#fate dracula

[nu-omicron-alpha-eta]

Fate Grand Order Servant Comparisons

Vlad III - Dracula

Left - FGO

Right - Portrait of Vlad III (c. 1560), reputedly a copy of an original made during his lifetime

Cover of the first edition

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

Hey! I saw you're into Dracula and Fate series both, so I want to ask you, have you seen Fate/Apocrypha? For me, the first half was good, but the quality degraded in the second half (the battle scenes were good though).

I have!! Dracula’s fucking blonde to green ombré was the best part of that show.

I love the concept of Vlad III being a Heroic Spirit and ABSOLUTELY LIVID about how his legacy’s been tangled up in the myth of Dracula. And then his noble phantasm is...Dracula lmfao. It’s just *so* funny, it’s absolutely fantastic. I missed him in every episode after he died! Gone too soon! RIP King, you had such good taste.

That being said, yeeeah Apocrypha’s one of the weakest installments imo.

So basically I binged every readily available Fate related show back in February, including this. But I watched every other show and movie with two other people, and Apocrypha’s what I jumped to when scheduling for the other stuff didn’t pan out. So there were some gaps in between, and maybe that effected my experience? Maybe? But in general it was hard to stay invested in it.

Generally it has a lot of really fun concepts, but it just doesn’t do much with them. For example, of all the Fate bland shonen protagonist’s, I think Apocrypha’s protagonist (I forgot his name, which is frankly telling) has the most interesting *introduction.* I fucking love Learning To Person stories. But he doesn’t really maintain any individual momentum. He kind of just sticks around as a protagonist because he has to, there’s not much going on with him. And the romance with Jeanne D’Arc...no.

The plot itself doesn’t really form a cohesive whole beyond something something fight for the grail (as per usual) but Shirou “Kotomine wait no actually Amakusa” Who Is Also Immortal BTW wants to derail that to fulfill his own wish to destroy/save humanity?? I think?? Also Jack the Ripper is there but as a small child?? Also hi random cat girl???

And like I still have no idea what was really going on with Amakusa. The wiki told me he was Kirei’s...adoptive older brother or something? But I don’t think the show ever went into that? Maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention? And Semiramis was hot but also that’s kind of it. And her dynamic with him was so generic. Like I remember the ending scene with them, that I think was meant to be meaningful and emotional and I was just like “...I do not care about this boring straight shit.”

So yeah, if neither the protagonist or antagonist are engaging, there’s not much driving the story. And while I love a lot of the characters (Mordred my beloved ❤️❤️) there was just a ton going on that didn’t seem to add up to anything relevant. There wasn’t a lot of attention to grounded stakes or introspection and character development beyond super broad brushstrokes and tropes either. And that’s what I most latch onto in stories. You’re right, the fight scenes were fantastic, but after awhile it just starts to register as Stuff Happening.

It was also one of the more fan servicey installments, which def detracted from the story for me. I got more used to it in Babylonia, but I was def wincing during a lot of Apocrypha.

I feel like it’s probs worth a rewatch to see if I like it more this time around, but overall it was a rather meh experience. Entertaining for the moment, but like next to Zero or Heavens Feel it does NOT hold up.