Fate/Grand Order: Divine Realm of the Round Table - Camelot Wandering; Agateram

TLDR: Like the previous FGO Babylon anime series, this movie was very well animated, full of visually beautiful and sometimes moving moments, with a diverse and memorable cast of characters. However, the story is its weak point, because as expected of an adaptation of a mobile game, the plot is basically just a series of events herding the main characters from Point A to Point B to Point C. Overall score: 7/10 Note: I am not a FGO player and so will not be comparing the movie to the in-game story. I heard some people complain about things being cut out, but since I do not knowthe game's story, it did not bother me at all. --- Having been a fan of the Fate franchise since the original Fate/Stay Night anime from Deen, it's been amazing to watch the series expand with so many spinoffs and timelines. FGO brought the franchise to the mainstream mobile gaming community, and has been credited with an above-average story (for a mobile game, or so I heard). So how does this movie, which adapts the 6th arc, hold up? In terms of everything outside of the story, pretty darn well. The story itself, not so much. Like the Babylon anime, the story follows around Ritsuka and Mash trying to recover the Holy Grail of this particular Singularity and save humanity. Along the way the meet a number of servants, including the Knights of the Round Table who serve Artoria (an alternate version of F/SN Saber), except this time, Artoria serves as an antagonist to the heroes. I went in not expecting much, but was really blown away by the visuals. The scenery is stunning, and I loved the change in art style when Bedivere reminisces about his memories of Artoria. The fight scenes were much better than expected too, with decent choreography and camera angles showing the cool swordplay from Bedivere. I absolutely recommend this movie on the animation and art element alone. However, the story is undoubtedly the weak point of the movie. Aside from being a little curious about why the Artoria of this world has become a villain, I was not too engaged with the movie's plot, which basically involved going from place to place to meet another new hero. Go to X to meet Artoria, go to Y to meet Ozymandias, go to C to meet Hassan, etc. etc. It honestly felt kind of tedious, and I was just waiting for the next scene where Bedivere did something cool. In terms of music, it was a bit generic, but did its job. Sakamoto Maaya's ending song was pretty great too, with a good buildup with the quiet intro into a cool rock song. All in all, if you loved the FGO Babylon anime, you will definitely love this movie too. If you are hoping for a Fate story closer to Fate/Zero, UBW, or HF, then you will be sorely disappointed. If you can enjoy an anime just for its visuals and action scenes without much attention to story, then this should be well worth watching. Story: 5/10 Art; 9/10 Sound; 7/10 Character: 7/10 Enjoyment: 8/10 Overall: 7/10

Forgot to write a review for this one, but the story was not as good as Babylonia since it's split into two. Now, you'd expect that since it's split into two, the story should be slow paced... right? WRONG! It's very, very fast paced and I felt it was more rushed than any anime I have ever watched. Having played the game and read the story before hand, I could still manage to catch up with it. My poor friend, on the other hand... I would put the story at 10/10 for FGO players, 7/10 for Fate lovers and maybe 4/10 for people who have no experience.This is because they do not even explain a bit of the premise of the story. If you go and watch this without at least watching First Order, you won't understand anything. As to why I give it a 10 for FGO players, it's because it's the first time in any of the animation that the perspective is shown from an entity (no spoilers) that is not from Chaldea. Art and Sound: 10/10 It doesn't feel like an anime at all. If I were to draw a comparison, this is very much like Heaven's Feel 1-3. The music, sound effects, and composition just feels very pleasing to the ears and makes your heart beat fast. The IMPACT is overwhelming. Also, there's many famous/popular VAs who have roles in the movie, so it really felt like an AAA film. From the battle scenes to the paintings of food etc, everything is meticulously drawn and animated that it's impossible to find any faults in it. You have to watch it at the theatres to get this experience. Character: 10/10 for FGO lovers, 7/10 for normal people It's hard to explain the feeling when you finally get to see your favorite characters animated. Arash for one, was very cool in the movie. He's really like the big brother. I got goosebumps from watching the different characters (yes, the same ones from the game - they didn't cut anyone out). Enjoyment: I really enjoyed it overall. For those who are still waiting for the NA release, I suggest watching every other Fate anime while waiting and make sure you catch it in the theatres because the experience is just surreal. Overall, I would recommend this movie to any Fate lovers.

Fate/Grand Order: Camelot only recently got released in the cinemas for me hence the late review. - You do not need to play the game to watch the movie, pretty much every chapter of Fate/Grand Order is a standalone comprised of self-contained stories. However, I recommend you do at least watch the prologue Fate/Grand Order: First Order or read it via the game. - Camelot was animated after Babylonia because of a fan polling that took place 3 years ago, Babylonia was ranked first in terms of what the fans wanted to be animated followed by Camelot. - If you're wondering why they still couldn't just have Camelot animated first, Ihave no clue. Ask Type-moon. - I just want to put it out there that if you are hoping for the epic battles that made up most of Babylonia, try not to get your hopes up too high, for this movie lacked the intensity of fights and simply tries to encapsulate the main storyline which they did a mediocre job thus far. - The general premise of this movie is an adaptation from the Fate/Grand Order game, the two main protagonists arrive in a Singularity era where the Knights of the Round Table terrorize the Holy City of Camelot. As they try to figure out who are friends and foes, the crisis grows worse, and failing to resolve it could spell disaster for all of humanity. This is definitely a film for fans because there is so much explanation required just to understand the premise of Fate/Grand Order that the movie completely does away with it. Here's a short explainer. “FGO is set in a world where humanity is threatened by disruptions to history, known as Singularities. The players are sent to resolve said Singularities by summoning historical figures, known as Servants, to fight (your gacha). Along the way, they learn that there are other agencies that are determined to interfere with the history of humanity. The game's storyline is divided into chapters, which each center around a particular time period that has been disrupted by a Singularity.” Story - 3/10 Now, contrary to the opinions of others, I felt the movie was extremely fast-paced. If you are a completely new viewer, with the story unbeknownst to you, you may have felt it was slow-paced because the movie was drowned in a series of uneventful dialogues. Do not get me wrong though, personally, the dialogues were the only things keeping me watching this poor adaptation since it at least tried to stick as close as possible to the compelling narrative that was Fate/Grand Order: Camelot. - Simply put, the movie on one hand can be rather languid in how it progresses. While on the other hand, it rushes through events just to get you to the final battle in the climax of the movie. It doesn't provide enough exposition while having too many long-drawn-out conversations which don't get anywhere. You might see your favorite character, but you won't really feel you've met him or her, simply because it's so awkwardly put together. - Understandably, the director was trying to cram the events of an entire game's chapter into a pair of 90-minute movies. Nevertheless, there's a distinct lack of elegance or even subtlety in the storytelling. It feels like it's just plodding along with a formulaic plot (which it is, given that it's based on the game), rather than organically pushing the characters forward in a good story. - The reason I gave the story a 3/10 was because the movie skipped some chapters and made significant changes to the initial introduction and progression of the story. I felt that if they hadn't changed those subtleties, the story would have had a better pace and possibly even made amends to the enigmatic story told in the movie. - The majority of the scenes tend to bring that ephemeral atmosphere, yet, I couldn't help but notice that the dramatic scenes where we were supposed to feel something had zero repercussions from the audience. That speaks volumes on how poorly executed the scenes were. - Not to mention, the battles and supposedly epic monologues, despite how few and momentary, felt extremely anticlimactic. The ending especially, one can only be left to question... - "Was that it?" - However, let's be rational. I do not blame the studio or director for the poor execution, they were thrown a chapter from a big book and expected to animate it as a standalone with only approximately 3 hours worth of time to provide context, story, action while sticking to the written chapter which has all the context it needs from the previous chapters in the book. Imagine a studio asked to produce Harry Potter: Deathly Hallows as a standalone with there being zero other Harry Potter movies out at the time. - Granted, the movie was targeted towards fans of the franchise with a compromise to accommodate the losers sleeping on FGO. If anyone is to blame, it's not the studio. - Apart from the anticlimactic scenes and ending which actually had the whole cinema laughing as the sad OST was playing, there were many odd and untimely segues. -Mild Spoiler- Regarding the poorly executed segues and scenes which were actually so bad, I can't help but laugh at the thought. We had Lancelot coming in with his army and just swinging Arondight trying to look all cool. Xuanzang coming in at Ozy's temple with zero explanation on why she was even there (She left the Knights of the Round Table and joined Ozy, that is information left out) Ozy’s anticlimactic introduction (please compare this to Gilgamesh in Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia) Lancelot slashing Arash and afterward completely vanishing when Tristan appeared out of nowhere, this one was weird as hell, where the hell did he go Mordred yelling about the past while fighting Bedi and even using Clarent Blood Arthur but the noble phantasm wasn’t even properly animated (where was the red beam) Arash using Stella which sums up the only good scene only to be ruined with the wrong type of music and setting. Also, why the hell was Bedivere so sad, he barely even knew him in the movie I would also like to reiterate that the whole cinema was laughing when Arash was dying and the sad music was playing whilst Stella was flying into the sky to destroy Rhongomyniad… What the hell kind of music cue was that? That scene was so poorly executed despite how beautiful it was it's actually giving me cancer. You can argue that Arash is a meme that justifies the laughter BUT, you cannot deny the fact that they can make Arash end with epic music and a huge fucking bang to make the cinema go fucking wild with his death instead of that anticlimactic bullshit that will cement itself as another sad disappointing meme moment which had the potential to be brilliant. Last but not least... Where the fuck was Hundred Faces and Touta?!? You seriously telling me you replaced those 2 with a fucking bath scene even though Nito is fucking hot and Rie Takahashi being all cute with Mashu’s voice and all BUT WTF? You’re that time constricted huh? There was bad execution, skipping of many parts of the story, the omission of characters, horrible timing, and wrong type of settings which just goes to show how the studio and production lacked the knowledge about its audience and how the scene/setting should be built. Also, the context wasn’t provided very progressively although you can tell they tried. Basically, context was just being hurled here and there to give you at least some information about what was going on which just felt weird for me as someone that already knew what was going on and would go on to feel messy for others that were watching the movie with little prior knowledge of the story. - It should be duly noted that according to the storyline if they continue to progress as is, there should be cooler and way more epic fights in the upcoming second movie to this 2-Part Camelot. - On a side note, the movie was directed by Kei Suezawa who is notable for being an animation director but not a storyboard director which might explain the poor execution of the entire movie apart from the time constraints. - The second movie, Fate/Grand Order: Shinsei Entaku Ryouiki Camelot 2 - Paladin; Agateram will be directed by another director, Kazuto Arai who is also notable for being an animation director which makes the decisions to give the directing roles to these two directors a tad questionable. One can only hope that Arai can live up to expectations and deliver with the second movie. Sound - 7/10 I’m not going to lie and say the OSTs were anything short of absolute brilliance. However, due to the poor timing of musical cues, the beautiful instrumentals weren’t able to shine. The score in itself had the potential to provide a raw delicate depiction of emotions and inflict that sentimental affliction if it were used in the right scenes at the right time. The movie however used these scores so wrongly it honestly felt like a waste of good music, I felt that if the studio had understood the audience better, it could have made much better use of the music, maybe save it for the next part. I’m no musical connoisseur nor am I a musician but you can tell when something is wrong when the music playing is the complete opposite of what you and everyone else is feeling and expecting. - Imagine Attack on Titan when Erwin and the soldiers charge towards Beast Titan but instead of epic battle music, sad music plays in the background while they so epicly sound off their warrior cries. Imagine that… That was one of the many analogies I had in my head while trying to embrace the musical score for what it truly is and not how it was used… Art - 8/10 The animation was great, I enjoyed it however, I couldn’t help but notice that the art style isn’t your typical Production I.G. style. I also couldn’t help but notice that some of the characters look a little different or ‘off’ like Ozymandius. - Turns out, after a little research, Movie 1 will be animated by Signal.MD which is an offshoot of Production I.G. That explains the different art styles. The second movie is said to be animated by Production I.G. itself however I don’t expect a change in the animation staff. - The movie was directed by Suezawa Kei which can explain the competent animation since he is, after all, an animation director to date. - I really enjoyed the stunning visuals of specific parts of the movie like the beautiful sky made by Solomon’s noble phantasm, you can’t help but want to be there and look at it yourself, in-person. - The intensity of the fight scenes was mediocre at best but nevertheless still well-animated except some things simply didn’t make sense to me (Why Tristan was standing still for example) - Also please, go watch the TVCM of the Chapter and understand why I’m disappointed by the lack of action, this is also the reason why I said to expect the action to be in the second part and to keep the hype train up. Character 3/10 If I was being dead honest, you are essentially thrown into a story where you should at least know who the characters are otherwise, you will be lost. - If you’re a fan and you already know the premise of the movie, the reason why you’re watching is probably because you’re keen to just dive in and see how the movie manages to realize the game world on the set and see how the characters ‘come to life on screen. The movie did a decent job at trying to include as many characters as possible from the game but all at the expense of character development and the screen time of various characters. You will probably get to see your favorite characters unless your favorites are T***a or H***n of the H***d F***s. However, it probably won’t be as satisfying as you would expect. - Like I mentioned previously, all of the character introductions are way too anticlimactic especially if you were expecting a Babylonia level of build-up and hype. Overall - 4/10 I love Fate/Grand Order so it’s honestly disappointing to see such a lackluster depiction of the amazing story in the game. - If you’re an FGO fan though, I’d still recommend you watch it and decide for yourself if it’s actually good or not because I hear many mixed opinions from fans and casual viewers but personally, I felt it didn’t live up to my expectations at all. This review was written on 03-14-21 and may be outdated. I may have changed my rating due to various reasons.

Hi. This time I’m actually reviewing something FGO related, so I’m gonna get this out of the way at the very start. Fate/Grand Order is a really deep and riveting story of journey to find and take back the future of humanity. I find the game’s narrative as a whole to be rather moving, so I genuinely believe that you are doing yourself and this franchise a huge disservice if you have watched or plan to watch this movie or the Babylonia anime without having at least played the game up to that point in the story. People wouldn’t suggest to others to watch theHalf Blood Prince movie as an introduction to the entirety of Harry Potter, or to watch the Force Awakens as one’s first Star Wars movie, or to start watching The Office from season 7. It’s no different for Fate/Grand Order. Camelot is the 6th singularity of the first arc of FGO, and Babylonia is the 7th. There is no good reason to watch these adaptations without having played the game up to that point. If you haven’t played Fate/Grand Order, then leave; and if you don’t ever intend to, then don’t come back. This is the final warning for those who haven’t played FGO. I will be assuming from this point forward that you’ve completed the first arc of FGO, because as I already previously stated, there is no point in watching these adaptations without having played the game in full. Thus, there is no reason to continue reading this review if you have no intention of playing FGO; so, either get lost, or go install the game and get grinding. Alright, now it’s just us cultured Masters. At first, I didn’t know what to think of this movie after finishing it for the first time. Honestly, I was just a little confused because a lot of events that happened in the movie didn’t line up with what I remembered from Camelot. So, I went over to My Room and delved into the Materials section and reread the entirety of Camelot up to the point the movie ended. And then I rewatched the whole movie again. This is the reason for the whole rant in the first paragraph, because simply put, if an FGO player like me needed to revisit the original Camelot story to digest the movie, how lost would someone be if they had no idea what FGO was in the first place? On a side note, if you wanna add me, I have Skadi and Waver available as supports and I’ve grailed Nero, caster Nero, Ereshkigal, Illya, Kuro, and Miyu to lvl 100 for those that want to use them. You can add me (and feed me friend points): 917580838 Okay that’s enough account shilling, time to get to the review. After rereading the Camelot story and rewatching the movie, I conclude that this first Camelot movie was underwhelming because it deviated too much from the original story, and because it was far less entertaining and less impressive than the Babylonia anime. This doesn’t mean it was an awful or bad movie, but it simply didn’t live up to my expectations as an avid fan of FGO who witnessed the raw production value put into the Babylonia anime and who wanted the same type of passion to be put into the other contender the for the most interesting singularity of the first arc, Camelot. I’ll first talk about how the movie differed from the in-game story and why I feel those differences are problematic. During the in-game story, we rayshift into the desert where we very quickly run into Hundred Face Hassan and her group of mountain people abducting Nitocris. After saving Nitocris, she misinterprets the situation thinking that we are the kidnappers and she attacks us with a sphinx. Bedivere happens to be in the area and saves us, before going off into the desert again. After working through the misunderstandings with Nitocris, we are led to Ramesseum Tentyris and have an audience with Ozymandias. Ozy really isn’t pleased with how little awareness we have of this singularity and essentially exiles us from his domain, telling us to go see the Holy City for ourselves. Using the resources Ozy gave us, Da Vinci creates the desert vehicle and we go off to the Holy City where the “haha funny buster gorilla man at the wailing wall” happens and we flee to the mountain villages. During the movie story, we are already riding the desert vehicle. Then, we suddenly cut to this shot in a village where Arash and Bedivere are chatting and Da Vinci joins in to learn about the Holy City. Bedivere quickly leaves after being told what he wants to know and runs into the Master with Mash when he has an altercation with Rushd’s mom. This is where we go off to the Holy City for the “haha funny buster gorilla man at the wailing wall” and instead flee back towards the desert into Ozy’s domain. We’re intercepted by Nitocris and escorted to Ramesseum Tentyris (why would she escort us when we have two people dressed like Knights of the Round Table with us and we have done nothing to gain her trust?) to have an audience with Ozymandias. Ozy once again banishes us from his Egypt, but orders Sanzang (who for some reason is serving him when that doesn’t happen at all in the game?) to go with us. By some random stroke of luck we find a map etched in the gem from the pendant Rushd gives us and somehow understand that we should go into the mountains. After this part, not much differs between the game’s story and the movie’s story other than that the movie’s story omits a bunch of other (important) stuff. So the main difference at this point between the game’s story and the movie’s story is that the movie has us go to Camelot before Egypt. This really skews a lot of the interactions we’re supposed to have with some characters and really makes the narrative proceed unnaturally. By going to Egypt first, our correspondence with Ozy makes more sense because we just arrived at the singularity and don’t have much of an idea of what is going on. But since we are guests to his temple because we saved his subordinate Nitocris from the bandits, we are able to interact with him more boldly and coax him to share information about the singularity. With the movie, the interaction with Ozy is placed under a different light. We’re refugees hunted by the knights of the Holy City, forced to grovel and plead for shelter in his domain. It also just doesn’t make sense why Nitocris escorted us to Ozy’s temple in the first place, because we didn’t save her like we did in the game, and we have Bedivere with us in the movie who unmistakably is dressed as a Knight of the Round Table. At that point we already understand that the Lion King is the source of the singularity, yet for some reason Ritsuka tells Ozy that “he doesn’t know what to do.” This ignorance is excusable in the game’s version of events because we just arrived in the singularity and don’t understand the situation yet, but in the movie’s version of events this just makes Ritsuka look really cowardly and dumb. There is a similar discrepancy when it comes to Bedivere, since we first meet him in the desert when he saves us from the sphinx according to the game. But with the movie we’re somehow already zooming through the desert in Da Vinci’s vehicle (that we didn’t procure any resources to make), so don’t have a chance to encounter Bedivere in the desert. The thing is, though, we must meet Bedivere at least once before the encounter with Gawain because the narrative needs to establish that he recognizes Mash’s armor. So the movie kinda puts in this really distasteful scene where Bedivere shoves aside Rushd’s mother after she begs to him for food, and we catch her before she is slammed into the ground. Bedivere is probably lore-wise the most loyal, benevolent, and kind-hearted knight of any of King Arthur’s subordinates, so the movie storywriter forcing this scene in to cover their asses for reversing the Egypt/Camelot order really gets on my nerves. Of all the ways to introduce Bedivere to the Master and Mash, they chose something like this. It doesn’t even make sense either because as the movie goes on everyone is talking about how Bedivere is so kindhearted and loyal, not even batting an eye about how he shoved aside a homeless widow when we first meet him. And then there’s Sanzang, where they don’t even cover how she used to serve the Round Table and parted ways, but in the movie they still keep in that scene about Agravain inviting her to return to them even though they never discussed how she left in the first place. For whatever reason Sanzang ends up serving Ozy which absolutely doesn’t happen in the game and since Ozy has her accompany you, she joins way earlier than in the game. This usually shouldn’t be a problem, except Sanzang is really out of character because, since she’s not supposed to be with you yet, there’s really nothing for her to do. Instead of improvising new scenarios to ease her into the group as a companion and have her contribute, the storywriter for the movie just had her kinda stand there like a scarecrow. Sanzang pretty much does absolutely nothing until we reach the prison to rescue Serenity which, go figure, is ACTUALLY when she’s supposed to join the party. If this is the case, it really bewilders me why the movie writer went out of their way to change the script from the game if they’re just gonna have Sanzang tag along so unnaturally by having her join super early. Going to Camelot before Egypt also means that Da Vinci "dies" way earlier in the narrative. She’s supposed to accompany us when we meet Ozy, and this opens up the amusing interaction where Ozy declares that he desires her as his concubine but the movie’s scenario doesn’t allow for that. Da Vinci only ever accompanies us in person for the Camelot singularity, so I really don’t understand the thought process behind changing the story in a way that makes her die earlier and gives her even less spotlight. We’ve talked about Ozymandias, Bedivere, Sanzang, and Da Vinci so far, so now let’s address the two elephants in the room. The two characters most affected by the movie’s changes from the game are Hundred Face and Touta, because THEY’RE NOT IN THE MOVIE. We missed out on Hundred Face at the beginning of the narrative because the movie reversed the order in which we went to Egypt and Camelot, but when the west mountain village is attacked, it’s too late to go help them and Serenity is the leader of that village instead of Hundred Face. This means the movie skips out on the legendary scene where Arash shoots us from his bow to go save west village and Hundred Face is just cut out entirely. The movie also skips Touta, which is an absolute travesty, because his master-pupil interactions with Sanzang and archer-bro-moments with Arash are some of the best scenes in the entire singularity. Touta’s absence honestly caused both Sanzang and Arash’s characters to fall apart because their relationship to Touta was just so essential to the role they played during the singularity. I was so excited to see Sanzang blast through the walls of Camelot with her buddha palm, but now that I know that Touta won’t be there, I’m already aware that I’ll be disappointed by that part before it even airs. Let’s not forget to mention that all of the mountain villages are impoverished and would’ve otherwise starved without Touta’s Noble Phantasm. There is one final difference this whole “going to Camelot before Egypt” scenario creates that really gets on my nerves, and that’s how we end up going to the mountain village. In the game, we go to Egypt first and get exiled by Ozy, then go to Camelot and get chased away by Gawain, and then we flee to the mountains at the suggestion of some of the refugees we saved. Since the movie has us go to Camelot first, we end up fleeing to Egypt next where we are denied refuge by Ozymandias, and we end up in the desert with no place to go. This point in the movie is really awkward, because with how the narrative proceeded in the movie, the group really has no leads on where to go and what to do. So the movie director pulls some scenario out of his ass where Rushd HAPPENS to give you some pendant and the sun HAPPENS to shine in just the right way such that it reveals a pattern engraved in the pendant and it HAPPENS to be a readable map with directions to the mountain villages. Instead of, you know, contacting Chaldea which has Romani to consult with, the Trismegistus Spiritron Calculation Engine, and the Near-Future Observation Lens Sheba, it makes soooooooooo much more sense to rely on this kid and some random pendant. If it wasn’t already blatantly obvious, I think the writing in this movie is awful, and it is made even worse considering there was already a parent story to simply copy into movie format. Instead, they took the liberty of making changes to the game’s story and miraculously only made the narrative worse with every change they made. That section took a whole lot longer than I thought it would, but that simply shows how much worse the movie’s narrative was than the original game’s. This section will discuss the Camelot movie’s differences with the Babylonia anime, comparing them both as adaptations of FGO’s two most exciting singularities. If the previous section was mostly about the poor writing in the Camelot movie, this section will address the subpar animation quality of the movie. The entire reason that we, as fans of Fate/Grand Order, want to see anime adaptations of the game’s story chapters is mainly to see the majesty of the game’s story come to life on screen. For example, the first thing I thought about back when the Babylonia anime was announced was that I wanted to see Merlin get attacked by Fou. It’s a completely silly scene with no narrative significance, but that’s the kind of thing that we look forward to in these anime adaptations. We want see our favorite interactions and Noble Phantasms fully played out, as grand as it was in our imaginations. I don’t think the Camelot movie delivered on that. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the animation was bad. But this is the Fate franchise we’re talking about here. Every single anime adaptation from this series is filled to the brim with stunning scenes and dynamic shots... until now. It’s a shame to say this, but the Camelot movie had BY FAR the worst animation of anything Fate related, period. I’ve read some other reviews here saying that the animation was gorgeous or whatever, and all I can say is, do you have eyes? Did you watch the Babylonia anime, or even anything Fate related ever? I don’t know how anyone can watch the likes of Unlimited Blade Works, any of the Heaven’s Feel movies, and the Babylonia anime, and still say that Camelot with its CGI villagers looks good. Within the first 10 minutes of the movie we see this horrendous rendering of CGI townspeople that looked like they came straight out of the 2016 Berserk anime adaptation to burn holes into my eyes at 5 frames per second. Just simply comparing Uruk in the Babylonia anime to the desert city in the Camelot movie is enough to demonstrate the raw difference in animation quality. The low quality, robotic CGI in Camelot made me feel like the city was overrun by zombies that consistently moved at 5 frames per second. Let me remind everyone that this is a movie, which typically means the animation quality should be more impressive than an anime that airs on television. “Should” being the key word here, because it’s not just the horrendous CG during the initial segment at the desert city that stands out. The combat scenes in the Camelot movie were really lackluster, which is an absolute shame considering the notoriety of Camelot’s difficulty spike for FGO’s gameplay. The problem with nearly every fight in the movie was that it felt like it was all staged, as if the characters were only pretending to fight with each other. This is because the studio doing the animation abused screen cuts, which means they’d animate the start of a certain action, and then cut to the result of said action, having our brains fill in the gap. For example, the majority of the time a sword is swung in this movie, we’d see the swordsman wind up for the swing and then cut straight to where the sword made impact at the end of the swing. We barely ever see an entire sword swing animated from start to finish, which is really dishonest of the studio because the very reason why we want chapters of the game animated is to see these things in full motion. This kind of cheap technique is frequently used when the animators are either untalented, underfunded, or both. Although even the best works of animation use screen cuts occasionally, abusing it for every single fight scene is a clear sign of lazy animation. Screen cuts make attacks feel like they have less weight behind them, and constantly changing perspective in the middle of a fight scene takes away a lot of the tension. Plus, a lot of the fights are shot from super zoomed in perspectives so we don’t get a good view of what’s going on. This is yet another effort by the studio to cut animation expenditure because if the screen is more zoomed in, then there’s less to animate (conversely there’s also less for us to see). I’ve just simply never seen any other Fate animation make this many obvious efforts to try and skimp on animation quality, and it really makes the Camelot movie stand out as subpar compared to every other Fate animation. The best animated fight scene in this movie was probably Mordred vs Bedivere, but even then the fight was full of screen cuts and any fight involving Mordred in the Apocrypha animation was still better animated than Camelot. It’s just really such a letdown with all the wasted potential, because the boss fights in Camelot were so difficult and the game’s narrative made them look so powerful. The Fate franchise is so good at hyping up the power of their characters by animating a beautiful Noble Phantasm or orchestrating a battle scene that’ll make your hair stand on end, but instead we get stuff like Tristan standing in place plucking at his bow as Mash slowly marches toward him and Mordred letting Bedivere jog towards her and hit her point blank with Airgetlam. The animation as a whole in this Camelot movie just lacked so much impact compared to when Ushiwakamaru used her Noble Phantasm against Gorgon, or when Ishtar used her’s against Tiamat. Even outside of the battle scenes, a lot of the Camelot movie were just panning still shots of backgrounds. These shots felt out of place the entire movie because the backgrounds they showed weren’t even that pretty, and it’s not like they used the downtime for any narrating exposition explaining what was going on. Exposition would be so easy to do in this context because a lot of the game is simply Romani explaining something through the comms for the player, but they simply let these still shots play out with music in the background. Sometimes these still shots are really oddly framed, like there’s a shot when we’re climbing up to Ozy’s throne room where most of the background is blocked by the walls on either side of the stairs and there’s another shot that oddly lingers on a mountainside with no music or movement whatsoever. It took me 3 rewatches to finally notice three heads (Ritsuka, Mash, and Bedivere) bobbing up over part of the mountain as the party reaches the top, but the shot lasts for so long and nothing happens for the majority of it that it feels just so awkward. Most of the Camelot movie is exactly like this, where there’s just something off about the story, or the animation, or the characters in every single scene that it felt like the complete opposite of why I wanted a Camelot adaptation in the first place. The movie wasn’t necessarily bad, but there was absolutely nothing about it that was super enjoyable or impressive. It felt like less of a celebration of the fandom like the Babylonia anime was, and more like a scheme to produce something that can pass as the Camelot adaptation in the quickest, cheapest way possible in order to sell the movie tickets. One thing that I have not addressed is the time constraints, given that the entirety of the Camelot singularity needed to fit into two 1.5 hour movies which is equivalent to roughly 9 anime episodes. For reference, the Babylonia anime was 21 episodes long. While this is a valid defense for the movie, this doesn’t excuse the weird things like switching the order of the events and having lazy animation. Plus, as I mentioned before, the Camelot movie had plenty of these panning background shots with music playing over it that really served no purpose whatsoever other than filling up time. Cutting all of these scenes out would create up to 10-20 minutes of screen time that could then be used to include more important things, maybe like ACTUALLY putting all the Camelot servants in the movie. Ultimately, it doesn’t even come down to the time they had to work with, or how much money they had to throw at a pretty fight scene. It comes down to the passion put into producing the anime, which the movie obviously lacked. The single best example I can provide for this is the 40 second cameo of the Camelot singularity that was featured in episode 0 of the Babylonia anime. Sanzang’s short narration during that clip was more in line with her character than anything she did during the entire Camelot movie, and additionally that clip managed to show off ALL of the characters from the singularity (including Hundred Face and Touta) in the infamous village feast scene that the movie ever so kindly left out. Those 40 seconds were more genuine of an adaptation of Camelot than this entire movie was, which perfectly tops off how I feel about Fate/Grand Order: Shinsei Entaku Ryouiki Camelot 1 - Wandering; Agateram.