"AAAAHAHHHHHH IT'S HEREEEEEE EVERYTHING ELSE IS TOTAL GARBAGE THIS IS SOOOOO HYPEEE HOLY SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-"
Was my initial reaction.
Now I'm having second thoughts.
So, my favorite anime is Fate/Zero, no questions asked because while I also highly enjoy Baccano! and Mawaru Penguindrum, nothing can compare to it. It was extremely well animated, the fights were well choreographed, each of the characters were more like fleshed-out individuals with their own dreams and beliefs rather than D2 characters, and the story presented a lot of dark but very necessary questions about morality and human nature. Which is absolutely awesome, and I applaud it for that. And because I love Fate/Zero so much, I went all out into a frenzy of finding just abut anything Fate/related after that, I sought out as much information about the world as possible and found light novels, visual novels, and so, so much more to explore in this world, and while I couldn't find translations to all of them, I was able to find out the main story and plot to each of them and basically looked up every tiny bit I could about the most important servants in their respective story. Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, Fate/Strange Fake, and Fate/Apocrypha were all stories, in particular, that I really wanted to get into but just couldn't due to there not being too many English translations available, so I just decided to wait and see if anything would come of them.
And, hallelujah, amen, I got at least one of them three weeks ago.
So, the first thing that I worried about when I heard about Fate/Apocrypha being animated was that it wasn't being put under the production of Ufotable, as Fate/Zero and their soon-to-be two Fate/Stay Night adaptations were, but A-1 Pictures. Now, I've got absolutely nothing against A-1 Pictures: they can do some amazing work, as seen with Anohana and From the New World- which are among some of my favorite animes- but I notice that they tend to do better with dramas than they do with action-packed stories.
I suppose that many stories from the Fate universe can be considered dramas to some extent, but there is a hell of a lot more to them. Fate has a deep lore and relies heavily on action, violence, and some really dark and twisted themes. And while one A-1's earlier works, Black Butler, shows that they can be capable of pulling this off to some extent, I doubt that Black Butler is nearly as complex as Fate/Apocrypha, which documents what is likely to be the most jumbled and tangled Holy Grail War that the Fate series has to offer, as you will have to keep track of at least thirty participants in the war (this includes Jean and her master) as opposed to Fate's usual fourteen. So, yes, this could very easily become a bit of a cluster-fuck.
Those worries seemed to leave me upon seeing the first episode. It looked like it was trying to focus mostly on Sisigo and his servant Mordred, who simultaneously manages to be best bro and best girl wrapped up in one neat little package, and that is great, because I love Mordred, and she's part of the reason I was so hyped for Fate/Apocrypha in the first place. Not only that, but A-1 also managed to keep a decent amount of time dedicated to the other team, seemingly so we would know what our main duo and their team would be up against. Also, the first few fights we were introduced with were very eye-catching and super cool to look at. So that got an A, too. Episode two was more of the same thing, but with more fights and a little more time dedicated to the other team. Alright, cool. Where it all starts to fall apart is episode three.
Why I say episode three is where is all starts to fall apart is because of the real set of main characters: Jean of Arc- Servant Ruler- and the homunculus I assume is her master, neither of whom we really know even exist up until this episode. Except, we kinda do? They were seen in the sequence at the very beginning of episode one, which tells us that, yes, they are intended to be our main characters and not Sisigo and Mordred. This makes sense from a technical perspective, as the Ruler class servant is meant to mediate between the two main parties, and it would do the story good to have a main character that takes neither side. 
But the problem is that they fail as main characters because, until episode three, we only saw Jean sitting in hotel rooms and hitchhiking, and her master doesn't even start technically existing until that point. So it just seems jarring and like a strange directing choice when we seen him break out of his tube and run naked around the castle until Astolfo and Chiron take him into hiding. Now, I would understand if this is the way things are paced in the light novels, but it seems like a poor choice for an animated work, which is making it start to lose points as an adaptation already.
I hate to keep making comparisons to Fate/Zero, but this really could have been easily fixed by making a few tweeks and combining the first two episodes into an hour-long prologue, which ends with main character-kun breaking out of his tube and collapsing on the ground in front of Astolfo. Then episode one can go on with out two main characters: homunculus-kun swept away into hiding while Jean gets caught in the middle of a little less anti-climatic battle between Siegfried and Karna (Because I cannot be the only person here that wasn't satisfied with that battle),
This would resolve some of the other cluster-fuck issues that begin to rear its head in this episode when you realize that you haven't even seen half of the red team's servants and that some servants like gender-bent Jack the Ripper and Berserker of the Red were only see for a total of ten seconds before disappearing from the big screen in episode one, as a prologue episode is only supposed to give you a run-down of important info and give you a taste of what is to come.
Overall, I still have high hopes for Fate/Apocrypha, but it is starting off on the wrong note, and in order to redeem itself, it's going to have to focus more on Joan and her master, and we're going to have to stop trying to throw hints at some weirdo romance between gender-bent Frankenstein's Monster and her master. Because that's just really awkward. I know she seems like waifu material, but we all know the real waifu material here is Morded, so stop, A-1, please. And, please, next time don't tease us with amazing-looking animation episode one only to let it drop immediately afterwards when you have us hooked. That's just plain cruel. I know not everyone can be Ufotable, but all I ask for is consistency.
Also, more Mordred, please.
I need more Mordred in my life.
But, of course, that's just my opinion as a die-hard Fate fan, and I'm sure everyone else has their opinion. So, what's yours? Feel free to let me know in the comments below, and thanks for taking the time out of your day to read this silly post of mine.
Have a great day~!
