A new Holy Grail War rages, though this one is a little bit different. Instead of seven masters being chosen to battle it out in a city or the countryside, instead hundreds of masters have been selected, their souls digitised and sent to the moon. There they can summon heroic spirits, former warriors of legend and myth, to battle towards the 7th Level where the Moon Cell and the Holy Grail are, to have their wish granted. However something went wrong. The Moon Cell’s original intention was to study humanity and instead all it has brought is death and misery for a hundred years. Now the Moon Cell is breaking down, still with no victor in this Holy Grail War and with life deteriorating back on the Earth this could be the end of humanity itself.
However things are about to change. At last a new master has arrived, Hakuno, a strange young man who wakes after being stabbed to death. Together with his servant Saber and the help of the mysterious Rin, he climbs through the levels, battling the Floor Masters even though he doesn’t know what his wish is. You see Hakuno has no memories of who he was, only an unbridled hatred that sometimes takes over him. Just what is a Dead Face?
Okay, I think that’s what was going on, I may be totally wrong but I don’t feel like rewatching the anime again to try and figure it out.
The Review
Yeah, this is a confusing one, I mean the Fate franchise has a reputation for being quite a dense mythology to dig your way through, but this series takes it to a whole other level. There’s so many times where I had to listen to a conversation two or three times just to grasp what they were trying to tell me. Sure, Fate likes its long, overly poetic and rambling dialogue at times and in other Fate series I’ve been able to either put up with it or genuinely enjoy what they were talking about. Here though it makes the story near impenetrable, so many of the episodes are just wall-to-wall exposition and yet they say so little. I think one of the main problems this series has is that we see so little of what is actually going on. There’s talk of the population of the Earth either collapsing or being on the verge of that and yet we never even so much as a frame of what the state of the Earth is in with our own eyes.
There’s also a distinct lack of set up to the actual setting, in the first episode Hakuno is just going through the motions in this generic school setting and we’re left by ourselves to piece things together from the scraps we’re given. I really think this anime should have started by showing us the Earth, then the Moon Cell, then explained about the century long Holy Grail War [actually thinking about, the series doesn’t even explain what a Holy Grail War is]. After all of that, once the series has given us our bearing, then we can go into Hakuno’s story. If the series had been done that way I think I would have enjoyed this so much more because I could have spent my time getting to know the characters, rather than trying to work out what was going on.
Then again it’s not as if the characters are that revolutionary. Hakuno is okay in a generic main character kind of way, honestly it’s probably Billy Kametz’s personable performance that makes me like the guy more than anything else. My main problem with him is that he keeps going on about how filled with hatred and anger he is, but he never acts like that. Hakuno comes across as a very nice guy, wanting to help and save others and he can even smile and trade jokes with Saber. The whole hate thing just feels like forced angst because it never comes through in his personality. Saying that the whole Dead Face thing is an interesting concept, I just wish it were put to better use.
That brings me to Saber, who I feel could have been a fantastic character, I just never really connected with her. I mean everything was there on paper, she’s always fun and has an interesting back-story when that’s revealed. I often found myself smiling whenever the show’s spotlight swung back to her and yet I can’t say I’ve really fallen for her, not like the Saber from the regular Fate universe [or even Saber of Red from Apocrypha]. I think it again comes back to me having to spend so much time trying to work out what people are saying that I couldn’t devote enough of myself to investing in the characters. However, I will admit that during the later episodes the exposition calmed down a little [only a little mind] and I did find some of Saber and Hakuno’s conversations really heart-warming. I won’t discuss her outfit here, I’ll just say that I had some issues with it [of course that was when she was actually wearing it. Someone in charge seemed determined to get in as much Saber fanservice as possible during the early episodes]
There are two other problems that I feel really cripple this series. One is the length of the series, at only ten episodes long this is an incredibly short series and I can’t help but feel if you doubled the length of this series it might help with the exposition so that it can be spread out a bit. Also it might help some scenes breath, as there are several that fly past in the blink of an eye before you can even properly register what happened. Now I know there’s a movie that’s supposed to be coming out later in the year, but honestly I don’t think that’s going to help much, though it may give an actual conclusion to the series as at the minute it ends without one.
The last problem I have with the series is the story structure. What I’ve always like about the idea of the Holy Grail War it that it’s a proper battle royale, anyone can fight anyone and you never know exactly who’s going to win [outside of the main protagonist] or exactly what match ups you’ll get. The anticipation is part of the fun, in this series though there’s no anticipation. Each Floor Master is introduced as we come to them and I know this series is based on a game, but do we have to have the battles laid out like such? I mean every couple of episodes is just Hakuno and Saber arrive on a floor, we learn about the Floor Master, then there’s a fight, Hakuno and Saber win and carry on to the next floor, rinse and repeat. Also throw in some weird yet possibly symbolic imagery and copious amounts of exposition for good measure. It’s not as fun or interesting just to have Hakuno face each new enemy one after the other in a straight line like that. There’s no chance really get invested in an opponent because as soon as Hakuno arrives I know he’s going to beat them in an episode’s time so I generally stop caring there and then. The old formula works so much better.
The Verdict
In the end Fate/Extra Last Encore is a confusing mess of a series that only the most die hard of fate fans should attempt to watch. There is some bizarre yet interesting imagery, especially in the backgrounds [but then again this was made by Studio SHAFT], but the series is crushed under the weight of its own exposition and lack of proper set up. Maybe if the series was longer to give it time to breathe or put some effort into establishing its setting, but it didn’t, which is a shame as I feel there’s a lot of potential in this story. However we’ve got what we’ve got and I won’t be asking for an encore of this performance any time soon.
Chris Joynson, aka the Infallible Fish, is a writer, blogger and lover of animation living in Sheffield. The blog updates every Friday.