If you’re not playing Fate/Grand Order I will point out that the title of the post is a reference to Mordred’s Max Bond Level Card. Even if you know nothing else about the game it should be a big hint that most of this post will be spent talking about the Knight of Treachery.

The biggest revelation in this episode is actually quite significant in the greater Type-Moon pantheon of lore but is easily missed by casual fans. This was the first onscreen shot of Morgan le Fay. Even if she is either in shadow or a faceless memory it is still more than she has even been seen before. When Fate/Stay Night has first released King Arthur and Bedivere were the only Arthurian characters who had portraits. As time has gone on various Fate offshoots have increased the amount of fully fleshed out pieces of the legend. Especially since Merlin was unveiled there have been three people who I feel are critical and have been left out. They are the Lady of the Lake, Guinevere, and Morgan le Fay. Thanks to Fate/Apocrypha one of the three great mysteries finally have some answers. While Morgan le Fay is still partially clouded in secrecy she now has a general character design and a voice actress. I expect to see her appear in Grand Order fairly soon with a full character design and a little more insight into the infamous sorceress.

Continue reading →

Seig really went from nobody to central focus character in no time flat. I was just talking about this with Elliot Page but Type-Moon does like to use the idea of the decoy protagonist. It happens with the Rin prologue in the original Fate/Stay Night visual novel and prologue of Fate/Extra with the fake out protagonist. In a way, this is no different from those examples but the amount of lead up to the reveal feels a bit different. It reminds me of the story I heard about how Tomino always wanted to make a mecha show where the signature mecha never appeared in the first episode but Sunrise NEVER liked that idea. Even with Turn A he at least had to show the titular suit at the end of the episode.

We shall see if the Tomino or the Sunrise approach was the correct one soon enough.

Continue reading →

 The major problem with Type-Moon anime coming out in the summer is that the summer also tends to be the busiest part of the year for the blog other than December. The real time sink is Otakon because the month before the convention is nothing but preparation. Then Otakon itself is amazing fun but drains all your energy in a sleep deprived blur. The month after that is con reports and catching up with everything else. That always made starting the Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya posts have a weird period where I had to play catch up with them while also playing catch up with everything else in my life. Therefore it makes it doubly important that I don’t fall behind on anything beforehand because it takes the challenge mode tasks of writing for the blog after Otakon and adds hard mode on top of that.

Basically what I am saying is that I love battle heavy episodes like this one when I am running behind. They tend to require much less writing and analysis since they are more about visual spectacle. There are still elements to unpack but overall they are far simpler besides some notable exceptions.

If they can keep this up for the next few weeks my life will be much simpler.

Continue reading →