By the way, your main character is the recently escaped homunculi and not Astolfo. I wanted to make that clear before I got anyone’s hopes up.

At this point, I only pop in on fandom discussions but I already see there is a very distinct and vocal faction of people who HATE this guy. When it comes to Type-Moon properties the main male protagonists tend to either be ignored or hated. Up until this point, Shirou Emiya was the fandom’s lightning rod of hate. He was so hated that I think he helped draw away anger from other characters. Soujuurou Shizuki and Mikiya Kokutou play second fiddle to their much more prominent heroines to the point that they barely register enough to get hate. I’m not sure I can’t even remember anyone having a strong opinion on Soujuurou. I’m sure people have opinions on him but I have never seen them. Shiki Tohno is pretty much the exception that created the rule. Fans liked his style of the protagonist so much they have not really taken to any other sort of main male character. Then in comes the character who eventually is known as Sieg.

As I have stated before I only know the broad strokes of the stories and characters of Fate/Apocrypha, therefore, I am a little hesitant to make judgments on any characters unless I am familiar with them from other Type-Moon stories. As an example at this point, I really know Mordred from other material but I can’t really tell you anything about Achilles more than you would get from reading his historical Wikipedia page. It does not help that most of the time people merely state that they really just hate Sieg. I’m sure they have a significant beef with the character I’m just not sure what it is. He is mostly a mystery with a vague cloud of resentment around him.

What I’m basically saying is that I’m going to try to go in and judge him as fairly as possible. I’m going to avoid mindlessly jumping on the hate train as much as I avoid defending him just because he is a target. If you hate the guy that is cool as long as you came to that conclusion on your own. Heck after watching this series I might be one of you. But if you really like the dude you might also take this as a bit of advice to avoid saying that publicly unless you are spoiling for an online argument.

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 Does anyone know if Fate/Apocrypha is going to be two parts or one? As far as I know, while a single 25 episode season has been announced it seems like the pace of the show is more geared towards two 25 episode seasons much like Fate/Zero. On top of that, both series were also four books long so it only makes sense they would be of equal length. 

Even at the end of this episode of Fate/Apocrypha, we find that Jeanne d’Arc has only just been formally introduced and Sieg has only been panned over by the camera in a way that clearly shows he will be significant but could easily be mistaken for a mere MacGuffin as opposed to a significant character. I know there have been some minor edits like Kairi Sisigo and Rocco Belfaban do some haggling over the preserved juvenile hydra in the novels and manga but that is hardly earth-shattering. Considering they are eight percent of the way through the story and they have only introduced one of the main characters it makes me assume they are not doing that much to pick up the pace in the anime.

If this is going to be two seasons the pace makes perfect sense. If it is only going to be one season I am a little worried. An artful editor could condense the story and miss some important and exciting parts but still make an anime true to the original. The only problem is a messy Studio Deen Fate/Stay Night styled mishmash is much more probable.

I totally forgot to mention that those small golems first the first episode look exactly like stone versions of the B1 battle droids from the Trade Federation Droid Army. In a way the small golems severe the same role in a magical army so it makes sense but I just wanted to point it out.

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In just a few days Reverse Thieves will officially be a decade old.  I swear sometime in those ten years I made a Murray Head’s Chess reference on the blog but I could not find it with a casual search of our posts so I think I can use it and declare no harm, no foul. I just ask for a bit of forgiveness if I say name a post “One Night in Mariejois and the World’s Your Oyster” within the next decade.

Fate/Apocrypha is an odd beast. It began life in back in the day before mobile games were a thing and the game everyone wanted to be was World of Warcraft. If nothing else Type-Moon has been pretty good at adapting their properties to different mediums in order to seize on what is popular. If you have ever seen Fate/Complete Material Volume IV you will see that they had a whole slew of Servants by different artists for the initial release of the game. For various reasons the game was canceled and the designs for the characters and the general premise of a two team Holy Grail War mostly became a bit of trivia for hardcore fans. A few of the Servants from Fate/Apocrypha found their way into other Type-Moon titles like Fate/Extra but overall it was more a case of what could have been.

As time went on light novels became the popular trend swept the otaku markets and Type-Moon has never been a company to ignore such opportunities. In 2011 they took the overall concept of the Great Holy Grail War and with Yuichiro Higashide made some tweaks to the story so it would work as a series of novels. This led to some changes to the background and the Servants involved but the general framework of the plot was adapted fairly straight.

If nothing else each of the Servants who were dropped from the original concept of Fate/Apocrypha have made their way into Fate/Grand Order. At the same time, all but a few notable exception from Fate/Apocrypha have made their way into Fate/Grand Order. With a Fate/Apocrypha event on the horizon, all of them should be in the game by the end of the year. In fact, if they don’t add Semiramis soon there maybe been some riots in the street of Akihabara.

The novels have been popular enough to get a manga and anime adaptation so here we are today. Unlike most of the other Type-Moon anime, I have written about I only know the broad strokes of the plot. I know most of the characters involved, some major plot points, and some big spoilers but details on anything and some major chunks of the plot will be as much of a surprise to me as they are to a good deal of the audience. So this time I will be as much of a tourist as many of the people reading these post. Sometimes even more so if any of you can read Japanese.

So let’s begin our journey together and see where it leads us.

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