love > Clock Tower 2015 > Case files LN vol 1-3 > Proto OVA+LN vol 1-2 > FGO singularity F+First order > Extella > Proto vol 3-5 + labyrinth > FGO part 1+Camelot anime right after that quest > FSF 2015 vol 1-3? > Koha Ace GO+Type Redline > all part 1 events before Solomon > Solomon quest in-game before taking a small break from FGO > Foxtail+Extella Zero+Extella material+Last Encore > Case files vol 4-5 > Babylonia+Solomon anime > starting FGO part 1.5 > Case files vol 6-7 > finishing FGO part 1.5 > FGO part 2 (first half, without events) > Moonlight/Lostroom > FGO Part 2 events until NA ran out > FSF vol 4-6? > Requiem vol 1+collab event > FGO JP part 2 main story before it came to NA (LB5.5 - LB6.5 + Arcade story) > re-reading GoA with the new full translation post-LB6 > finding out about Case files collab rerun extra story and nearly spoiling myself, waiting to read it after finishing the CF novel and LEM > Case files vol 8-9 > Case files anime (ep 0-10) > Case files vol 10 > reading Case files's first arc in the manga while re-reading vol 1 of the novel side by side > Case files material databook (LEM) > CF anime episodes 11-13 > ??? (future me isn’t relevant here, but it might change)

Honestly, even with this I don't have as much to say about the show as I would've liked to because it was set-up wrong from the get-go. This review will be interconnected with my light novel and manga experience. It's a core component to any introspective source material fan reviewing adaptations and is pretty important.


FINAL SPOILER WARNING: I will spoil things from all over the place, beyond the anime, and beyond just CF novel series. You have been warned.


Before even watching the show, I already had tremendous issues with the anime just adapting volume 4-5, but tried to stay open-minded as usual. And at first, my impression on the show from episodes 0-1 were pretty positive, despite some of my issues. It was really interesting to see how the anime can handle Case Files in animation. How will the presence of visuals, voice acting, music, and generally anything outside of Gray's (and sometimes Reines') perspective will affect the feeling of everything? It was fun at first because I could tell that despite clearly getting a wildly different vibe from the novel I could find enjoyment in this anyway. I liked the vibe of this show's music (made from the same person responsible for KnK OST), I really liked OP/ED to the point of ED becoming one of my favorites among any Nasuverse anime titles pretty quickly. I consider the casting choices to be perfect for everyone except maybe Yvette and Hishiri. That first potential exception is somewhat debatable because she was meant to be annoying to some extent in the novel, but I cannot express how much I started hating her guts after she was given this voice here and it made me actually dislike her a lot when the Rail Zeppelin arc was taking place (which is unusual for me after not having any issues with her in the novel). My dislike for Hishiri's voice may seem a bit dumb, especially how it seems to fit her description from the novel, but I'm just really tired of this overly onee-san voice and it just annoyed me the whole way through. But alright, enough about the voices. I didn't mind episode 0 being focused on the cat incident only very briefly mentioned in the very first page of volume 1. There was an image of a dead cat at the very beginning, and then Gray and Luvia were talking about Waver where one single line about the cat popped up (or something along those lines). They made an episode out of just that. Which is cool and all, but it sneakily started this tendency within me where I question many of this extra stuff with a "why?" when we could've had a normal full adaptation instead. I tried to be thankful that we got any Case files anime at all, and this mindset is honestly the only reason I switched my decently long-lasted rating of 4/10 into 5 after finishing the last episodes. But I digress. My experience with episode 1 is a bit complicated to explain, but overall I was fascinated with it as a novel reader. Reading that scene of Waver meeting with Reines for the first time at the start of volume 2 from Reines' POV was undoubtedly better than in the more basic way the anime did it. The anime changed up young Reines’ design by shortening her dress, giving it frills, and having Reines shorter haircut. And when I was watching the scene, I found myself liking it more than the illustration of her in the same scene from the novel or in that Fate/Zero: Another Epilogue chapter (even if it was a bit closer to the novel than the anime design-wise and with more bits from the novel preserved in general). The anime may have been basic in a lot of ways (without having the luxury to go into things deeper due to the format of anime restricting it somewhat) and the pacing of the episode split the scene into 2 parts with the Waver traveling and meeting Melvin part in-between, but I liked this approach. I also found the changes to the way Waver gets interrogated in this version pretty amusing. Having Waver be upside down and the guards shaking him around is a silly devious thing that Reines may come up with if she were to feel particularly impish and childish (the new design helps with that feeling too, so good job). I liked how the anime did it with what it had, basically. Now, the Fate/Zero manga, on the other hand, took a more comical approach and the peculiar artstyle of it helped a lot for the situation to feel very lighthearted compared to every other version of this scene, and I liked it in its own way, too. All 4 iterations of their meeting scene do their job well in very different ways and are all welcome additions. But I’m unsure if any of them work quite as well as the novel. In the novel it was very expository (which is exactly what we needed and waited for after that first volume), introspective, and with a certain vibe to it that only really was felt in the Case files manga adaptation of the scene. In that manga, this scene was handled as perfectly as it could be in the visual medium without going full light novel. Definitely was the second best version of the scene after the LN (it was even better than the original in some instances). I may have liked the visual and directorial approach of the anime version of the scene, but Case files manga made me truly understand why the first intended Reines’ design from that novel illustration works the best, after all (especially with the content of the novel), and why having very little of Reines goofing around in that situation was superior in the narrative compared to her feeling a bit too childish in the Zero version and to a lesser extent in the anime. Reines may like to do a little trolling and can be silly at times, but she is also supposed to be very mature and reserved for her age due to all of the bullshit she had to go through like having to be a target for assainations and such. This duality is pretty much what makes up Reines’ personality. She is much cuter in the anime and you can argue she looks better there visually in some aspects, but the manga handles her much better in that core aspect of her character visually than anywhere else. We see less of her being exaggerated and more ’real’ in the novel and the manga thanks to the knowledge of what Reines was thinking about during this ‘heartwarming’ episode and pretty much every time we have the narrative switch to her perspective. It doesn’t take much to realize how much better this introduction was for Reines in the novel and the CF manga compared to the anime and Zero manga, so I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed by the thought of people seeing those versions first instead of the superior ones (although ofc no one’s reading Zero manga’s version first normally unless they know Japanese or something, so realistically it’s mostly the anime I’m a bit concerned about). That’s nearly all my thoughts on the topic of the ‘Reines meeting Waver’ prologue, but I have one more thing to say before moving on. Having this prologue scene interrupted by Waver traveling and then having our first young Melvin meeting all in one episode is quite awesome. If not to at least just know how both may affect the story and my experience in general (granted, I can't really ever know how it feels like for anime-only people, but oh well, you can't have it all). When we finish with Melvin scenes and go back to finish up with the second part of Reines meeting, the coat transition into Iskander’s at the end is just awesome and with that short montage stuff the ending of episode 1 is pretty great. Really makes you wonder if it would be better for someone to skip episode 0 or not, even if it came out earlier than this episode or not. Anime-only experience must be super weird as usual and it is quite amusing to think about. But of course, I would never advocate CF anime or this point in the story being your first time meeting Reines or Melvin. I’d rather most people read the novel or try the manga (there’s really not enough manga translations, though). You can already imagine by how long it took us in the novel or the manga to see that Reines meeting scene and even more so meeting Melvin for the first time properly in the later volumes just how ridiculously fucked this anime had to be paced to make up for the number of episodes or a limited production or whatever the hell was the reason behind it. Part of the reason for some of the directorial moves is simply the format of an anime being different from the novel, but a lot of the scenes in the manga prove it could still be made work well in the anime if they maintained similar pacing and the core structure of the novel without jumping around to the 3rd arc straight away. In that aspect alone this anime deserves the spot of the worst Nasuverse anime. Starting off, it's already wildly different from anything we've seen in the Nasuverse and not in a good way. We've had a lot of wild shit happen here: from KnK 6 being simply ridiculous as an adaptation, HF3 anime ending section being very unfriendly to the anime-only Fate fans, Zero anime being a menace to every OG novel reader fan out there for being a normie magnet, Deen Fate route mixing shenanigans, Deen UBW being a fun scene compilation movie and nothing more, ufotable’s UBW changes lessening Illya’s character +spoiling Zero +"hidden" stuff for those who played FHA and CCC (and have read Case files), Prototype OVA being a thing to mald over never being a full anime, Prillya anime being Prillya anime, random FGO animes that somehow are watched by the people who’ve never played FGO, Tsukihime anime actually existing, one of the most reference-heavy titles like FSF becoming an anime, and up until Last Encore being so unfathomably based most cannot understand it (much less enjoy). This CF anime is the only one that went as far as just starting in the literal middle of the story and not finishing it because the story was never meant to be consumed separately from the novel. CF anime tried to do it anyway, and it reminded me of the Canaan anime situation where the core part of the story was already told in Shibuya Scramble. But that didn’t start in the middle of the story, instead after it was done already. The only difference between CF and Canaan anime is that the latter wasn’t trying to adapt anything and instead was serving as a largely redundant product that only served to make the original source look worse by having this unnecessary thing attached to it (even if having more Type-Moon content isn’t entirely unwelcome). CF was and is a LN adaptation and it tried to do this ridiculous thing. I could tolerate it with FGO anime a lot more because the source material there wasn’t a light novel and FGO in general tended to be a very flexible thing to adapt compared to something like Case files. And currently, having parts of FGO’s first arc adapted/interpreted through First Order, Camelot, Babylonia, and Solomon is already much better than only having Rail Zeppelin in the CF anime being the only thing adapted in the entire novel series. First Order would be an equivalent to Arda’s Castle arc and Solomon would serve as an equivalent of the final arc to Case files (Grand Roll) and we do not have either adapted in the anime form here. And while I hate that with an endless passion, I gotta admit this takes some balls. If I am really just being impatient and if CF anime really will get that final arc adapted some time later, I’ll have to take that into account later, however then you’d have the same problem as in this first CF anime with later having characters from volume 1 appearing as well as the events from all other volumes mentioned which they may even remove entirely to replace with more anime-only stuff again. That hypothetical Grand Roll anime adaptation is going to be just as weird as this one if they don’t adapt more of the previous arcs, but with just a bit more chances to be enjoyable because the whole thing with Heartless and his servant was set-up in this anime already and that’s what’s the most important. Rail Zeppelin anime overall was just not it for being a setup for CF anime series, just like the first Camelot movie was before the second one saved it from being a pure garbage adaptation or having anime-only people experiencing Babylonia arc before going through Camelot. Rail Zeppelin anime is the closest to the first Camelot movie in my earlier “FGO anime to CF anime comparison” equation. It can also be close to the latter half of Babylonia (when it started to fall off), but Camelot fits a bit more here. CF anime managed to disappoint me more than Tsukihime anime (for already having an expectation of that one being terrible) or Prillya anime (with an expectation of it simply being nothing more than a uoh joke compilation), and This CF anime is right up there with the worst of the worst for me in Nasuverse as of right now. But it can definitely change in the future more easily than the other anime I’ve mentioned could.
I went off-topic for long enough with my whiny ass rants. Let’s bring some positive energy back again for a moment and remind you where we’ve left off. Episode 1 did everything well with these peculiar production circumstances. Having to see Waver travel around and get in trouble with Melvin after the 4th HGW was a great addition to this weird limited anime format they were going for as was having to see the scene of Melvin landing Waver the money animated. It was confusing when paired with the cat episode before it, but pretty good. I was now ever more hopeful to see the anime get to the arc it was supposed to adapt. But what I didn't take into account is something ridiculous happening like this show only having 7 episodes to adapt the entirety of the Rail Zeppelin arc in the latter half of the show with the rest of the earlier episodes being anime-only filler that blue-balls its viewers. That made me pretty freaking mad, but the first 0-1 episodes did pretty alright as far as filler-esque episodes go, so I tried to be patient. Episode 2 was when it started to go downhill. As much as having to see some random Animusphere branch family filler seems okay in vacuum or some random Clock Tower shenanigans in general, I'd really rather not have to sit through it when I know it could've been novel content instead. But the unfortunate thing here is that the overall plot doesn't work without this kind of tomfoolery precisely because, despite the anime being so bold with starting in the middle of the novel and even referencing stuff no anime-only watcher would know, they didn't want to go all the way with it. Having the viewers see this overly-complicated magecraft stuff wasn't as neat as in the novel and even in there it wasn't a particularly big reason for your enjoyment (as you can't truly guess anything as you would with most normal detective novels and just having to follow the flow), instead it was character interactions and the overall lore stuff. Having to see this random filler plot where anime-only people can see a fraction of this astronomical magical stuff we went through in the novels but so much worse is just irritating. It's obvious that the anime wanted to hit the same beats as the novel with displaying Waver's magical deconstruction prowess and to make callbacks to it later because they’ve decided volume 1-3 weren't worth its own adaptation apparently. And let me make this clear, I am super mad about CF anime not starting with volume 1 because I truly think it's the best starting point for the series and I have made a point to myself to re-read it alongside the manga of that arc to make this point clear to myself once and for all that anime sucks ass (trying to uncover the differences between the manga and the novel was a big W). And as a bonus, if you've read just a few volumes of CF before FGO on top of Garden of Avalon, your enjoyment for Camelot will skyrocket to overshadow Babylonia in some ways. But I digress. Episode 2's family drama angle was very much a replacement for what would've happened in Twin Towers of Iselma arc (vol 2-3) and the secret plan of the dead father becoming a culprit instead of someone present being suspected of it at first was clearly meant to be Adra Castle arc's replacement (vol 1) and it was all in the same episode. Next up, episode 3 actually had that random-ass Clock Tower Slice-of-Life nonsense that I wanted to see more for a long time and I enjoyed it a whole lot more than episode 2. Much of the lightheartedness here cheered me up a little and gave me some more hope for the Case files anime to turn out enjoyable by the end. Although, it irked me a little bit that Flat's inner character stuff was mentioned at all here. After catching up to the FSF novel, it was done and revealed so much better as it was always supposed to be truly delved into right there in FSF and nowhere else. This was why the CF novel wasn’t really keen on wanting to explore his character and why you always knew that something about him was off. You were supposed to get all of that from FSF instead of this random filler episode, and the thought of someone watching this episode before reading FSF makes me cringe deeply, even if this moment was very brief. Another thing that irked me a little bit were tiny FGO references within this episode. I did like them and I wouldn’t want them removed but at the same time it’s amusing how had I been a little more of an idiot and decided to read the novel up until vol 4-5 and went straight for the anime without catching up to FGO, I would've missed out lol. This is just the nature of these easter eggs and it’s not even an issue (I just wanted to bring it that thought). Tiny pet-peeves of mine aren't enough to really detract from my initial enjoyment, even if I did still feel it'd be better to focus more on the novel content instead and for these random filler-esque episodes to happen in-between instead of replacing it entirely. Episodes 4-5 were a mixed bag and they actually managed to make an anime-only filler arc on top of this already ridiculous situation Case files anime is in. But let’s start from the beginning. I like the scene of Reines and Bram (Sola-Ui's brother) talking about the 5th HGW for a tiny bit a whole lot, but while briefly bringing up Bazett didn’t really change anything, Altrum's brief presence on the photo only served to remind me that we couldn't have volumes 2-3 animated. Having both photos there was perfect and better than one or none, so the point is still “I like this scene”. Now about this arc thing they were trying to do. By the end of episode 4 I was so shocked and mad that those bastards included an anime-only filler arc instead of animating more of the novel, it was kinda funny. But I've actually calmed down more than expected as episode 5 kept going. It's unclear how much different it'd feel if I didn't already read LB6 and never met a Nasuverse fairy in full before (and no one would call the brief appearance of one in this episode “in full” when compared to LB6 characters), but despite the anime and volumes 8-10 coming out before LB6, I'm still glad I've read LB6 before seeing both of those (as much as that may make me more of a normie in the eyes of even more hardcore Type-Moon fans who’ve been around far longer than me) because my first experience with fairies and Albion was with Nasu's writing instead of Sanda and this anime (and it helped out especially a lot while reading final CF arc for obvious reasons any LB6 reader could tell you). But even with all of that, I can't really describe these episodes as anything but a mixed bag, yet I kinda liked them by the end to an extent. Although that brief underground graveyard tunnel stuff really reminded me of volumes 6-7 and that cool Gravekeeper, and that we can't have that arc animated either (lol). My mind turned out to be quite the downer this time, huh? But I couldn't help it. Why must this show be structured like this? Anyway, having Shishigou show up was a brilliant move I couldn't really expect. Actually seeing the concept of Wild Hunt being played around with in Nasuverse besides it just being contained within a physical being like a servant was very nice, and so was knowing the fact that the fairy realm can be accessed through a portal. That moment when Reines jokingly offered Waver to sleep with her with intoxicating smugness reminded me of how much I liked Reines, and by the next episode I felt she was carrying this anime. When the Rail Zeppelin arc started I felt that it was so much better with her around, too. The feeling of "Mid (Gray) vs Kino (Reines)" was profound at times. But it’s all in good jest, Gray is great. Although I wanted to just briefly mention how Gray's voice could be a bit too meek at times to the point of annoying, but as that was pretty similar to how it was supposed to be in the novel, it was absolutely spot on. Now, episode 6 was most blatantly combining the theme of beauty from vol 2-3 with the entrapment aspect from that one awesome scene from vol 1 but being way more passive in here. There's more at play here like Reines explaining stuff to Gray about Iskandar and Luvia wandering around the place being pretty meh and how I'd rather see vol 1-3 animated again, but it was actually fine and I liked these calm moments with the girls together (and Reines carrying the show for a little while). It was pretty short and we're quickly back to where we started the episode, focusing on Iskandar's relic again and with the Reil Zeppelin arc about to begin (finally). And how should I put it? The Rail Zeppelin arc in this anime doesn't live up to the novel at all. It's easy to see why it failed to grab the attention of some people for me especially, because I'm one of those people. Visually, the train and all about it was done almost perfectly and I really respect how the studio handled it, but the story here simply failed in this medium in my opinion. I think I’ve talked about how vastly different Case files anime felt to the novel a little bit, but this is where I'm gonna expand on that. The anime needed to have this outward all-encompassing direction to work as an anime and you couldn't really ever transfer that peculiar sense of isolation or seclusion that Gray's inner monologue provided (the lack of visuals in the novel help with that feeling a lot and the manga doesn't have it either). Sanda sure can write them to the point of the reader occasionally getting tired from it, but it worked great when you’ve taken much needed breaks in-between and most importantly it added to the characters’ charm, made them fully fleshed out and developed. Reines and Gray suffered a lot without that, just as Shirou did in all FSN anime that there is. The only times I can even recall this similar vibe done perfectly in an anime was in some of the scenes of Evangelion, and Case files clearly was never meant to be like that. This is definitely my inexperience talking, but I honestly don't know if transferring that mood would ever be possible without making the show feel too awkward. It simply didn't deliver in the anime at all for me. It was so boring, in fact, that I could not finish some of the episodes for hours, instead opting to pause and stare at a screen for 20 minutes at a time. My mind went to switch to literally anything else like a YT video or just typing out about how I hated the show in discord chat. Blankly staring at a screen was better to me at one point and this is simply insane. Minutes were stretching into hours and I'm still in disbelief that it actually happened. It was the first for me in any Type-Moon anime and it was as impressive as it was depressing. Just thinking about it again makes me sick. I was initially intending to finish the anime right before reading volume 10 because I wanted to feel the sense of it being "over" more profoundly (despite there still being a sequel novel series), but in the end it made me so bummed out and almost made me lose faith in the Case Files series when it was instead supposed to have the opposite effect. The disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined, seriously. "Volume 10 better be very good" I thought, hoping it would return me to normalcy the novel provided and cleanse me of this anime filth. And the next day, it actually did. Made me so enthralled that I finished it in a single day. I've been reading until morning and refused to leave until I was finished. It turned out to be one of the best volumes CF had, if not top 1. But after that, it took me a while to return to the anime, and once I did I was determined to be as clear about what was different in the anime from the novel as I could. Last time the memory wasn't as clear as I would've liked (as you can imagine seeing how far in the timeline it was) and it probably made me dislike the anime more than necessary, so I wanted to avoid repeating that mistake. For just 3 more episodes it wasn't really that much of a game changer, but it did help. It was a fairly standard case of "novel was better, what else is new?" with nothing much to really comment on given how ‘done’ I am with this arc here, but I at least wanted to touch upon the new Reines/Shishigou/Luvia investigation side-plot (aka the changes that contradicted the novel the most that I could notice). What some of those early filler-esque episodes really served for is more connection for this investigation side-plot and having more backstory/organic explanation to some things that couldn’t be done in the anime quite as normal as it would be in the novel in a way it was written. They wanted to make some eureka moments for viewers to get them to feel how interconnected Neartless' presence was in Case Files because they didn’t want to mention too much stuff from the previous volumes (I can only assume so, at least) because if they went too far with that it would seem like too much of a cop-out for anime-only viewers that didn’t read the novels. And all of that was done despite us not really knowing anything substantial about Heartless until the final arc in the novel anyway, it’s not really possible NOT for it to feel incomplete and missing something already. It feels like something done out of necessity and feels more fake than what it felt like to me in the novel, but at the same time some of it also feels completely unnecessary for the people who simply wanted them to make more anime adaptations either before or after this one. But despite that, once I delve into it again I become way more fine with it than I was in my initial viewing of the first 0-10 episodes. Trisha’s investigation was explained a bit more in the anime and I appreciated it. I liked how this suspicion of mine for why Trisha was investigating was confirmed. Trisha was doing this to find out about why Olga was not cared for properly by her father Marisbury after he got to the HGW investigation. The anime-only girl from the branch Animusphere family from episode 2 was there, so that’s kinda a little bit cool. That silly mage in the sewer workshop from episode 3 had some connections with Heartless too, that’s cute. Shishigou that we’ve met in episodes 4-5 went to investigate stuff with Luvia on behalf of Reines and met up with that zombie cooking show mage guy (that was actually supposed to be on the train this whole time in the novel) to confirm that Iskandar’s relic being stolen was done from within (as if it wasn’t obvious already without Shishigou’s involvement) and probably more behind the scenes. That’s pretty interconnected and cool, at least. I didn’t mind that stuff too much since Reines indeed was doing some investigation in the meantime while the story was focused exclusively on the train and Gray’s POV in the novel’s volumes for the most part. Touko travel part was still a little bit odd (even if Touko is exactly the kind of person that can make me believe she would make something like that and especially after CF volume 3), but at least we now visually see the procedure with summoning circle a little bit, how much exhausted the people were in the process of the ritual to activate it, and most importantly the fact that Flat was involved in making it work (refer to FSF to know more about Flat’s importance). Shishigou was hired to do the investigation in the anime and to my memory he does not appear in the novel, which is why it was especially weird to see this huge disconnect. His involvement and some scenes would’ve looked differently in the novel given how that TV star mage was supposed to be on the train this whole time, but then the whole story would’ve been altered a bit too much. Just a thought experiment of this sounds fun, though. Anyways, I couldn’t remember this zombie cooking guy in the novel too well except that he was on the train giving some info and stuff, so perhaps this switcheroo wasn’t too detrimental to the novel’s narrative? In times of confusion like this, I really wish I could’ve experienced this arc in the manga in full to compare. But even if I tried very hard to read it, the manga is quite literally still ongoing at the moment and after this many years it’s currently still only close to the middle of Rail Zeppelin arc. I respect Case files manga a lot and it is such a shame we don’t get more translations for it. Maybe in the future someone picks it up again, but who knows. Now enough about the superior CF adaptation. What else can I say about the anime? In a lot of ways it’s simply confusing. It’s going to be really hard to rate the story, or the characters, or my enjoyment when there’s so much nuance to account for, so I wasn’t really planning to make an objective take with all of this weirdness involved in the first place. There were points in time where the enjoyment was okay and where it was nonexistent. Some of this stuff was interesting and some of it was simply dreadful. If I extend my rating to the characters connecting it to the novels, my rating would be probably 10 since I liked the voice actors and nothing was really fucked up about them except not having inner monologue and making them feel flatter than I would’ve liked (or what I would’ve liked being possible in this anime format to begin with). But even that would be somewhat disturbed by my dislike of Yvette and Hishiri in this show. And first of all, this anime is divided into volume 4-5 parts on top of so much anime-original content, it’s nigh impossible to judge clearly for me. I wish this was an actual adaptation and for the filler-esque episodes to be either left in-between or reserved to anime specials or a separate series or something. Honestly, that would be ideal. So, ironically enough, now I can finally feel what some have already felt towards Last Encore about not getting a Fate/Extra adaptation. But I have a few issues with those people who think Last Encore is worse than Rail Zeppelin anime (besides the fact that there’s plenty of OG Fate/Extra content without having it to be an anime that’s just yet to be translated). I’m of the opinion that the ideas and the execution of the completely anime-original Fate/Extra story in Last Encore was done well and it makes even your most Nasuverse lore goblins and the most hardcore Fate/Extra fans think a whole lot. Usually the most you have to think about as a novel reader with Type-Moon anime is about the structural changes and always comparing every aspect of the character and story portrayed to the other mediums/adaptations, but LE required the most amount of thinking and research out of any Type-Moon anime ever. The only other intentionally vague anime piece within Nasuverse I could think of that’s on the same level would be Moonlight/Lostroom OVA (we’ve yet to see part 2 of FGO finish so you would have even less info to speculate about when that OVA first came out), but it’s a short OVA and not a full series. Last Encore’s existence wasn’t pointless and it even managed to be quite meaningful to the overall narrative of Extaverse. And it wasn’t even an adaptation but something new, which none of the other Fate anime series can boast about. Last Encore is the only Fate anime of its kind so far in many ways and I wouldn’t want to see Fate/Extra anime adaptation if it makes Last Encore not be a thing. Just like I would’ve enjoyed seeing the anime original Tachie (stray servant, proto-Mash from FSN) route that was planned to be a thing before it was canned and changed to Fate route adaptation. All of this to say that this short snapshot of what Case files anime could’ve been is not comparable to Last Encore at all. Case files anime is supposed to be an adaptation from the start, and it fails at it, due to this strange way they decided to start it in the middle of the story. Somehow it makes me wonder if they actually planned to continue Heartless related stuff and adapt the final arc from the novel later while skipping the arc right after Rail Zeppelin (especially because of the insanity that was volume 7), because there’s no way they could’ve entered into the franchise in the middle of the story and just ended it without moving to the finish line, right? This anime legit comes in like “does a thing, refuses to elaborate, leaves” just like Heartless himself and that kind of vibe is just funny to me while also incredibly sad. Speaking of Heartless, there was a moment in episode 12 on top of the train where KnK-esque music was playing and I really felt the weight of how poetic the anime could be and what it’s trying to do in that moment. Whenever the topic of fairy kidnappings comes up, you obviously think about that Satsuki guy from KnK 6 where it first got introduced to us. The fact that the same composer with the same kind of music is back for this very moment again feels just right at home. Makes you crave for more in a good way, for more KnK and more of this arc actually being finished. So I’m very conflicted. And of course the last episode just had to be a good note to end on to make me conflicted even more. This anime is weird and simply incomplete as of now. While I could tolerate something like the first Camelot movie because the second one was just that good for me, I cannot do it here because there is no second season on the horizon. And even if there was, it wouldn’t just instantly fix all of my issues here in this Rail Zeppelin anime. This show overall screams part 1 of 2 of the now (unfortunately) normal “season cour” trend and leaving it at that is just not right. It wasn’t right to start here and it’s not right to end it here, either.

I could’ve gone on for more and analyzed stuff better without rambling as much (and not formatting walls of text as horribly), but I just don't feel like spending any more time on this. Here's hoping this review doesn’t seem completely trash to you. It’s a frustrating show, but can also be interesting, despite how boring it can be at times. If there even is a number to represent this confusion and conflict within me, 5/10 is the only fit here. But don’t get me wrong, I still want to leave this anime feeling hopeful for the future, just as I want you to feel hopeful and excited for Case files anime to maybe return in a proper form (and not just for one special episode) to finish what Rail Zeppelin anime started one day. A lot of my frustrations and dumb mindset issues I couldn’t help with could be turned around with more of this anime becoming more passable if Type-Moon simply adapts more Case files. I would still be grumpy about the story sucking compared to the novel (which no one would expect an anime adaptation to compete with in the first place), but it’ll just be one part of the whole anime series and not as annoying overall. Despite heavily separating them from the novels, I still very much like most of the KnK movies, even as I heavily dislike what KnK 6 adaptation turned out to be. I dislike Camelot movies changing around so much that they’re inconsistent with even Babylonia anime (much less the game), but I enjoyed my time with the second movie. If there was more CF anime made, small inconsistencies that may arise from some of this stuff like repeating scenes (Reines meeting, for example) or something else for the anime-only people would be wholly irrelevant to me if you could make it enjoyable. Give Lord El-Melloi anime series more content and we’ll be seeing the whole picture more objectively. And once there’s more, this time capsule of an opinion will evolve and become more nuanced in the future. Right now I feel like a moron even writing about it, to be quite frank. I simply had to collect my current thoughts somewhere and find out if someone out there could relate to this stuff I felt and what I had to say. I’ve only decided to post this take months after writing 99% of this initially because of getting bored while waiting for LB7.2.

Despite everything, I’m glad Case files got an anime at all, and that it didn’t have as much of a bad rep as Tsukhime anime, DeenSN, or Prillya anime for me to have more of a “normal” experience. But it still leaves too much to be desired, and this surface-level appearance of normalcy may have actually been detrimental to how I perceived this adaptation. I am left wondering if it could be salvaged in some way, hoping the future will bring something eventually to improve the situation.

Might actually be the best Fate anime (excluding meme Carnival stuff)
There won't be spoilers until I warn you that it's time to leave, so maybe keep reading until then if you haven't watched the show(?)

The topic of getting into Fate/EXTRA franchise from scratch without spoilers in excruciating detail will be at the very end for the newcomers if you're interested (cue the cringe 'Fate fans explaining Fate' meme).
Reading the whole review isn't advisable for most people, so don't worry about the length of it too much. You'll be leaving pretty soon since most of it is spoilers I'd like you to avoid.

Now let's get this ... out of the way: I gave the first 10 episodes 7/10 but would give it 8/10 overall (minimum) if it were on the same MAL page. That is higher than I gave Babylonia anime, the second Camelot movie (might reconsider after a rewatch someday maybe because of nice emotional value it had despite its flaws stemming from the movie formula and the first one being a giant waste of potential), both ufotable's UBW and Fate/Zero for the reasons of them all being adaptations that didn't quite reach it for me or managed to make me be less harsh on them. Adaptations of things I care about the most usually have a higher standard to uphold. The anime originals, on the other hand, are usually easier to rate on just my enjoyment (even if they are as deeply connected with other source material content as in Last Encore's case). Don't take this as blasphemy if you're a fan of those adaptations, but my stance as a fellow based source material enjoyer first and foremost is - original content trumps adaptations no matter how much I might like them. Last Encore is the best Fate anime from that perspective alone (although if the anime itself sucked I wouldn't be saying this obviously). So despite giving stuff like the UBW Prologue or the Solomon movie 10 or a 9/10 in the past (from 8-10 range I think is fair), it doesn't mean those are better things in my eyes necessarily. If you do find my takes here outrageous and you've already ruined your experience with Last Encore by watching it without reading the source, then step into the spoilers later if you dare to ruin it all completely.

The balls this man Nasu got in not even trying to milk the EXverse for all of its potential adaptations and giving us a new story that expands on the lore for the core fans instead is nothing short of admirable. I'd expect people who could enjoy this to the fullest to barely be in 1% of the people who watched it here. So the amount of monkeys on MAL being this incredibly high makes perfect sense.

Take a look at how many users added the first 10 episodes to their MAL vs the last 3 (or 4 time-wise) episodes here. When I'm writing this, it's about 81k vs 30k. If so many people didn't even bother to finish the show compared to those who've seen the last episodes, how many people can you expect to: finish not only the original Fate/EXTRA game, its sequel Fate/EXTRA CCC which is STILL not fully translated (but it's close) and is only recently could be played with sugoi+agent apart from watching an incomplete edited playthrough of one route (although I might be wrong and it could've been translatable on textractor before sugoi+agent combo, and in that case ignore that point earlier), expecting people listening in on a Fate/EXTRA sound drama adaptation that's pretty hard to even find in full nowadays even a little bit, checking out some EXTRA manga for a little bit (even if just to see how it went in the raws), reading Fate/EXTRA material databook, finishing all of Apocrypha novels before watching the anime and specifically reading Fate/strange Fake 2008 in-between it (I do recommend "Apocrypha:Unbirth > FSF2008 > F/A main novel" order personally to get you into Apocrypha more smoothly), after FSF2008 expected to read the full FSF story later down the line so you could get all of the intended timeline-relevant references from the future serialized version (that came out after Apocrypha), taking a step back calmly and then dealing with Apocrypha to the fullest without hating on it blindly through an anime like a cringelord, finishing Fate/EXTELLA along with EXTELLA/zero, also to get the fullest authentic experience by reading as much of Fate/EXTRA CCC FoxTail (while getting yourself into FGO correctly) as possible, just not being a silly goose and reading all that came before Last Encore in the Type-Moon timeline without ever watching an anime adaptation before the original source material first, and finally reading Fate/EXTELLA material databook and EXTELLA/zero before arriving at this Last Encore anime

Ok so what I'm trying to say here is that I've done all of it, and it isn't to brag but to make a point. I believe this was made for the most dedicated Type-Moon audience and it shines the most exactly when you're on that Type-Moon grindset. Despite many nice EXTRA story refreshers and despite many people still being able to (somehow) enjoy Last Encore to various degrees without being this invested in seeing the source material first, the audience who will judge it most freely without any prejudice and will derive the most from it is definitely the novel reader types. This effectively makes the score in both Last Encore entries on MAL meaningless since it's just statistically improbable it ever represent its true value to your average joe looking at the score, especially since this is MAL and people will usually keep falling into a trap of listening to top reviews that came out usually when the anime just finished airing or reviews and opinions from cringe anitubers who simply don't care enough to get based and couldn't be trusted to provide any commentary on this anime that won't go beyond surface level. The nuance is easily lost on people, but I believe this anime will age much better gor the dedicated fans because eventually more Type-Moon translations will start popping up to make the ride smoother. But back then and even now, not everyone is going to try to properly enjoy long-running things like the entirety of Type-Moon content timeline. Not everyone cares about finding true value of something and maximize your chances of liking some cult classic weeb thing like Fate series, it takes effort. Easier to watch some random bits and pieces of Type-Moon content through anime instead to kill some time lol. Most people are even lazy or uncaring enough to not even bother to google if this Last Encore anime is a prequel, a sequel, an adaptation, or an anime original story (< correct one). Although it should be pretty obvious that regardless of what it is or would be, you shouldn't just watch first and ask questions later. Researching is easy, people. You have the internet.

It's all a weird situation for me specifically when I see some people here and there enjoying Last Encore here on MAL that just aren't all in. My obvious biases won't let me fully comprehend anyone simply skipping CCC for EXTELLA or not experiencing Apocrypha properly (even without being able to read vol 5 it'd would be way better to just finish the rest of it with the manga and anime after reading 4 vols of the novel) among other things like not reading KnK and Tsukihime before playing the first EXTRA or not even reading FSN related trio of novels at all (FSN/FZ/FHA) and watching only anime despite it so obviously being a bad idea. Honestly, I don't get how some people do it. Naturally, not everyone will go read some random isekai LN just because they heard the title was good, and I wouldn't do that either. But it's not random new isekai LN series, it's Type-Moon and Fate series, one of the core backbones of weeb industry that inspired a lot of people on the VN sphere and more. Aren't you curious? I get the anime only experience logistically, but can't quite comprehend it entirely. Imagining myself in the place of someone like this and watching the anime only with my occasional cynicism kicking in could've prevented me from enjoying Type-Moon content in the first place which would purely be fault of the adaptations. I imagine it is just as weird for an anime only Fate watcher to comprehend how people like me (novel fags) view things. So consider the next part being a window to that perspective for all of you anime-onlies who are crazy enough to continue. Or alternatively, for any based fellas out there who enjoy all of Extraverse like I do, consider it a potential break from the madness of the ignorant masses.



Now, for the actual content of this review.
(Heavy spoilers for everything in Extraverse excluding EXTELLA LINK for the rest of the review except "First episode analysis" mostly spoiling Last Encore itself)

And yes, this is how short my non-spoiler section of the entire review is. I can't exactly make you fully understand why I think it's good and enjoyable without spoiling it but I tried to explain the (correct) perspective people like me will be judging the quality of this anime. If by some chance you haven't seen this anime before reading this far and you are a casual Fate anime fan, I strongly encourage you not to watch it or read the review further. It's not the type of show that is consumed easily, especially in your position. It is rather one of those that is meant to be paid careful attention to, talked about and studied. Add into the mix the fact this relatively massive amount of source material is required of you before viewing for full enjoyment, and you'll get one of the hardest shows to get into. Although if you came into Last Encore fully prepared like me, it's a pretty easy watch and not hard to get into at all in my experience if you're in the mood to pay attention and do the usual Type-Moon plot and lore theorizing.

I will repeat for anyone willing to get into this Fate series branch, that the guide sections are there at the end and are spoiling nothing of the plot of anything there.


Btw, to anyone who's reading this after getting through everything TM related like me but also being currently way farther into FGO than I am when I'm writing this and those having already experienced LINK and the original Last Encore script - don't expect my interpretations to be as advanced as yours.

Now let's get to my more in-depth thoughts about the anime.
I've had mostly no issues in understanding Last Encore but there were some intentionally vague and intriguing stuff in there even for me, which I respect massively. I enjoyed trying to piece it all together. Managing to make yet another story with Hakuno (at this point there's like 10 of them) be so entertaining and even meaningful in a way is a massive feat. This story should be treated as what it is: an extra branch/route of a parallel world in Fate/EXTRA universe. Usual tropes will not bother you in the slightest when you went through the entire Extraverse properly. You will nott complain about Saber here taking a liking to baths or her having a certain childishness to her behavior among other things as trash fanservice if you knew those character traits were already established for her character way before this in the games and in databooks (although iirc her personality became more open after the first EXTRA when Nasu and Takeuchi got away with their plan to intentionally confuse everyone about Red Saber's identity, but then it could be explained in-universe with enough imagination too). And you also wouldn't bat an eye about Saber or Rider's true identity/gender in the Fate worlds (or at least one of their possibilities, the multiverse of Fate nullifies these as a complaints entirely if you think positively but the gender-swap in particular just became Fate series tradition at this point and you should be used to it by now. But of course, I would love for them to someday do an introduction to their male versions with Nero's other materialization in particular being a real tyrant and those historical signs that real Nero might've been framed to be one much worse by the establishment of Rome at the time not being the focal point of their backstory like this Nero. Would've loved to see some light politics of Rome being involved there as well to explore all of it... and that's what I wish Septem Singularity was instead of what we got but oh well, let's just get back to the topic). I would go as far as to say Last Encore is one of the best uses of Red Saber's character with her not being overly lovey-dovey after getting all too familiar with MC, possibly overstaying its welcome a little bit like EXTELLA for some or just the way she was in FGO. Seriously, any Nero fan who dislikes Last Encore's portrayal of her character really shouldn't be calling themselves a Nero fan. That just makes it seem like they never got into EXTRA series properly and their first introduction to her was FGO. Ignorant EXTELLA fans shouldn't seek EXTELLA/zero in this (meaning what happened in the EXTELLA parallel world's equivalent of Fate/EXTRA events aka the Holy Grail War) because that already existed for like 2 years before this anime. And you definitely should've read it beforehand. Seeing that first scene in episode 1 already makes one wonder about its possible (but most definitely false) connection and is a definite plus for those who read it before starting Last Encore, it definitely does keep you on your toes for a little bit at the start when you try to figure out the plot while you watch before you quickly figure out this is a story made after one of the possible Dead Ends of the final battle in first EXTRA game. I get that it'd be also nice to have a full EXTELLA/zero story out in an anime form except just those Nasu blogposts he dropped of it, but at least we got something. (Also, I'm not sure that EXTELLA/zero anime would expand on the lore that much and be quite as interesting or enjoyable as what we got here in Last Encore.) But the original Fate/EXTRA fans who wanted it to be a simple but solid adaptation of the game which could've sparked future CCC and EXTELLA animes I can definitely understand the most. I do relate and agree to that being an unfortunate thing (since I am, as you can see, an avid Type-Moon enjoyer myself and will only want more content just like anyone else), but if the original story in the anime that we get instead is enjoyable and is unique to the point of combining the vibe of both Monogatari series and Madoka with Fate and doing it pretty well, I'm not sure we can have the right to complain about it this much about it being something else (if at all).
Now let's go into my number 1 issue with this anime. The vibe of the show is vastly different from the OP in the anime and I'm honestly shocked it could be this bad. Despite the song not being bad at all and it actually amazing, it just doesn't fit and I'd rather it be made like some specific Monogatari openings visually and musically (perhaps something akin to the CCC game opening and with probably more of a virtual feel to it to fit the theme of the EXTRA series better). The visuals in the OP were pretty generic as well (or at least, even if you think those are good, you have to admit it doesn't quite fit in visually either). It felt almost like a battle shounen OP which somehow been placed in a Monogatari/Madoka-type anime, it's just absurd. I think that OP wouldn't even fit into a legit Fate/EXTRA anime adaptation and would more suit something like Babylonia with its hype energy. There's no way you're not skipping every instance of that OP appearing after the first watch if you value the calm and mysterious/melancholic atmosphere that immediately gets ruined once it pops up and just leaves you mad wondering "what it could've been" (both if you like the anime and think the OP is badly placed and if you like the OP more than the anime because you expected something else and were unfortunately never into EXTRA series prior). Moving on, the OST itself was very solid and I cannot complain there. Amidst the usual ambient stuff you'd expect in this kind of show, there are plenty of actual bangers here and some are timed in the show to perfection, with its highs even sometimes being on the same level of excitement as you might find in any other peak Fate anime moments sometimes. Next we go unto the ending sequence. The ED song is a bit of a strange choice to me for some reason but I like it a lot as a full song itself and it kinda fits with its music most of the time if not always (although maybe something else could've been even better fitting, there's no point in creating such problem to complain about). The addition of different art pieces in the EDs with the character focus connecting to the episodes themselves was a nice touch, the people who liked those in Madoka will surely enjoy them here as well. Now, enough about the music. The art style that studio SHAFT applied to Fate series that we first got to see in CCC and then later in EXTELLA opening sequences shined bright here, got nothing to complain about here as well (unless you expected ufotable level animation or something, maybe?). All of it felt very fresh after ufotable, Deen, A1 and Cloverworks. I'd seriously love more TM stuff coming from studio SHAFT in the future, especially with something like Fate/Prototype Fragments. I feel like they'd make that story justice with its melancholic atmosphere and the fragmented nature of its narrative. We all know they can handle both of those points well because of their work on Monogatari series, Madoka and Last Encore being good at doing exactly that. A man can dream, and so I will. Anyway, I'm not gonna do a deep lore dive or dissect the script here. It's pointless to me but I'll try to think of some silly complains someone may come up with to address. It's gonna be hard to concentrate and I'm gonna just go from what I remember the most reading about recently from the Last Encore review sections on MAL. Ah, but having to start with commonly obvious thing of characters not being development enough despite all of them (except Amari) being drawn from Fate/EX works preceding it is a bit redundant, no?
Check this out, Saber's NP being the same as her Bride version in FGO instead of her original was somewhere in the reviews and maybe if you dig deep and it's not deleted you may find it. There actually was a complain like this and this is just funny. But let's get serious.

A complaint that came to my mind from seeing it in another MAL review somewhere a while ago would be about Saber on a few occasions spamming her Imperial Privilege skill and also her overcoming Excalibur Galatine being an issue for some people.
I'm not entirely sure what kind of scenes people would complain about anyway besides this or the Drake fight which was only really explained properly on LE website and the original book script, since the Imperial Privilege skill is mostly been vague as hell throughout the entire time Nero is on-screen anywhere.
So is Gawain weaker than Nero? It seems some people have issues with this possibly being the case in this one fight here, so let's get to the scenes in question:
When Leo was talking with Hakuno as he was amassing more of his Dead Face magical energy to aid Nero in her fight with, presumably, slightly-stronger-than-usual Gawain (from adult Leo's maryoku supply), with Hakuno's Dead Face powers helping Nero to be evenly matched against this Gawain. At the end of Leo's chat with Hakuno, Leo commands Gawain to unleash his NP and Nero responds with the release of her own. Gawian loses because of the Golden Theater weakening its trapped opponents, so Galatine was weakened enough to get broken in there. Imperial Privilege might have also been at play (and I assume it was) but we just don't know for sure from this anime. But regardless, we do have a very decent reason for Nero being able to repel Gawain's NP with her sword. Not sure if this was worth getting so pissed off at Nero for, since Leo himself also wasn't particularly trying to win the entire time. However, Gawain's Numeral of the Saint power-up working or not at the time is not a mystery here. Fem Hakuno in LE beaten Gawain in the same way as the game, meaning that Rin/Rani had to hack the sun to help you out. We see glimpses of the last arena in the game in the LE with fem Hakuno, so that suggests Round 7 went similarly. As for how this all even worked: all that was needed is sunset, so Rin probably just had to put a different time setting after hacking in. During Last Encore's fight between Nero and Gawain we clearly see constant sunset. so you cannot honestly say that Numeral Saint skill working here makes sense. If that skill was actually working, then Gawain would've stomped Nero no problem. And he actually did stomp without that skill when Nero wasn't receiving Dead Face magic from Hakuno, so it's pretty clear what made the difference in the end (aside from Leo testing Hakuno and not going all out, of course).
I'll try addressing possible general complains about Nero's fighting style in the show by making you ask yourselves a question. How do you suppose most of Nero's battles would look like with her low stats in actuality, meaning without game mechanics of EX games and FGO having to restrain her? Although Nero isn't by all means dumb and a great strategist, she's usually a brawler type and can't have omega brained 1v1 Caster battles of FoxTail here in an atmospheric plot-heavy/lore-heavy 13 episode anime. We don't have the kind of enemies Tamamo faced in FoxTail anywhere near this anime, but most importantly - there's just a matter of writers not wanting to gameify the setting too much like FoxTail did for various reasons like not wanting the intended atmosphere and pace to be lost, as well as this Hakuno having to fight on the front lines more with his Dead Face powers instead of learning having to utilize the BREAK/GUARD/ATTACK RPS system of the games that won't even have a chance for those systems to be effective against other Dead Faces. I assume some people really wanted to see same level of big-brained battles in Last Encore with top tier animation in each episode instead of this kind of slower paced mystery show with a different kind of thinking required and then some of them started to fall into a mindset of LE being a wasted potential and that they'd rather it be something else instead of taking it as a breath of fresh air and enjoying it. Having to always deal with the gameplay calculations in every EX game (even in EXTELLA with the territory management when aiming for S ranks on first try whenever possible because one might enjoy it) is decently fun and the complexity of some FoxTail moments was all around awesome for CCC fans, but I felt like having it kept there away from this anime and trying a different approach in the EX series yet again would shake things up in a good way and could rekindle people's love for it once more (what it did for me basically, so I stand by it 100%). Now I'll stop trying to come up with more issues from MAL review section to discuss, since it could probably go on for hours if I push it too far. Those games are already a giant flexible pool of interpretation and digging that hole even deeper than I already did (and will do a bit more later on) would be too time consuming if I go all out and would limit the review character limit.


First episode analysis with many interpretations about almost the entirety of Last Encore's premise:
Here would not be a complaint I came across on MAL but what I personally had trouble understanding at first despite some of it partially explained by Twice himself almost immediately and I assumed some of you could also find issue with it possibly not making sense and those are: the Incinerator, what was the weird looking Archer and Saber's abandoned Golden Theater with her red sword doing there, and what actually happened to Hakuno's body. These points come with all of them being deeply interpretive and most people not paying enough attention, along with not knowing or caring about extra material that might help in coming up with your own interpretations. You may or may not consider those points troublesome when you reach my conclusion.
Incinerator overlaps 3 layers of reality into itself and it is because of structural zone itself being damaged. First layer is the original foundation of the place that is Ruins. Second layer is the texture of the school that was added on top of the Ruins and was repurposed for the preliminary grounds that connects to the Incinerator area (to make it easier to understand, think of how the school storage closet that Jinako hidden inside in CCC was used properly without being damaged like the Incinerator here). Third and the final layer is what your own mind creates out of your trauma.
The first episode is partially about how second Hakuno came to realize his "hatred" with a few flashes of past lives within the school here and there before getting killed off by Shinji in the sudden end of preliminaries and the start of the first round of the first and last ever Holy Grail War with new policy rules for the next 1000 years. The still alive male Hakuno, while being immortal and not realizing it, decided to hide from the carnage in the Incinerator. It is unclear when the flow of time accelerates for us to be skipping a 1000 years, but I assume it was when Hakuno was lying dead in the school corridor and was thinking there's still killing puppets roaming somewhere in the school building while losing his sense of time. Before getting to the Incinerator scenes, I'd like to speculate that Hakuno (either because all early-stage Dead Faces work like that or because of Dead Face phenomenon being different case-by-case basis like Rin later explained in episode 7) is perhaps getting up and reviving/rebooting himself with "hatred" very late into the game in the school corridor because of his existence as a Dead Face being at the very beginning of its forming stage 1000 years ago. (Perhaps because back then a full-blown Dead Face couldn't be formed by the virtue of resource allocation working way better than hundreds of years later. It could be that Dead Face Twice formed quicker in just ~100 years compared to Hakuno and either had to wait for Chakravartin those ~900 years for the it to fill up with enough energy/resources to be able to stop any new possibility within every parallel world in SERAPH or he didn't need to wait as long and could execute it within a ~100 years' time but decided to wait and observe SERAPH under his past original living self's policy changes for a bit more to see if anything changes.) It took for the malicious data around 1000 years to go from possessing NPC's body along with making it show occasional images and making the NPC feel certain emotions to the host NPC starting to go further into physical transformation with possibly getting some more of the future people's residual malicious mental data to make that final push in the "physical" to reboot. (That would also explain the "Onii-chan" figure in future episodes who made a promise to Alice if that happened after the old tournament-style HGW system was changed and that figure being able to show up in Hakuno's memories along with abstractly looking like his current body within those vague visions which was probably made to try and make that point a bit more clear yet probably confusing more people in the process. But of course, all of that could also just be the case of someone from the old HGW system getting that automatic win and making a promise that was within Hakuno at that point but couldn't be triggered before seeing Alice again. Who said Alice needed to be female Hakuno's opponent in that war anyway?) When male Hakuno finally reached the Incinerator, the consciousness of many people and experiences were continuing to be displayed/materialized by the 3rd layer. This is where the overlapping trauma of a nameless master within Hakuno about their dead servant (Archer) that lost during the previous originally-managed tournament-styled HGW started appearing. "Archer" chased him to the Incinerator pit and, in unsuccessful attempt to stab Hakuno, opened up a hole in the Incinerator pit's floor in which Hakuno fell down a moment later. The abstract visuals of the red sword within the abandoned Golden Theater came about at the end of his fall in the place at the very bottom of Incinerator known as Limbo. Naturally, those visuals originated from female Hakuno's trauma within male Hakuno. The combination of Archer's dangerous presence, the Nero-esque scenery and the will to survive ended up being enough to reach Saber herself.
The value of abstraction and mystery of it was appreciated and I like how it was done. However, this kind of complex and highly interpretive narrative wouldn't be appreciated by most people and it definitely makes this show more of an art piece kind of show to study rather than one easy to consume. This really makes me understand people who would give all of Last Encore a 10/10 and wonder about myself becoming one of them after all? I won't be doing this kind of full episode analysis in the review, so rest assured. My memory might fuck something up so try to fact check me and test my interpretations by rewatching the show and checking out Last Encore's website later if you must.

What's not to like or enjoy about Last Encore if you're an Extraverse fan? Why does it seem so insulting to me?
You can be a normie who scored this anime 1/10 or an EXTRA fan that still somehow disliked it. I will try to make you see why the idea of this anime as an original story is a great addition to Fate/EX series and that we should be content with what we got enough to be chill about it and see the value this anime brings to this massive table that is Fate/EX series.

Time-saving/reading-pacing caring me speaking, here to say that you can skip the next "reflective" section, which very briefly goes through all of EX parallel worlds before Last Encore timeline and highlights some moments to remind/prove why EX series is enjoyable and good (all with some extra rambling on my part), before going back into the anime review.

We had the original EXTRA story with 3 plot divergences. 2 of them being massive in the saving scene of either Rin or Rani along with the change from that Clown cannibal woman to Gatou Monji in combination with the Hakuno gender-swap for everyone to absolutely needing to play through the game at least 2 times minimum. CCC having quite literally a continuation of each of the routes til the end in their own way without ruling out a possibility of the original EXTRA ending occurring (since that ending was interesting and in some ways superior to all of the other endings of CCC depending on how you look at it, I truly appreciate it being so flexible) and in each of them the world around also changed to us readers with "what if" modifier to our CCC worlds with Elizabeth being summoned by the Clown with all of its consequences (death) instead of Vlad and having Gatou still be in the picture. Aside from us getting introduced to traveling the most uncomfortable place in Fate/EXTRA (human mind/subconsciousness), we also get to learn about 2 important concepts on which the universe of Type-Moon operates (Observed Universe and Recorded Universe) that is definitely a huge piece of the puzzle that serves to explain many things within it like 5th magic (perhaps if we get those goddamn Mahoyo sequels already) or something that is definitely will be seen in FGO. And yet, amidst it all, we got 5 more significant divergences in CCC with each of the character's ending on top of each having their own important SG garden scenes being a great addition to the formula in which some will be expanding on the characters monumentally, but with all of the usual servant specific character interactions added on top. 4/5 of those are for all the servant endings and 5th obviously being the True/CCC Route. But there is another extremely important plot divergence in CCC that's called FoxTail manga. It should be obvious why it's such a great manga for anyone who played both EXTRAs and read EXTRA material. To make my point and remind you about how good we have it in the Extraverse already: the mangaka had a choice of just making a normal game route adaptation with Caster or an entirely new take on a story of CCC with the discarded Alter Ego characters. You already know what this absolute madlad chose and now we're getting a "true" CCC experience with Caster that we're not actually receiving from Nasu himself and one that you need'd to play CCC to completion for beforehand in order to have the best experience (but only starting going past like chapter 2-3 after a break for finishing FGO part 1 for obvious reasons of fearing FGO spoilers because it's an ongoing manga and at the same time still having that initial shock of having the CCC route including all of discarded Alter Egos after hearing about them from EXTRA material). And it just keeps going, Extraverse can't stop going for bangers again and again. We get EXTELLA secretly turning out to be not only interesting from the standpoint of wanting to see the new SERAPH and what happened after the end of Saber's route of CCC (and the EXTRA sub-series as a whole) but also for its FSN/Zero-like relationship of having to slowly figure out what might've happened in the EXTRA events of that timeline (just like in Last Encore later) and getting ourselves finally introduced to and explained the concept of parallel worlds with all of that juicy lore bomb out of nowhere at the start of the route that was building up interest from both previous main stories. And with all of that, in total, EXTELLA has (if counting EXTELLA/zero) 5 more plot divergences with 1 going from the EXTRA timeline and 4 from the EXTELLA itself (16 more if counting side-stories) and the absolute blast that was Altera in that game (at least for me) along with a better explanation for the Foundation of Humanity that wasn't touched upon confusingly as it was in FGO. Both of these points are what makes me inclined to declare first EXTELLA to be a must-play before either getting to playing FGO itself or just after finishing the first introductory quest of FGO (First Order/Singularity F) before starting going too deep and probably ruining your impression of Altera from FGO. You're clearly not meant to meet her first in FGO and her introduction there is just lame and you'd be crazy to disagree. (Also, we know EXTELLA was developing back at the very start of FGO in parallel so it doesn't matter if she had her small cameos sooner back there in FGO, the point stands.)

So now that we're reflected on some of the interesting and valuable aspects of the series (without touching any simple personal character arcs throughout the series), we got from around 14 to 30 of these vastly different interpretations to explore (decide for yourselves which you'd consider less significant) and there is interesting experimentation with nearly all of them to varying degrees. So with all of this heavy amount of content, all of that creativity and the satisfaction with Fate/EX series as a whole that it can provide and many intricacies that it all came to have with time, why not try and have 1 more big one and see if you could still manage to make it interesting or at all meaningful?

Now what if Hakuno never interfered with the battle of Rin and Rani that in turn ended up with them fighting forever, along other characters having their own similar arcs of that sad nature. What if in the end Hakuno didn't succeed and ended up dying against Twice which subsequently made Twice lose hope and his mind that not even someone with just as improbable of an existence like an NPC gaining free will as a bug that witnessed similar carnage as Twice himself couldn't agree with him and that even the best King the Earth had to offer like Leo failed. Twice then ends up reshaping his whole ideology and fucks up the entirety of SERAPH in their world for a thousand years along with the countdown for the end of it coming with the erasure of not only everyone alive in that SERAPH world branch but in all parallel worlds of EX series. The countdown/shut-down program/weapon/repurposed NP of Savior called Chakravartin (that we also first heard of in the EXTRA material databook and learned how it was axed from the first EXTRA game due to production cost) required a lot of energy, so it subsequently stopped proper allocation of resources relating to the residual malicious mental data of the dead and allowed a so-called Dead Face phenomenon to occur. With Hakuno gone with these collective past mistakes which consequently led to the OG EXTRA cast here having to wait for a 1000 years in stagnation to twist them mentally in some way. With all of that, what if we also made our new protagonist and the "new Hakuno" the ultimate point of this excess malicious mental data that had obtained sentience (but not the only one in existence) and having him face all of those people and his own existence once more. Doesn't really sound like a bad idea worthy of not existing in place of yet another Fate anime adaptation, right?

"Malicious data" goes way back from CCC of Far Side of the Moon being a storage for it along with imaginary numbers for Moon Cell to be used as a bottomless trashcan and later getting such data used by BB and Kiara as fuel beside other consumed servants (or so my memory dictates, at least). Anyone who played the game and read databooks properly before watching this anime knows how much of a great feeling it was to see a similar concept which Far Side of the Moon Cell's partially main feature was to contain and be a storage for as well as getting to be part of last bosses of CCC now being used as our protagonist's entire being (and in HERE? Last Encore of all places?), getting to see this come back and get utilized in such unique way once again (and after that nice set-up both EXTRA/EXTELLA materials relevant sections of it provided), making everything fit perfectly into the lore and how interesting of an idea this Dead Face phenomenon turned out to be in general (despite it just seeming like a funny name at first). These are big points of interest and value people wouldn't get to care for like anyone who played and read it all. Anyone who might complain about MC here being edgy or uninteresting amnesiac trope despite understanding what our MC is or perhaps any complaints about him being covered in plot armor or whatever just sees things on a surface level and is watching the show in bad faith. I've seen Hakuno with his amnesiac shtick for literally 4 times and it was because of some wildly different reason each and every single time. At this point, I can only applaud for making it this ridiculous and it still working to the point that I don't even question it. That just seemingly became a tradition in-and-of-itself for the Extraverse, and I'm a-okay with that. But about that plot armor point: We have an entire multiverse to allow us to witness majorly improbable stuff which literally happens in each iteration of Fate. And each and every single time someone from the anime-only side complains anyway. You have to understand that, as long as it's enjoyable and believable enough without that scope of probability, it's all well and good. We might find something slightly a bit too outrageous with much more rationalization needed than usual with something like "Archer at the end of UBW" tier every now and then (not that it particularly ruins everything, it just makes those moments weaker than the rest of the less shaky ones, narratively speaking), but I don't think what happens in this anime can be anywhere near that level anyway. Those're probably the same type of things I would almost always say on every Fate review that is about something anime-onlies find controversial yet again.

Going back to explanations and databooks that I used and overlooked explaining properly up until now. You should read WORLD/WORD thing on the official Last Encore JP website (fate-extra-lastencore.com) along with the Character and Story sections on there which further explain and deepen our understanding of everything. If I had another way to describe, it's somewhat of an equivalent to a material book in website form. There are very few entries of WORLD/WORD translated at the time of my writing on the Type-Moon wiki's Encyclopedia page for EXTRA CCC, so unless someone has the time and motivation to translate it in full (along with all of the other website sections), you'd have to Deepl most of it on your own. Have your brain on alert for MTL bullshit and read on if you're still on the fence about Last Encore making sense or not.

Now to address seemingly one of the biggest underexplained things in the show if you haven't touched any supplemental material: Chakravartin being able to destroy parallel worlds, Buddha shenanigans, Twice's character, and Overcount 1999.
Although that bit was somewhat vague, it's explained in WORLD/WORD that the Moon Cell core's Angelica Cage (event selection tree/ tree of possibilities) is also responsible for observing and calculating parallel worlds besides just Earth and SERAPH in its own parallel world branch and that the implied connection it had with Twice's servant Savior (Buddha) played a role in it. As it is stated in that same Angelica Cage entry of WORLD/WORD: "It is said that it was under a Bodhi tree that a certain savior attained enlightenment." So there we go. With this much, it's easier to see how Buddha's NP could be more suitable for affecting the tree of possibilities here at least somewhat. If you also take a look at one of Savior's skills listed in EXTRA material, you see that there is definitely a connection (the skill in question is able to reduce damage against inter-dimensional attacks). There's more stuff about Chakravartin itself in the EXTRA material, but that is neither here nor there. If you read that section you could even assume that perhaps the original (fem) Hakuno of this parallel world had such unfortunate death partially because Saver manifested it in the sky instead of it being a smaller ring on his back or because there were no spells left or even a right situation to use one if it was already too late, but that's stepping into a muddy territory. But let's go there right now, since it's so important. Hold that parallel world topic for a bit. How you survive Saver in the original game? This would your first logical question. First I will say that despite all of the databook-based speculation I am about to go into, the original plan for Buddha wasn't used in the end and that Saver at the end of the first Extra game simply spares you himself if you manage to "defeat" your opponent in battle (likely to be interpreted as defeating Twice himself rather than his Servant) fast enough before he strikes you with his unsurvivable NP. It could be that that Buddha in LE wasn't feeling as merciful yet as it 'wasn't fated to be' or something like making this a trial for humanity, or maybe the scrapped mechanic is actually here in LE right now, or maybe Hakunon simply didn't do well enough in battle to last until Buddha decides to show you mercy (after Twice disappears?), maybe she simply couldn't defeat Twice in time before Buddha charged his NP. Thanks to the line about Buddha's main NP in Extra material databook stating the following: "Theoretically, the humanity of Earth has no way of withstanding this attack. On the other hand, it’s weaker against those humans who aren’t quite human, and it can’t completely save individuals of a scale of existence greater than the domain of humanity." What do we do with this information? Does this mean Hakuno as an NPC actually has a slight chance of surviving Saver's ultimate NP lore-wise despite not being able to do in-game (due to bs difficulty mechanics)? I've mentioned a scrapped mechanic, what it was is: an 'enlightenment' mechanic that was scrapped from the game which would've made you survive Saver's main NP if you reached it (enlightenment) by the end of the game. It might even come up in the remake for all we know (if Nasu wants to try it for real) and it could play a role in this LE universe for all I know. There's a line from Buddha once you defeat him about the untainted soul, but I'm not sure if that could be entirely evidence to the mechanic existing lore-wise and being at play and we just don't see it. This fight and its particulars could've went multiple ways and we don't know for sure since there's no extended LE fight scene with fem Hakuno, or the anime adaptation of EXTRA games, or just more Saver content in general. We do have a manga version of their battle to go over and think about (you could try to find the drama version too, but that's unlikely) and come up with head-canon reasons for why LE fem Hakuno did this and that like the matter of reviving by a spell mattering or not or if this original fem Hakuno from LE was an NPC or a human and if it affected the outcome or not. It's pretty much impossible to fully analyze with how little footage we have of fem Hakuno's journey in LEverse. You would definitely have some concrete answer when you read the original LE script book to find out what happened in that Saver fight, and I do apologize for writing this review without reading it yet (I'm planning to do that someday after catching up to all other TM novels and FGO. god have mercy on me, it will take a while). Now let's get serious. Despite my whole spiel like it's so hard and confusing (boohoo), the most realistic answer here is simply because Chakravatin is there fully in this LE world instead of remaining as a minor NP of Saver's like in original Extra to make all the difference. You do feel like being able to shoot magical blasts in wide range made LE Hakunon camp pretty exhausted, after all, do you not? If it's not entirely satisfactory, read the script book. Now let's go back on the topic of parallel world Buddha stuff and continue from there. The point made a while earlier in that databook skill stuff I've mentioned before was to show that the inter-dimensional connection is there and is clear even without digging deep into how OP Buddha was in the religion's lore this Fate servant incarnation was based from. Being able to affect parallel worlds is a matter of Chakravartin being a repurposed Buddha's NP (after he left) that got to this level of incredibly dangerous to the parallel world tree after an intervention from Moon Cell specifically after Twice made his Moon Cell policy change within Angelica Cage (see Twice character section on Last Encore website if that seemed out of nowhere to you). Normal Twice from EXTRA games wouldn't be able to make that subtle change to Moon Cell without dying and becoming a Dead Face just like Twice from Last Encore and he couldn't make a wish because he wasn't the winner of the war, but Twice in his normal mental state wouldn't even want to use that NP to destroy everything anyway since his normal self still had the ideals of preserving humanity, however low or evil they might be in theory, by keeping it in a state of constant (yet, in a way, stagnant) conflict to try stopping the "decline of humanity" at its core as well as planet's resources starting declining as a result and what Twice in Last Encore collectively called Overcount 1999 just like it was mentioned prior to this (see EXTRA material and WORLD/WORD for more details and remember it also being mentioned in Notes as the Land of Steel) that we really have to assume either piled on top of planet's mana depletion after a certain ritual of 1970s or that Overcount is the possible result of the D6 ritual itself. (We also still don't know how it came to be possible to work this well within a Fate world, if it really is the Dark Six ritual that was supposed to be covered in Tsukihime 2. Perhaps it has to do with EXTRA world tree or the Overcount itself having slightly different effects on the Human Order than Tsukihime worlds and regular Fate worlds, making it an exception much like the world of Fate/strange fake or whatever abomination Notes world is that I couldn't quite put in similar terms (Nasu mentioned about "land of steel" type worlds when talking about Tsuki no Sango iirc, but we've no idea about that concept entirely and how it comes to be. Tsuki no Sango may not have supposed to always have been that type of world and "something" happened to push it in this direction in the past just like in Notes). Maybe DAs/DAAs in Fate worlds are strong enough to cause it without being boosted by being in a Tsukihime world and all other instances of it were silently eradicated by the mages in all other known regular Fate worlds because there was no extra focus on Tsukihime 2 content needed yet and we just don't know). There's more to suggest about the D6 ritual and the Overcount being separate things than not, but who knows what kind of complex connection they may have. Overcount 1999 is declining of humanity and the death of the planet's soul itself (different from but maybe also connected to mana depletion and perhaps the formation of Land of Steel) which seemingly eventually leads to making Earth uninhabitable. So now that we know how humanity in the EXTRA world is fucked and what will eventually lead to their extinction in Twice's estimate, it's clear why he had to do something about it and how anyone in that weird position would want to do at least something. If you were to read Notes, Tsuki no Sango, even Fate/Apocrypha before playing Fate/EXTRA, you would instantly start understanding the duality of both extremes of humanity's stagnation and Twice's perspective in leaning into one of them mistakenly. And when you get to EXTELLA and learn how parallel worlds die out, you'd understand what Twice was trying to prevent in full without clearly knowing if Twice really knew that much about the Foundation of Humanity and the pruning phenomenon or not. But here in Last Encore that is finally been made clear. Although it's unclear to me (due to my imperfect memory) if the ideology of Twice from the EXTRA games and Twice in Last Encore to have an exactly the same thoughts on the matter from their different speeches in the game versus Last Encore when they faced Hakuno the first time before losing to Hakuno or before becoming a Dead Face, so in case of it being not consistent enough with each other, I'm just gonna attribute it to slight parallel world differences.

Most of the stuff from Last Encore DVD/Blu-rays except for CD dramas is pretty impossible to find on the net, but you definitely should also check those 2 Last Encore CD drama if you got the ability to at least have a surface level understanding of what's going on. Those try to fill out the gaps anime left out from the original script drafts, namely: what happened to Amari Misao (Shinji's gf) and some bits from the 4th floor's servant. The first one with Amari could've been made into 2 OVA episode arc that would've been quite atmospheric and I'm very disappointed it weren't. I understand why the 4th floor servant's "tales" narrative in the second drama couldn't possibly be touched before going to 5th floor in the anime or really even before the anime's ending, but I would say that it definitely would've made for a nice and somewhat relaxed epilogue for the main story as the final OVA and I'm bummed out that it wasn't animated too. We can complain and speculate about why that was with ourselves but if someone involved doesn't step in to explain how it came to be having only 13 episodes, we wouldn't know and be just wasting our nerves if we let it gets to us too much. The main story bits were done well enough already, and they did at least make those CD dramas so it definitely is better than nothing. Not having those episodes animated will continue to sting me hard, but I won't let it be the reason for why I should judge the anime unfairly. Now if only there was someone that would translate these dramas so that at least the willing English-speaking community (and first time watchers in particular) could experience it properly. I assume some of my overall 8/10 rating to LE anime in its entirely not being higher because of those CD dramas not getting animated and me being subconsciously salty about it.
Alright, so we've seen the Last Encore anime. I'm sure there was a fair amount of tedium present in a review this long, so I'll spare you even more time wasting explaining more plot/character content I found to be of quality here as a Fate/EXTRA fan. You know what happens. And if you don't have the whole picture, use the Last Encore website to fill some gaps and learn Japanese for real to get the CD dramas fully and experience the original Last Encore scripts by Nasu in particular (or alternatively just trying to find some secondhand info in bits on Beast Lair's Last Encore thread or wherever else, as I really doubt any new motivated Last Encore fans that would be willing to translate over 500 pages long "Your Score" book could ever appear for you to wait. But there's also a possibility of finding and using a certain Chinese epub of the book and Deepling it extremely carefully, if you're up to do that for over 500 pages and are that desperate for knowledge and lore). Despite what some especially salty people in disappointment of original script not being perfectly copied for the anime may try to claim, the plot we got in the anime isn't at all what I would consider bad. I'm sure most people would be content with at least having an option to read the book and would probably treat both versions with enough respect as their own separated things. You'd need to be of the opinion that everything needs to be over-explained for everyone and that there should be no room for heavy interpretation or for extra content to be so important to be seriously thinking Last Encore is truly bad. I'd somewhat agree on the anime perhaps relying too much on mystery, but that's gonna be in the subjective territory as the amount of mystery here can act both as a minus and a plus for different people.

It is quite plausible you could enjoy this anime if you played just EXTRA and EXTELLA (or even maybe just EXTRA if you've got an open mind), a bit of a weird incalculable chance to like it if you only played FGO to completion without reading any other Type-Moon content like either a gacha-addicted normie or a casual turn-based JRPG fan that also watched anime but are committed to the story and the characters nonetheless (even despite FGO spoiling nearly everything under the sun in Type-Moon), the least of a chance to have a fun time with Last Encore I imagine is if you're just an anime only Fate watcher and that's all. The score for the anime on MAL is still in the positive 6/10 territories for both so even some of the normies on MAL didn't find it to be particularly horrible despite all of the substantial vocal portions of negative reviewers on here that trash this show into oblivion stating otherwise. I refuse to believe people actually gave a fuck when they watched and hated the show if they were EXTRA fans already. This anime original story, ladies and gentleman, have done nothing but enhanced, deepened the original EXTRA story, and made use of additional properly introduced concepts from EXTELLA, tying it all together to "EXTRA" story again in a new and fresh way. And all this while making us see some EXTRA bits of content (like the OG characters) in animation for the first time and making the never before seen combination of Fate series with the vibe of SHAFT's best works at the same time. Despite how much it makes sense, and despite how it can partially act as a "gate" for any hardcore Fate fan who wants less stupid people in the community and thinks of it as a positive thing, the fact that this anime is so trashed is nothing short of a tragedy. However, with all that said, I wouldn't have it be any more newcomer-friendly if it meant making me personally enjoy it less.

In conclusion:
Underrated as hell and shame to everyone who keeps dunking on it knowing jack shit. Anime original content is of higher value than another adaptation. Releasing these 3 episodes late didn't go well for the anime normies and it's kind of a shame that it turned out like this, but at least these final episodes didn't ended up being a flop for the core fans. This anime is one of those that really hinges on how the last few episodes went and how many questions they would answer before exiting the stage, and it did manage to tie up everything I wanted it to pretty nicely (with more spicy stuff left outside as usual). MAL situation makes perfect sense but you need to dig up on it just a bit to understand it in full. Last Encore encapsulates the experimental nature of Fate/EX series perfectly, and is good to the point of being worthy of making a question of liking or disliking it your personal "moron test" within Fate or Type-Moon community if you're a novel reader.








Now for the guide sections for newcomers to get into Fate/EXTRA as best as you can:
(Hopefully at least for those who read FSN and Zero novels all instead of watching and who also didn't forget FHA or Notes.)
If you're still here without playing every EX game and are looking for a way to get into it while being slightly worried of the original EXTRA being too janky to enjoy - use an emulator with save states and speeding up the annoying parts. It'll become quite an enjoyable ride and there's no shame in it whatsoever. And if you're tearing yourself apart with deciding on waiting for the remake or not, remember this: the remake will not even be in the same timeline and we don't know just how much OG stuff we will lose when it's out. Needless to say, CCC remake as the sequel won't be likely to happen for a long time if ever (Not only because of censorship, but especially because of the Caster route in the remake being made like anything it was originally meant to be. FoxTail manga would also probably need to be finished with its serialization before CCC remake would ever will be seriously considered). It's the same Tsukihime remake vs original situation with not having any chance of TM ever making a Kagetsu Tohya remake. The disconnect between OG fans and new ones will be real if one would start with the remake as well. Speaking of Tsukihime, you absolutely should get into both Kara no Kyoukai and Tsukihime (in that order) before playing Fate/EXTRA if you haven't yet, among other things. It is truly the ultimate latest possible point of your transformation from being a Fate fan to a Type-Moon fan and it's important not to spoil yourself anything from EXTRA.
Also, remember how some of the Apo/FSF ordering was at the beginning? Having to read FSF 2008 either before or after Apo:Unbirth is an optimal way within the timeline, but not starting on FSF 2015 before reading all sorts of stuff like Proto Fragments, Mahoyo, Case files, some other stuff, and even FGO to some extent - is a must. Regarding Apo/Extra order issue: my take is to read Apo fully before going into Extra (since you'd need to get into two relatively long journeys of KnK & TH before being able to go back in the groove and the pacing of Apo if you haven't been into those two already, and that's assuming you even have the memory for that to work out well). There are a few points with a certain character in vol 5 of Apo that would make it better experienced after playing CCC (same goes for that character's section in Apocrypha material), so reading the manga and watching Apo anime after reading 4 translated novel volumes is a pretty solid idea. By then, you'd be open-minded enough and expecting the usual rushing and shallowness of Fate adaptations with Apo anime or manga and will be expecting to only see how it actually went down in the novel anyway, so in many ways it's all fine even without having vol 5 translation at the ready. But if you're going to sleep on Apo anyway for the time being, keep in mind that your very last chance not to get more characters that were in Apocrypha overlap with Fate/EX series is before starting EXTELLA.

Regarding when to best start first EXTELLA
(this is a non-spoilery but nearly identical version of what I said somewhere in spoilers prior)
There are 2 major points that makes me inclined to definitively declare the first EXTELLA to be a must-play before either getting to playing FGO itself or just after finishing the first introductory quest of FGO (First Order/Singularity F) like I preferred before starting going ham on it and probably ruining your impression of EXTELLA's major character from seeing their cameo in FGO first because it was there a year before EXTELLA released. You're clearly not meant to meet that character first in FGO and their introduction there is just lame and I think pretty much all sane people who played both would agree with me on this. Also, we know EXTELLA was developing back at the very start of FGO in parallel. So knowing that, it definitely doesn't matter if that character had small cameos sooner back there in 2015 in FGO as supposed to 2016 when EXTELLA released. If you're not convinced yet, let me also remind (or inform) you that FGO writers definitely aren't too happy with how some early Singularities turned out back then and the one I am speaking of is widely considered to be the worst one.

Fate/EXTRA CCC Foxtail manga is another weird thing to figure out how to best get into due to it being ongoing. The initial introduction to it (2 or so chapters maybe) you can see whenever you like after finishing both EXTRA games and reading EXTRA material databook for completion, but before going too deep in the manga to not get confused and still be willing to re-read early chapters later, you should probably finish all of Part 1 of FGO including the events so you wouldn't stop and be confused by some small things along the way. Although some of the proper introductions for cameo characters could either be considered being done better in this manga or some other quest from that game than their initial "release date accurate" appearance. You'll have to see the detail of this yourself later, tho. What I'm absolutely sure of, however, is that reading CCC event in FGO definitely needs to be done AFTER as much of Foxtail as possible. Last Encore doesn't really require you to know a lot about Foxtail but it definitely is the best to get into it before watching (Foxtail started about 5 years before Last Encore aired, after all).

I'll try being as brief as I can for those who didn't experience KnK or Tsukihime so if you've already done everything you could on that front, any hardcore fans that're still here for some reason may go ahead and leave. Unless you're interested in my take on it anyway and you got plenty of time to waste, or in case you think I might mention something new however unlikely that could be.

But the first step of starting on KnK is tricky as always, to the point of it being a hard/bad starting point to the Nasuverse in general despite coming out so early.
You should read the light novel first before watching the anime, specifically with Baka-Tsuki's translation and not the Cokesacto version. Once BT translation falls off, find the new translation effort recently started on BeastLair forums and when you can't wait for more if it's not done yet, look for the entire text of chapters 5-7 in Japanese somewhere on archive.org and (assuming your Japanese isn't too terrible) try Deepling your way through, fix obvious mistakes with great patience and compare the lines to Cokesacto ver and be amazed how much of a fanfic his translation can be. If you're not cool with that, read Coke's version after a certain point with a giant spoon of salt. If you're too cautious/lazy/short on time/ability but also impatient after finishing BT&BL translations, start watching the movies but beware of chapter 6 being a garbage anime adaptation and not being canon to the novels. Also, the extra stuff like the KnK "Epilogue" after chapter 7, Mirai Fukuin, and Garden of Oblivion weren't translated by Coke so you'll be good on that front (if you search for them on BL well enough). Although, keep in mind that you must find Mirai Fukuin translated in a full book with Extra Chorus manga chapters included somewhere on the net (perhaps on archive.org) and read it there as this was how it was been meant to be read/paced originally, you will not be able to replicate that pacing with the anime at all even if you try. There's also a random factor of watching HF trilogy before KnK movies being a bad idea because of how little sense the last movie would make without at least 5 of them along with the FSN VN itself because of the 'rushed' ending in HF3.

Explaining Tsukihime content order and stuff like EXTELLA LINK became too long here now (character limit), so I'll actually move it to one of my more recent crazy convoluted MAL messages regarding Type-Moon order overall. Ctrl+F search "Edit:" on that convo page and you're there.
https://myanimelist.net/comtocom.php?id1=8323472&id2=13728168

This will be quite long as I here aim to explain the Prototype branch of the Fate franchise properly. I don't believe most need a direct story analysis with how much of a niche this is. Right now people need to know the basics of what to expect and how it can be enjoyed. The only other review here is overly cynical, has spoilers right off the bat, and doesn't explain anything properly. I will humbly try to balance it out.

"Sougin no Fragments" is a prequel light novel series to Fate/Prototype OVA and all of Fate/Prototype which was scattered on a few related things to ... it such as: Character material, Prototype material, and Fate/Prototype Animation Material databooks along with Tribute Phantasm artbook/manga anthology. All of which is somewhat based on the initial ideas for "Fate" that Nasu Kinoko had when he was in high school, way before he wrote Fate/stay night or Tsukihime (maybe even before he had ideas for his original Mahoyo novel). After the Prototype OVA came out, a decently well-known female writer from the VN industry Hikaru Sakurai was inspired by it and ultimately ended up pitching her ideas for a Prototype prequel novel to Type-Moon through her connections to Yuichiro Higashide and Ryou Morise and it was accepted. Nasu doesn't intend on writing the "original" Prototype story himself but he was comfortable with other authors working on its setting, so maybe we can hope for an anime of this novel or a properly done interpretation/re-imagining/adaptation of the original Prototype story done by Sakurai somewhere in a distant future (I wish I could tell which one of those two is most unlikely to happen, but nope).

All you need to know of the setting of Fate/Prototype as a whole is that it's set in Tokyo of the 1990s and that in this part of Fate multiverse we have the first Holy Grail War in 1991 as well as the second Holy Grail War in 1999. No other story details should be necessary as just exploring the overall Type-Moon lore should be enough of a motivation to get into for a Fate fan.

Should people even consider reading this without watching Prototype OVA and/or reading Prototype material databooks?
The 12 minute short with fragmented and a bit of a confusing story you'd probably feel bad about watching afterward since you'd expect to be 'spoiled' less goes first on the release timeline (2010). I myself was a bit upset after watching it before reading this and have made effort not to pay too much attention while watching it to my memory and not even look at or listen to the after-credits scene. It was the right call as far as I'm concerned, and while I started reading the Fragments a while later (taking some time off before starting the novel after OVA helped big time), I've realized that it was better to have watched it exactly like I did than not to watch at all. So let me state properly that I believe watching the OVA first before reading this prequel is essential. Just as essential as giving it a rewatch after finishing the novel and the fragments of the "original" Prototype script with the explanations from the most essential Proto databook. Now let's talk databooks, this is where it could get controversial. I myself didn't want to get into those databooks even while knowing about the fragmented synopsis-like bits of Fate/Prototype scrip from Prototype material and that it was big enough for ~30 to ~60 pages (but with just 20 scenes tops) because I've had prior experience of not doing the same databook thing earlier and being glad for it by the end. A few examples would include me: reading Fate/side material that "spoils" bits of Fate/Zero after already finishing the entirely of the F/Z novel despite FSN databook coming out earlier (on the same day as FSN itself) and being happy to get those story elements introduced to me in a proper story that came a bit later, and the same goes with me not reading the earliest Tsukihime databook that reveals things from Kagetsu Tohya before it came out and only doing it after already finishing many more Tsukihime things that could go as far as after finishing the remake and being even more surprised afterwards by some of the info. Databooks are amazing in nature and I don't have a problem with certain under-explained things being there specifically instead of the story itself if the story without that entertains me enough, but I expect most people would agree it is better to experience these things in a story and not databooks that are equivalent to wiki articles. It doesn't mean reading databooks and expecting certain "spoiled" things to be cleverly used later is a bad idea altogether (and in fact, it is good in certain cases even for some Type-Moon titles, like for example: knowing all about Tsukihime 2 sections from PlusPeriod and Character material databooks before going into the Tsukihime remake being clearly better for a fan of original Tsukihime, or reading Fate/EXTRA material databook after finishing CCC and before going into the Foxtail manga) but I decided not to give it a go in this case and it worked out great as far as I'm concerned. Therefore, you can expect me to be biased towards that and to recommend others to do the same here. However, the Prototype material case is a bit more nuanced and it is sort of halfway from the general info and a fragmented narrative that was portrayed from the perspective of "if it got made into an anime." It felt quite nice to finally read after finishing Fragments since all of the backgrounds from it made for the underdeveloped scenes in Proto Material to hit better (and yet some info and scenes clearly needed build-up from an actual Prototype story apart from Fragments to be working better/as intended), but I can't speak of how the opposite would feel here. I believe you can go either way first and be entertained in unique ways by both reading orders in theory and yet I still lean towards reading Fragments first being the best-feeling order (which is an interesting thing to come out of a person who hates "Fate/Zero first" order in the mainline Fate series with a burning passion, so I'd really like to see how my opinion changes if there is ever a proper Fate/Prototype novel). The only constant to both reading orders is that you watch OVA some time beforehand.

Should you read the spoilery Servant/Master info (with names, stats, and more) along with seeing character illustrations on the opening volume pages or not?
Character illustrations from the cover page itself and in the middle of the story are fine. But I was personally skipping everything from the starting illustrations/profiles outright until finishing 4 volumes and will recommend you to do the same (or at least just the text). Sometimes I like going into stuff blind and I know introducing the characters right from the starting illustrations can be a double-edged sword for some light novels. The only exception of me being cool with the opening pages here would be on the last volume since there are no more character profiles to avoid at that point. If you're insisting on reading those all anyway, so be it. But I personally think it can kill mystery to some scenes. Also, make sure not to read volume afterwords (even in vol 1) until you've finished the novel or the Prototype material databook fully as those afterwords do have spoilers to what happens after Fragments and expect you to know all the spoilers from that databook beforehand.

Next will be a bit about the nature of this novel and my impressions of it if you would like to read them.
There won't be any direct spoilers in the review, but some surprise will certainly be lost if you didn't read the novel yet.
I would personally suggest not reading this next section and go straight for the next one about the translation and so on.
It is by far the weirdest Fate spin-off yet with the strangest storytelling (except FHA if counted) and maybe the writing style of any Fate spin-off, and I crave to see it get animated just to know how it would look and feel like. The story is done out of order, it's fragmented just like the OVA and the Prototype material were. It is the closest to and not quite like Kara no Kyoukai (or DDD) either at the same time if that makes any sense. But even aside from that, it's weird from the ground up just because this is basically Fate/Zero for the Fate/stay night that we didn't get to experience properly and one that essentially doesn't exist. It's the only time you can legitimately not be in the wrong when you start with Fate/Zero, isn't that super weird? I semi-jest, but this experience really does well to make me almost tolerate cases when people who started with F/Z before FSN (more so the ones who started with the F/Z novel and not anime specifically for some reason). Moving on, there's a CD Drama adaptation of Fragments and you'll probably have to listen to it afterwards (I recommend it after finishing both the Fragments novel and the Prototype material book) because it provides more to the story like was the case with sound drama adaptations of other Fate titles. In Proto Fragments' case, however, it doesn't just have to do with the story structure that can sometimes lead to extra content (main selling points of Fate/Extra and Garden of Avalon CD dramas) or the addition of voices to the novel scenes without an anime adaptation yet and/or even after it happened (main selling points of all Fate related sound drama adaptations but mainly Fate/Zero now as it changes the story the least out of all IIRC), but also the fact that each volume of it came with an extra 2 side stories distributed in bonus booklets and with this adaptation having a different experience you either have to read them in the proper way it released (after researching this "proper way" in the first place) in-between listening the CD volumes or having those be read separately after finishing the novel and making a sort of weird amalgamation of both the novel experience and the CD drama experience at once instead of separating the two by release dates (and it's a fine enough idea if you're not in the mood for basically re-reading the novel right after finishing it or even after seeing all of related Prototype material that exists out there for the time being). What I'm sneakily trying to get at with all of this at play, it gets kind of hard or perhaps even a bit meaningless to judge the entire Fate/Prototype series by just reading this Fragments novel (although that pretty much goes for nearly all of Type-Moon that constantly keeps expanding and building upon the experience outside just one thing). To judge even just this novel properly in relation to the Fate/Prototype story (like I really want to) would require much more context, mostly due to the Fragments' ending and it being an obvious set-up story for the main dish we cannot have yet (if ever). This story is simply incomplete without a proper Prototype novel/manga/anime/VN otome game/something and just having to feed on the databook spoilers that would maybe be implemented into a proper story somewhere in the future (to make having to read databooks this early finally obsolete) just isn't enough and having to do that doesn't sit well with me either. I doubt most Type-Moon fanatics who finish this novel simply won't read databooks right after and are willing to wait for proper adaptation to experience Prototype in a story as it once meant to be and not through databooks or vague parts of some scenes we are shown. It is unfortunate, but if that adaptation ever does happen, I suppose getting into Fate/Prototype would be the best ever with a new and potentially best-feeling order to it (depending on the quality of the adaptation, of course). So enough with the negativity, let us be hopeful. Fragments' was a decent novel and just an interesting piece of Nasuverse lore as far as I'm concerned. My mind as a Type-Moon enjoyer was stimulated enough by each volume and that tells me it's worth reading and can be enjoyed under the right conditions, even despite that weird prose the author was using (which is definitely feeling worse to me in the translation and which makes it even harder to judge the novel for anyone not reading in Japanese).

About the translation (Fragments/Labyrinth)
I do have more than a few issues with the current one besides the usual typos, or not updating a few instances of lore terms for consistency with FGO localization, or putting extra lines at the start that weren't in the original volume, or just some lines I'd translate in a different way myself, my biggest complaint is not preserving the dialogue formatting that did not have a name attached to every instance of it in the original text. It may be added as a preference or for the same feeling of the Prototype material for the people who've read it, but it feels like a dick move to me nonetheless. There's no good reason to add that in as far as I'm concerned. Let the reader think about who is speaking by intuition like it was meant to, let it stay part of the reading experience. This even straight-up spoiled things a few times with the biggest example being in the first volume (although that one is naturally meant for the people who've read all of Prototype databooks and probably for the same effect that having illustrations accomplished originally) and even if I started Prototype with the databook, I'd be upset (and I'm not quite sure when will that spoiler can be viewed safely from the "Fragments' first" perspective but probably after reaching volume 5 along with all past opening pages). I can also complain about the way the first translation pdf of volume 1 was set up with having "Fragments" side stories from the CD Drama adaptation mixed in without briefly explaining it wasn't part of the novel to anyone who may not do enough research for whatever reason (probably just people wishing not to get spoiled along the way) in the pdf itself in a single extra line right before it. Naturally, I do realize it was someone else doing the pdfs and it was probably done with preservation of text in mind, too... but it just feels like a mess of an experience to me. Although, the JP volume 1 wasn't without its flaws either with including a random one-shot manga from Type-Moon Ace Vol.9 that wasn't suited for reading at the end of that volume or even after finishing the novel with or without Proto databooks and the reason why I'm saying that it's no good regardless of databooks is it changes the tone and therefore pacing of the story too much along with not being released in that volume originally, meaning it should've ideally been read by the databook people by that point anyway (it was just a bonus and thankfully it hadn't happened again in the other volumes). But let's get back on track and finish my thought process. All of the work the community and the translator lady have done deserve massive respect, of course, don't get me wrong. The fact that people were willing to try making a few pdf at all is amazing and the translation is nowhere near the fanfiction tier of Kara no Kyoukai translation by Cokesacto if there's any confusion about it ever coming across that way or implying it's terrible or something. I just think Fragments and Labyrinth really need their translations polished (ideally removing that weird formatting and having decent pdfs along the way with no illustration placement issues like what can be encountered once in a while in the current ones) and it's all good and way easier to get into than now. Perhaps we can hope for that after the last of the remaining translation gets done in the near future.

What do we do with Fate/Labyrinth?
It is a 'side story' happening between volumes 4 and 5, it also coincides with the dates of both serializations IIRC (not the volume releases), and fact-checking this is a bit too hard to make sure exactly. But does it make it necessary to be read in-between those or is it fine or even better to read after volume 5? Does it even have enough of a connection to even care for it so soon? Well, I've decided to roll a dice on that one and put it off until after volume 5. Knowing right off the cover art of the later released full volume that it somehow ties itself with not only Fate/stay night but also Fate/Extra (and one would assume maybe even more, especially so if you've seen the opening pages describing Labyrinth characters that btw clearly spoils the story and should be avoided just as much as the character section on MAL). With this, you'd expect the pacing to get even weirder than it already was. And after finishing Labyrinth, I concluded that my decision was correct. In the beginning, it was hard to definitively say as I've miraculously experienced everything from every title it connects to properly, but that is only because I made a pause in between reading the Fragments novel after vol 3 (which made me lose a bit of important context that I had to remember later) and by the time I came back to it I've already read everything (to a certain point) that was coincidentally required for Labyrinth. Normally, it would not be a good idea to make such pauses and if I somehow decided not to make one for myself on a complete whim and read Labyrinth down the line so early as before getting into EM Case Files (at least 3 volumes of it), Mahou Tsukai no Hako or without ever reading Fate/strange Fake 2008 with Apocrypha before starting Fragments novel (let alone Labyrinth), I'd be upset with myself for not doing so in the end. So I'm absolutely sure reading Labyrinth in-between volumes 4-5 is a bad idea. Both for the pacing of Fragments and for the Labyrinth story itself. That weird reading order is only somewhat viable if you're emulating the release timeline of Type-Moon things near-perfectly like a madman or doing whatever the hell I did. But if databooks are in the equation, then I'd rather you read Labyrinth after those or maybe even after the CD drama if you want (it's totally fine). Just make sure to be sufficiently read on those Type-Moon titles mentioned as it is not quite just Fate/Prototype side-story but more like a side story to them all on the surface (leaning heavily on being a side-story to a few titles in particular) while still distinctively being its own thing.

Here I'll be adding a bit more context to my reading experience with Fragments and Labyrinth. It's really only for those who don't get what my process were and care for some reason. Feel free not to read this section if you don't care for it.
Before starting or finishing Fragments novel: I've already done almost all of Tsukihime franchise and got into most of Mahou Tsukai no Hako weirdness (explaining would take too long), experienced Extraverse up until after the first EXTELLA (first EXTRA & CCC were done way before, but EXTELLA was played during my Fragment reading pause, and miraculously after finishing it the context to a few lines in later volumes of Fragments was more understandable) and before going into Fate/EXTRA: Last Encore (because Sakurai was also co-writing that controversial anime along with Nasu, so I had to properly finish Prototype Fragments before it on principle), EM Case Files volume 1-3 was read on the Fragment reading pause (I guess it turned out a bit like it was in the release order) and FSF 2008 with Apocrypha (in that order) were read before everything mentioned in this whole section.

Extra section for smoother Fate/Labyrinth experience (sorry for using so much space on it but I'm not doing a separate review for that one)
Not reading Kara no Kyoukai and Tsukihime before playing Fate/EXTRA is as much of a mistake as watching Fate anime by ufotable too early (a big one). If you want the fullest experience out of the EM Case Files through vol 1-3 besides the obvious stuff like having to read Fate/Zero and FSF 2008 with Apocrypha, go as far as finishing all 4 main Type-Moon titles including Mahoyo. Mahou Tsukai no Hako was a multimedia project and is the hardest to explore because most of it is audio content that's not translated. The most enjoyable content of which, in my opinion, is the simple humor-filled slice-o-life stuff like the early CD dramas or Hibichika Time instead of generic Marmelade stuff they tried later on and didn't even finish. How much it's connected to Labyrinth is the main question, but you'd have to find out for yourself.

The topic of Fate/Prototype relating to Fate/strange Fake novel series (and not the 2008 version, which doesn't have any of the same kind of relations to FSF as in Fate/Labyrinth and Prototype material), I won't be discussing it here in detail. All you have to know is that you should either fully experience Prototype franchise branch (including databooks and Labyrinth) before jumping into FSF 2015 full force or (as insufficient as it might be) at the very minimum you should watch Prototype OVA beforehand.

And if I shall say anything of FGO in relation to the Protoverse, it is only that people should read Proto novels before getting into FGO. Meeting characters for the first time in FGO when some didn't originally come from there, and when some can be met in a more properly structured story instead of a Gacha/VN/JRPG-thing where there's too many characters to properly split time between all of them to give something resembling a proper development from the ground up, should naturally be off the table. Not that I'm particularly dissing FGO as I like the thing, but it just screams "bad idea" to me and it also should be obvious for everyone else. There are actual FGO characters and there are characters from specific series, this is painfully obvious without ever playing the game. This means some characters are just not meant to be met in FGO for the first time and spoilers will be a thing for everything that came before it when it comes to that game. Try not to be stupid, alright? Although if it's too late for you already, at least if you weren't focusing on the Proto characters too much it's probably still gonna be worth reading this novel if you somehow got to be really hardcore about Fate series for some reason from just FGO. If you get bored easily, though, or have a wrong mood for it, maybe it won't be worth it.

Good luck finding out if my takes are in any way correct or if some other people dissing Sakurai were in the right.
While there is stuff to diss Sakurai for, overall the content wasn't too bad for me. Maybe I'm being too much of an optimist, but who knows. At the very least I expect the truth to be somewhere in the middle, and not with the naysayers.

December 20, 2023 edits:

ProtoformX from BeastLair started doing updated versions of translated LN pdfs/epubs this August, and from what I could tell by skimming through it he at least removed some of the annoying name indicator stuff during dialogue. At the very least a glaring spoiler I malded over the first time is now gone, so that's great. I hope we could see vol 2 and 3 pdfs/epubs from ProtoformX in 2024. However, there's still no movement in the vol 4-5 retranslation effort to fix some of the issues I had with PhoenixRising translation, and because of that, any moves to make pdfs/epubs for those volumes won't be a thing until PhoenisRising returns.

On another new topic:
Because the manga adaptation of Fragments is now a thing since this July, everything about this Prototype series and its connection with FGO gets even more complicated to explain and navigate through. If Fragments anime is ever announced, prepare for it to get even more complicated! But it should be fun to figure out (pls let it happen someday mushroom man).

I think it's fair to go for scoring this as low as 5/10 or as high as 10/10 depending on how you look at it.

Being harsh on this ONA doesn't make sense to me unless you're not a Fate fan. The anime itself is obviously just a short and sweet feel-good food show for the Fate fans, but personally, I found watching each episode with enough food to last me an episode to be unironically the best to the point when I pretty much only watched it when I got food. It felt to me almost like a recreation of that nice feeling of sharing ... a meal with someone. But I imagine not having food to go with this being a form of torture somewhere as then I'd surely get so hungry I'd die on the spot. I didn't particularly care and I also think most of the non-Japanese viewers won't care about the finer details of Japanese food-making or relate to making those same dishes yourself, but all of that doesn't really matter to me. The anime itself is an adaptation of a manga that borrows FSN/FHA setting and is mostly basically just more Fate/hollow ataraxia's slice-of-life type content but more focused on food. I can't really speak for the manga since it doesn't really seem all that important to get to before literally anything else, but the anime was an enjoyable relaxing experience. Any novel-reading TM nerd or any casual anime watcher that finished FSN can enjoy it, provided that they get into it with the right mood.

No idea how it feels for the anime-only people as usual but it absolutely spoils the origin story of Canaan and Alphard from the visual novel and distorts your perception of better-written characters badly repurposed here, and just the former alone makes me glad I could properly experience it without ruining it with this anime.

It didn't add anything worthwhile to the novel, oversimplified and one could say ruined the characters. What else? The pacing is feeling way too rushed and the story really wants you to either remind you of some of the events of the novel or is really just made for those who ... never read the novel in the first place because the amount of exposition was boring me out of my mind (it is obviously both but it just feels so off). The new characters were entirely uninteresting and the whole premise feels forced just to have a sequel for the novel as promotional material. The ending to Canaan's and Alphard's story was done perfectly in the novel, I'd say, and it's just wasting it all on this thing. I know the Canaan manga or the novel may feel vastly different despite coming out later or even being written at the same time as the production of this anime was underway (like in the case of Evangelion manga), but honestly, Idk if I'd even like it if I read those first but it's my miss, I suppose. Kind of a shame that I can unironically say the best thing about this anime was the opening, but it is what it is.

Search 428: Shibuya Scramble on Steam or something and read the novel instead of watching this. The translation isn't exactly what I would call particularly good, but It's still better than nothing and certainly better than this thing.

VN reader here! It took me a while to watch this one given its controversial rep with a seemingly 50/50 split of people saying it's overly hated needlessly and it being pretty good and the other ones saying it just sucks.

A warning to you would be that I cannot recommend that you watch this or any Fate anime as a gateway to Fate or Nasuverse in general and to just read the novels first and foremost. If you're not into books, believe me, reading a visual novel is not the same as reading a book and can be a nice way for you to start ... reading more.

I understand the people who could enjoy it and get that bias for or against people watching this anime first will continue to have their valid points and some of the circumstantial merits to their liking or disliking, but I'd rather have people not taking such chances and going for the original source material instead.

Now, let me start by explaining my biases in detail. I think many reviews lack that important context when it comes to Fate and it can get pretty deep if you aren't just a casual anime watcher. It might also help you out with starting on Nasuverse properly without spoiling yourself too much in that process if you have the time for my ramblings. Although you can skip all of that bullshit and just get to my actual feelings on this adaptation after this next large-ass paragraph.

I thought the first FSN route was still the best one after finishing the novel and I wasn't spoiled by anything prior in the slightest (yep, didn't know who the Saber was or about the whole structure/premise of the Fate stories until those moments came up in the VN). I have read Fate/Zero after FSN after realizing in an hour of playing Hollow Ataraxia that it wasn't doing it for me at the moment (but afterward, it was just the thing I needed). There was no way in hell I was going to watch a fuckin anime adaptation of Zero after reading FSN. If I were dumb and impatient, I'd consider watching UBW anime first, but thankfully, I had enough of a brain to look at the release dates and quickly deduct and research without spoiling myself that the UBW anime spoils Zero pretty badly. I knew that the Zero first watching order the ufotable forced with the spoilery scenes is horrible for first-timers, very confusing to even the people who read the visual novel and leads to many absolute monkeys declaring Zero the best (if not the only) Fate worth experiencing while ignoring the problems Fate/Zero has as a FSN spin-off (the way it is supposed to be viewed as). After finishing Zero novel, however, I was way too excited to see everything FZ related and finally start experiencing that dreaded "Zero first" watch order all the normies get wet over (not realizing there was something I'd rather see first in hollow ataraxia as I should have later in UBW, but going that far would require me to be patient or have more info which was an issue at the time period of me finishing Zero). Of course, that entire situation made a question of "how does the OG Fate anime of my favorite route and the actual proper start to Fate in anime format actually feels" grow ever so stronger as was my feeling of rejection of it having the confidence of it never standing a chance to the original in my mind like literally ALL of the other Fate anime. Slowly getting to the new and exciting Nasuverse content instead of rolling in FSN adaptations (and I knew of the KnK spoilers at the end of HF3 or the mangas that came out and/or finished way after to even seriously consider doing that anyway) to bore myself over Fate series in quick succession was objectively a good call on my part and made for a very smooth sailing around Type-Moon stories. So, having smartly positioned other core TM things as to not get spoiled anywhere or get bored over the seemingly unending sea of Fate content I started getting ever so closer to FGO without being an anime-only wanker in pretty much everything I touched, but at some point, I needed a break. And the feeling of something important missing grew at the back of my mind, something along the lines of not experiencing the first appearances of FSN voices, seeing one of the most influential anime adaptations of the time, and finally getting to the bottom of the mystery of this adaptation's quality once and for all.

So after going through an anime arc of my own I finally watched it (over a month ago prior to writing this "review", I believe). Now, as you can see by the score, I do belong into the camp of people who think it is overly hated and is actually pretty good but the side of the "hate" that people legitimately have for it lies for me purely in thinking it is a horrible place to start Nasuverse or Fate as I have always suspected. I think that the soundtrack and the overall old-school feel of this anime has a very unique place in the Nasuverse and it is either liked or hated depending on many different factors of each person watching it (liking the slower pacing or not, liking older anime or not, watching Zero first or not, misunderstanding the characters or not, reading FSN novel first or not, or just having the right mood for it at the right time or not). I like older anime quite a bit myself and this one recreated such a thing when the first Kara no Kyoukai movie was just a year away from it. It is honestly incredible to think about, but on the other hand, you might complain about DEEN being DEEN, cutting corners sometimes (to which you'd be totally right), and maybe just not feeling the vibe at all. All I can say to that is it just worked for me, I suppose. If that other route content wasn't in the anime (and I certainly don't mean the Archer bit as I found it okay as extra content for VN readers without spoiling too much for the first-timers) and if it only focused on the Fate route, I could've given this an 8 or maybe even a 10 on a whim possibly at least as a novel reader and a massive simp of this route in particular but the Heaven's Feel content was so surreal and uncomfortable to witness and was such an absolute mess to experience I just couldn't even think about it seriously for a moment even after it was done. I was so dumbfounded and numb to it I couldn't even believe what was happening. It shook me to the very core. I don't know what they were thinking. But anyway, back to pretending this never happened. I felt that the old voice Type-Moon had for the person at the end (if you know, you know) wasn't very fitting at all and the change they made for this character in the VN voiceover work from 2007 was done perfectly for that scene and I cannot shake off my biases about it. What else can I say? Common anime-only complaints about the characters people may or may not have would be pointless to address as I never experienced an anime-only perspective having started with the novel. The characters make sense because I know they do, having experienced all of the routes and understanding the original source material as much as my mind allowed at the time, but to quantify it as if I never had met this character before is next to impossible now and I can mostly only judge this as an adaptation and not its own thing. I know many people disliked it and many liked it despite all of that but it shall remain a mystery to me.

Only mild spoilers, but still! Probably shouldn't read this one until finishing the movie.

I'm only rating this from the perspective of it being very superficial extra material for a VN reader like myself. Most of my overly positive ratings to Fate anime is purely on emotion but objectively speaking the novel readers will understand that the best part of the Heaven's Feel route (which is the ending portion) was pretty much disappointing as well as the overall character development in the whole trilogy with cutting most of it to nothing (like those sacred Illya scenes, for example) and even having the balls to make the ... ending so rushed as to require people to see Kara no Kyoukai up to 5th movie beforehand to even guess what had happened there but still barely understand it anyway without reading the VN (there's also an attempt on expanding on things in cd drama but it's just hitting different). And yet, I thought the ending had enough merit with the combination of the two endings from the VN (and seeing the smallest of KnK stuff here was pretty exciting and the people should've seen KnK movies at the minimum beforehand anyway since it's mostly good stuff, very important for Type-Moon fans and is also pretty much the reason why ufotable is so successful in the first place). Anyway, I'm still going to rate it this high (or even higher on my personal score out of this review) because I came to terms with it being the way it was and was enjoying myself enough even until that Rider fight blew me out of my pants and made me so ready and hyped for one of the most satisfying moments in the VN and that being the final confrontation between you-know-who (because the Rin / Sakura scenes weren't expected to be hitting me emotionally as in the novel anyway) which didn't deliver at all, being okay-ish at most. But that Rider fight was so unexpectedly done so much justice and wasn't unimportant to extend it this much like the Berserker fight in the second movie was (the movie which maybe even cut out the most of the character development and yet some people keep thinking it's the best one for some reason). While that fight was going down I just had to stop and take a breather not caring about anything and giving this movie a 10 in the middle of watching.

Whatever I just said aside, everyone knew they couldn't do the longest route justice with just 3 movies, but the first one (despite the fattest spoiler at the end for anime-only people) and this third one were plenty enjoyable for me anyway. Feel free to get possessed by the first half of the movie along with the Rider fight and give this as high as a 10 or be overly judgemental about things and the anime-only experience like I myself was for most of the ufotable's Fate adaptations and lower your rating down to as low as 1 for all I care. Anything goes!

First of all, I read the novel beforehand as everyone should before just hating Apocrypha purely of the anime experience. Type-Moon stuff is mostly novels and we should judge this experience as an adaptation unless you don't care for Type-Moon and are a casual anime-only fan. If you do care, just read the novel and don't bother with the anime until you finish the last volume or even just 4 that were translated at the very least. Because I assume if you start watching anime after that point, you'd be already seeing what kind of stuff anime butchered for the anime-onlies and you'd be more ... open-minded about the story parts covering the ending while understanding it would probably go and feel very different in the source material. If you won't read the source, then It's gonna be bad. Or so I assume by seeing all of this anime-only hate in reviews.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a blast with this anime but only after reading 4 out of 5 volumes of the novel (it also helped with my impressions of Fate/Extra CCC down the line before I read the 5th volume of Apocrypha and finally found out how the ending actually went, which made the anime feel even more rushed on a rewatch).

I found the sound effects terrible at first but I suppose those grew on me somehow, however, the OST was a slapper and was most of the reason I enjoyed this anime at all (enough to give it a 10 on the enjoyment scale).

So what about the story? Let's be honest, it's pretty bad compared to the novel and you have to be a madman not to expect this (and it's not like the novel is one of the best from Type-Moon either, but enough for me to slap at least a 7 to it on MAL) and leaves out many logical questions that were answered there like "why didn't so and so use the blah-blah and did so and so" but from my perspective, it was kinda fun thinking about stuff regarding the story changes and how it will affect the anime-only viewer as well as judging some of the novel story moments through this adaptation while thinking about the overall picture. Seig complaints are valid on some level, sure, but it made complete sense and the story wasn't just about one character since it was a war (duh). But of course, when you read the novel first and have this little thing called "attention span" it makes sense with Seig scenes also being slower and detailed overall, which could be a plus and a minus in certain spots. Compared to the novel, which stretched out the more interesting things in the story as well as less interesting (typically the lower end of the "Sieg scenes" spectrum), seeing this reversed in the anime felt pretty fresh despite ruining many scenes and the overall consistency for anime-only people. Some of the other complaints regarding, for example (and I'm only mentioning/addressing these very few complaints because it's that disappointing to me), the Assassin's character would be mostly elevated had the studio actually tried adapting the Apocrypha prologue (the first and even maybe the second one that was written after the Apo story had finished) or if people would actually follow the Type-Moon timeline and read Fate/strange Fake 2008 before/right after that Apocrypha Unbirth prologue they'd once again understand there's no need to be upset at Apocrypha's Assassin. Or the complaints about the ending being bananas could've been elevated a bit had it been slower and had actual time-skips like in the novel along with the entire extra chapter after the ending in a form of OVA or just making it part of a longer ending. There are lots of examples for many characters or the story moments some people have a problem with but I'd have to go into spoilers and write a whole lot, so I'll spare you on that. But just so you know, you can explain pretty much 99% of the stuff that is supposedly unexplainable from your average anime-only hater. I've read plenty of long-ass negative reviews on here and I've contemplated making an incredibly long rebuttal section in here to all of them plenty of times. But then the realist/doomer in me tells me it would all be pointless since nothing I could say would be new to any person that read the novel, and everyone who's already watched the anime first and disliked it would not be motivated to read the novel in the slightest no matter how much I'll write and no matter how convincing it could be in theory. Even if some of those negative nancies start coming around to this anime just being extra material for the novel readers, they won't be able to take back that negative wave of prior experience. The more productive thing would be to warn fellow Type-Moon enjoyers not to make the same mistake, so here I am telling you not to watch the anime first. If you're the kind of person to start Fate from an anime despite the source material being THE most popular visual novel or the fact that we don't have a proper adaptation of the very first route of FSN not making you see how much of a bad idea it would be, there's almost no helping you anyway, but if you're someone who did read the VN (and hopefully even Fate/Zero afterwards instead of watching it first) and you're still on the fence about reading or watching other spin-offs including Fate/Apocrypha, I cannot be more confused and disappointed.

But if you do watch the anime first, at least try not to be overly serious about it to the point of not being able to enjoy it, especially when this franchise is about nearly anything being possible within a magical multiverse. If you're lazy enough to just watch the anime, consider reading some of the Apocrypha material translations on TMdict or the wiki to make more sense out of the content you've just watched without just reading the novel (although it kinda spoils Fate/EXTRA CCC for a little bit) and if you have any big issues with the story, try and look around the internet to see how it was done in the novel or even the manga (or just read the manga first before watching if reading the novel seems like too much of a commitment). Don't forget what you've watched is a goddamn adaptation. Make an effort to be fair in your negative reviews if you're so adamant about writing one.

Right off the bat, I cannot rate this one overly objectively, so I'm saying not to get hanged up on my score as it probably can also be fine to rate from 5/10 to 10/10 depending on the reader. I don't think it's objectively bad if you argue from good faith and are not being overly cynical, but it all depends on how much you liked the characters by the end. Anyway, let's begin.

It's a bit of a classic being the adaptation of the first novel Nasu ever finished writing in 1996, we know that already, but the fact this remade story came out way ... later than the rest of the core Type-Moon titles makes it a bit complicated. But you shouldn't expect this to be an overly complicated story, it is quite simple but quite solid. If you come here for action for some reason, drop that attitude. Just go along with the flow, get attached to the characters, and have a nice relaxing reading experience. No need to bring the experience down by listening to overly positive opinions and vise versa. I feel like you should go in without knowing too much about it if you're a first-timer to Nasu's work and that's it. You can pretty much stop reading this take if you don't want to see me rumble about some details on how to possibly maybe read it or not yet or through which lens I see the story to maybe have a similar chance to enjoy it as much as I did. No spoilers will be present for any specific Type-Moon stories including this one if you're sticking around. In fact, it will have many spoiler warnings and advice on getting into Nasuverse, which ties into Mahoyo relatively well I'd say.

So, from what perspective do I judge and experience this story?
How would I consider Mahoyo to be an entry to Nasuverse?
The next 2 sections will be answering those questions.




First, I'll just say I've read all of it and wasn't using the recently leaked old ass unfinished "full" FR>EN Hollow Moon translation patch from 2019 that was floating around 4chan and wherever else. Don't be that person and either wait for a proper full release or if you know enough Japanese use MTL with Textractor (and JParser) since it should be better than that garbage and fairly easy in the case of your Japanese not being beyond nonexistent and will help you learn kanji hopefully as well as preserve the untranslatable mannerisms of the Japanese language. If you're looking for those benefits, the relevance of this method will be everlasting even after the full translation finishes and the voices get added to preserve some of the Japanese feel later on. But of course, the best way is to know Japanese to a level you can read books freely without ANY help ever, but getting to that level on a whim is too hard a task for most people, myself included. So all you can really assume is that I hopefully had enough knowledge to read it comfortably and catch all of the mistakes (which I did).

I gave this a 10 on pure emotion after a few personal bumps and downs with the story I had along the way but this is a perspective of a massive Type-Moon fag that started with FSN VN and kept only reading the novels first every single time properly because I enjoyed FSN so much and the books were keeping me interested in more of a real version of things rather than some shallow adaptation (obviously including ufotable as well). Now, recently I started to get closer to FGO content timeline (2015) after experiencing almost everything Nasu and Takeuchi released until then. Reading/playing this title in the release order (not overly strictly but trying to keep spoilers away) was pretty great for experiencing the second half of Mahoyo especially but I feel like accepting the second half is a bit of a shaky subject. I believe it'll be easier to be okay or good plotwise if you're already familiar with Nasuverse extensively and how each story is different enough with almost anything being possible within the multiverse to not be overly cynical about it or overthink it in the less enjoyable direction. It might be my bias speaking, but I'm just making assumptions based on how I could've reacted personally to it had I started with Mahoyo instead. The first half of the story is probably better suited for a Nasuverse beginner but that second half makes me reluctant to recommend it to first-timers unless they're overly patient and constantly aware that is it an origin story that people were eager to experience for however many years we knew about it before it came out in 2012 that is a part of a trilogy that we cannot even begin to judge to its fullest yet. Most of my good vibes come from just chilling and patiently expecting more good stuff and the sequels answering a lot of the questions and more chill, but I'm used to it. Will first-timers be? Idk, but some people think Mahoyo is the best entry to the Nasu writing and... Having that discussion is largely pointless and will ultimately lead to an objectively best likely choice of starting Nasuverse being (and I only count books and VNs, no manga or anime here at all) Fate/stay night with the least connection to the rest of the main Type-Moon titles to spoil (non-book FSN content is just not even worth mentioning but FYI: HF3 movie needs at least 5 KnK movies at the minimum or any other Fate anime, in general, being riddled with spoilers from either other routes or the other novels entirely, for example, Fate/Zero is made impossible to experience properly if you even touch the anime adaptation of UBW before reading it in the intended novel order which leads to anime-only misconceptions). FSN VN is also sitting right in the middle ground (sweet spot) of Takeuchi's art style between Tsukihime being a bit older and rough around the edges but still very charming and Type-Moon's new style of Mahoyo, FGO, and now the Tsukihime Remake. Also, my bias tells me Tsukihime could maybe be weirder for me if I hadn't read Kara no Kyoukai novels beforehand since Melty Blood later spoils KnK (and even FSN in Type Lumina), but reading those KnK novels is kind of a chore to ask a first-timer if you know Cokesacto translation that every Mal normie read is mostly bad with the Baka-Tsuki one being eternally unfinished and the movie problems especially with chapter 6 and so on)

However, none of it matters too much as with enough of an open mind and patience it is fine to start with any of the main Type-Moon titles anyway and if you could find enjoyment in it, your journey will be a unique one (especially if you can keep yourself from spoilers and FGO for as long as you can).



Now let me just bitch about MAL for a tiny bit.

Whoever added this as a LN makes me scratch my head despite seeing these cases every once in a while, I assume it was done either because Nasu didn't really want to call Mahoyo a VN and used this excuse not to add voice acting (at least partially), or the fact that the original 1997 version was a light novel (still doesn't make sense to put the specifically 2012 one here), or maybe just ignorance. But that's a minor issue as I think MAL should expand to VNs anyway and more (despite things like vndb being a thing and such), but why does this have only 8 chapters out of 13? And that's purely for the main story, if you count extras there's more. The Hatsukoi wo Meguru Bouken short story (not a VN, actually should be on MAL) that came with the first editions of the VN also should be getting more attention for a MAL page IMO. Despite not being fully translated, it is arguably the best extra chapter out of those. (Nevermind. I guess it's been translated just 2 hrs before I posted the review. So I basically finished it the same day before it was finished translating and perhaps even mere hours apart of it. Believe it or not, with that kind of coincidence, I wasn't even mad I had to spend so much time to read it before the TL finished.)


btw, I'm not gonna go into VN experience detail as it is listed as LN here but it does have the usual nice visuals and a remarkable soundtrack.


Future edit:
1. In March we got a script for Agent (the program people usually use for Tsukihime remake text extraction) so you can use it instead if you didn't want to deal with Textractor but do want to see it in Japanese to some extent.
2. Apparently we'll be getting official TM Mahoyo localization with the new re-release. I imagine some people now gloating at Hollow Moon and all the memes of official TL coming out before it turning out to be correct. That's fairly funny in its own right, but we don't know if the official TL will be of better quality. I don't trust official translations much, personally, but we just have to see how this plays out. You'll be probably safe just reading that but do your research if you're from the far future when all of it came out already.