Fate/Apocrypha - Episode 24 Discussion / Poll

[Klashikari]

Welcome to the discussion thread for Fate/Apocrypha, Episode 24.

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[bakato]

Shirou's plan for salvation is finally revealed. He wants to materialize the human soul, freeing humans from their physical bodies. Coincidentally, Kazuma Kamachi tackled the ethics of this plan in the second volume of his series "The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign" where the antagonists wanted to create a world without death and suffering.

Max Ascension Jeanne! Nice.

[Xero8420]

Originally Posted by bakato

Shirou's plan for salvation is finally revealed. He wants to materialize the human soul, freeing humans from their physical bodies. Coincidentally, Kazuma Kamachi tackled the ethics of this plan in the second volume of his series "The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign" where the antagonists wanted to create a world without death and suffering.

Max Ascension Jeanne! Nice.

Yet it feel hypocritical for doing so by genocide - killing/destroying physical bodies, no different than Gil's desire to recreate human civilization by destroying any essence of profanity in mankind. If only Atalanta & Achilles lived to see through his hypocrisy, it would have turned out differently.

But mother of gods! This was a nuclear episode for a finale!

Before that, Jeanne managed to convince Gilles to reaffirm his loyalty & defend her to the end until she activated La Pucelle. It was pretty much her one-time use nuclear NP to destroy everything in sight but cost her own life, that resorted Shirou to sacrifice his right hand NP. Still, it's good to see Jeanne's & Shirou's 3rd Ascension form.

Jeanne wanted to live together with Sieg. Poor girl witnessed that he would become a dragon & lost her chance.

After Jeanne died, Sieg went Berserker Mode ON after his waifu died. I can feel his inner Kaneki/9S rage burning inside him. Be reminded that Sieg also manifested Frank's power from the Blasted Tree, which later Sieg also used it to go nuclear on Shirou in the end. Frank LIVES all along! Claudes was happy!

FGO logic: if Ruler vs Ruler fails, go Berserker vs Ruler.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by bakato

Shirou's plan for salvation is finally revealed. He wants to materialize the human soul, freeing humans from their physical bodies. Coincidentally, Kazuma Kamachi tackled the ethics of this plan in the second volume of his series "The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign" where the antagonists wanted to create a world without death and suffering.

That was also the plan of the SEELE in the pre-reboot Evangelion movies. With extra smug, "We know everything because we read the dead sea scrolls", etc... Assimilation plots never sat well with me since then.

[Xero8420]

Boy, seems like people are going to hate this series, as a whole, for being a pile of fanfic dogshits because of "friggin self-insert bitchboy MC-kun ruined everything!" Wanna blame Sieg & Jeanne for "ruined" the story & failed to live up as main characters? They should just direct their complaints to the LN author behind Apocrypha for deciding the "garbage" story's direction from the first place. Good luck go ahead & tarnish the LN author's reputation, by all means.

For me, I'm not even bothered about it because I'm not a self-proclaimed hardcore. But please don't berate me as an unworthy Fate fan for not condemning Apocrypha. Differing in preferences does not mean "are you with us or against us?"

[Twi]

Review/Recap.


I kind of understand where Shirou's coming from. You're sacrificing the bodies for the sake of materializing the soul, which is basically what going to heaven is and one of the selling points in the religion both Shirou and Jeanne follow. He's only stripping away what's arguably all the evils within man (which does exist as UBW has shown). He's not assimilating them, he's simply removing their mortality.

Salvation is looking good with how many things are wrong in the world. Yeah, there’s good in people, but there’s also evil too. The weak and powerless can only pray for salvation and serve as foundation for the strong to decide on their fate, which is what’s happening now with this fight when you have two super-beings fighting over the fate of humanity.

Really, the only flaw I can see in Shirou’s plan is that conflict is such an ingrained part of human nature that without conflict we can’t advance. Whether its against one another, against the world, or against the laws of nature. No drive for survival and no necessity means that everything remains static since all our needs are met.

But, by Shirou’s account, humanity would reach that point eventually. So… is there a point in stopping it now? Honestly, Sieg is probably fighting more out of emotion than rationale at this point, but I suppose it comes down to perspective more than anything.

Is it worth giving up advancement for the sake of paradise? And part of Jeanne's argument is that they as Servants shouldn't be doing this... so would she have been okay if a human master wished it?

[shadow1296]

Is it just me or does it feel like they save all the animation budget on these last few episodes, starting with the Chiron Achilles fight

[GDB]

Originally Posted by Twi

Really, the only flaw I can see in Shirou’s plan is that conflict is such an ingrained part of human nature that without conflict we can’t advance. Whether its against one another, against the world, or against the laws of nature. No drive for survival and no necessity means that everything remains static since all our needs are met.

But, by Shirou’s account, humanity would reach that point eventually. So… is there a point in stopping it now? Honestly, Sieg is probably fighting more out of emotion than rationale at this point, but I suppose it comes down to perspective more than anything.

That's basically one of the overarcing themes of Extra/Extella.

If he succeeds, everyone dies anyway because that reality will be culled.

[Kanon]

Maybe I've forgotten how it works, but since Sieg has used up all his command spells, shouldn't Astolfo have started to disappear?

I liked what they did with Gilles and Jeanne. Instead of ending up with Jeanne broken as Shakespeare had planned, it was Gilles who broke down and changed sides. Jeanne's noble phantasm looked nice (only knew about it from Extella, where it looked nowhere as impressive and pretty).

Originally Posted by shadow1296

Is it just me or does it feel like they save all the animation budget on these last few episodes, starting with the Chiron Achilles fight

That's definitely what happened. These episodes have been on a completely different level compared to the rest of the series.

[GDB]

Originally Posted by Kanon

Maybe I've forgotten how it works, but since Sieg has used up all his command spells, shouldn't Astolfo have started to disappear?

The Command Seals don't maintain the contract, merely enforce it. Example: Waver used all his on Iskander to power him up, but still maintained the contract.

[Twi]

In Extra its a different story, but in regular series you don't need Command Seals for a contract to remain after they're gone.

Originally Posted by GDB

That's basically one of the overarcing themes of Extra/Extella.

If he succeeds, everyone dies anyway because that reality will be culled.

The problem here is that isn't mentioned in the context of the story and only came into effect well after the Light Novel was published.

[Kanon]

I probably mixed things up with Extra then. Thanks to you two.

[4th Dimension]

I know some Nasuverse fans that absolutely HATE Apocrypha. But I'm not the greatest fan of Nasuverse in general, or it's attempts at philosophy and being "adult", so for me Apocrypha has kinda been the Fate show with LEAST things for me to gripe on. Especially since large amounts of edge for edge sake are largely gone since both sides kinda have inherently positive goals and aren't really going at it from the "LET'S MURDER EVERYONE BECAUSE FUN!".

In any case, while I disagree with Shiro, mostly because this plan won't remove all causes of distrust for humans, and ultimately because this is actually REDUCING the possibilities and freedom for humans. Being physical is a gift to us, a gift that we get to expirience just ONCE, for a really short time. And this would be taking it away.
Plus who knows what kind of unforeseen consequences this would have that our Earth bound minds won't be able to grasp.

Still, one can easily see how he could decide on his path, and on top of it all he even admits that he is doing this now, but he has spent decades since the last war thinking if it really is right. Doubt in the antagonist, whaaaaat

So yeah, no problem with him at all to me.

The real problem for me is the MC which is like 100% blank slate (probably for the sake of self inserting) with nothing much going for him. Which kinda feels the events that he helps with sound tacked on and his abilities asspulls.
And well Jackie-chan's design and her shenanigans can get lost.

But yeah, this is like the first Fate thing that didn't make me violently angry at some edge BS or stupidity.

GG.

And out of context, the fights were kinda a blast. I especially liked how they kinda used the reduction in artwork detail to sell how unimaginable it is what is happening on screen. It's so unimaginable that human eyes can't really perceive it rightly.

[Xero8420]

Originally Posted by GDB

The Command Seals don't maintain the contract, merely enforce it. Example: Waver used all his on Iskander to power him up, but still maintained the contract.

As long as Master is alive & kicking, a Servant will still physically exist. Nevertheless, it's amazing to think that only Rider-class is able to live up w/o Command Seals so far. I wonder if Archer-class could do the same or not?

Anyway, regarding the Sieg controversy, I'm beginning to think that many of those salty butthurting lots have never really understood how Frankenstein's NPs worked. Even if try to convince about the details of Bridal Chest, Galvanism & Blasted Tree, they'll still blatantly dismiss them as an "asspull" plot armor BS anyways.

From Typemoon Wiki:

Galvanism - B
Thaumaturgical attacks involving no material existence—wind manipulation, energy bullets, beam attacks—are converted to electricity and rendered without effect, discharged into the environment. Absorbed electricity may be used to implement rapid self-repair and physical attribute reinforcement.

Blasted Tree:

This lightning attack is not simply lightning, but rather a power that has Frankenstein’s will imbedded within it. As long as it exists, she will never perish.
http://typemoon.wikia.com/wiki/Blasted_Tree

Make no mistake, Sieg is essentially the 2nd Frankenstein. But given the Blasted Tree's details, a part of Fran's influence lives within Sieg & probably got her Mad Enhancement.

Well, yeah. Call that "asspull BS" as an excuse to give Fran-chan a proper closure that she didn't really died for nothing, if you will.

So... Berserker Sieg for FGO when?

[4th Dimension]

My problem would be how did the transfer from Fran to Sieg happen? It's not like she was really aware he was there or anything. Or do all people blasted by it carry a bit of her or something?

[GDB]

Originally Posted by Xero8420

As long as Master is alive & kicking, a Servant will still physically exist. Nevertheless, it's amazing to think that only Rider-class is able to live up w/o Command Seals so far. I wonder if Archer-class could do the same or not?

Rider's been the only one to do it, but not the only one that can do it. Though I think Saber was probably in the same boat in the "Good End" for UBW, unless the CS persisted long after the war ended.

Archer could definitely do it, considering they have Independent Action and can survive extended periods without a Master at all. But again, CS just enforce the contract, not maintain it. Pretty sure Kuzuki didn't have any CS at all, yet still anchored Medea via Master Contract.

[Xero8420]

Originally Posted by 4th Dimension

My problem would be how did the transfer from Fran to Sieg happen? It's not like she was really aware he was there or anything. Or do all people blasted by it carry a bit of her or something?

In Episode 10. Even though Fran wasn't aware of Sieg's presence while casting Blasted Tree to finish off Mordred with no success, the Blasted Tree's lightning of life jolted into Sieg's corpse outside near the blast radius, not only restarted the heart of Fafnir Siegfried implanted into his body, but also has Fran's essence from the Blasted Tree manifested inside Sieg's body - further enhanced his Magical Circuit to match the Servant's power. Nevertheless, Fran has been longing for someone else to accept her, hoping someone could pass her torch.

That was evident from Sieg able to exceed the usage limit of Balmung as Siegfried against Karna, as well as did not get exhausted when Astolfo drawn energy from him to use the defensive barrier NP to the end to destroy all the Hanging Garden's defense system.

[Twi]

But they never pointed that out until now. Yeah, there was foreshadowing, but not everyone going into it would be aware. You seemed to know what to expect and I have some knowledge of spoilers, so I wasn't surprised. Same with the issues with Shirou's plans for Salvation.

But remember, only a few of us have some context for what's happening and why things are going the way they are because we know more about the extended universe and source materials. Not everyone checks the Wikia to see spoilers. To a casual viewer, they're not going to pick up the pieces and thus it comes out looking a lot more rough.

Even then... Sieg's not that great of a protagonist to me.

[Kanon]

Yeah, I think the series lacks explanations. For example, it was never explained that Semiramis was both Caster and Assassin, or what the conditions to activate Shakespeare's noble phantasm were. It could be included as BD bonuses though (Zero had those omakes with Taiga that were pretty fun and explained some things that were left out of the series).

But to get back to talking about Sieg, I agree he isn't a great protagonist by any means. He has no past, there is no mystery surrounding him, he has a generic personality and most of his powers were handed down to him by someone else. There just isn't much to like.

[Ruki0089]

Never really novel... But Sieg is truly... Erm... Stupid mc? Failure mc??