Name: Simply executed, Grandly entertained
Item: Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia
Rating: 75
Author: R2R

Waifra

Simply executed, Grandly entertained · Waifora

/anime/103275/fategrand-order-absolute-demonic-front-babylonia

As far as the Anime goes, the only Fate entries that are considered to be great are, from the main timeline or if being specific, only the ones produced by ufotable. As for the remaining entries; many people don't even recommend DEEN Stay/Night as it isn't a proper adaptation (or so they say), there's a lot of hate surrounding Apocrypha, Kaleid PrismaIllya has some questionable scenes that only cultured ~~pedos~~ seem to like and many don't even know that studio Shaft has their own Fate. And then there's Fate/Grand Order, which is considered to be the only Fate that rivals with ufotable ones. Fate is famous for standing out in 3 elements: 1. Flashy Animation 2. Interesting Characters 3. Philosophical Dialogue

And anything like lore, waifus & husbandos are secondary for me. So, let's see how FGO Absolute Demonic Front maintained these elements. But let's start by talking about FGO.
Fate/Grand Order is a gacha game with 8 singularities (or levels, for simplicity sake) following Fujimaru Ritsuka & Mash Kyrielight journey. Each level has a different world, characters & themes (supposedly) and this "Absolute Demonic Front - Babylonia" is an adaptation of the 7th level, where we follow our main leads who found themselves in the midst of a war between the King of Heroes who's ruling the last of human race, Gilgamesh and the 3 goddesses, who formed an alliance to destroy humanity, but there's a strange green haired guy in between all of this.
Note:- There are 2 Ani-movies for the 6th level and a movie for the final singularity. Here are my thoughts regarding the 6th level, if you're interested to check that out before this (It's not necessary tho).

Now let's get into it.
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Animation

I guess all that money that came from gacha game was well used. Babylonia is animated by Cloverworks, and this is probably one of their best looking Anime. The animation in those fights is really flashy and is really entertaining to watch.

But apart from animation, what I really like from this Anime are the sound effects. Every explosion sounds different and not just the same bass-boosted sound effect, it's pretty unique. What really stood out for me are the shield collisions. Mash's shield has a different sound effect when collided with different weapons and they took an extra effort to add a sound effect during her bare movement of shield. This applies to other characters too. The sound of marching sandals of Ushiwakamaru during her grand fight is another thing I found amazing.

As far as the production goes, Yes. FGO is solidly backed up with flashy animation, great sound effects and excellent voice actors. Almost every episode has a fight scene, which never bores the action fans. #Characters I'll give credit that every character looks really unique in terms of character designs, excluding Isthar and Ereshkigal. The anime did a fair job at characterization. While they aren't mind blowing or emotionally investing, it didn't really leave anyone out and gave slight depth & enough personality to drive the story and not make it boring. But this carries the same problem I had with UBW. The main characters are bland when compared to all other characters. Fujimaru is a lot like Shirou, a fight-for-justice warrior, who's actually more bland than Shirou. But I guess, that's an unavoidable result when you skip most of their journey. This is the 7th level, the penultimate level means we basically skipped most of Fujimaru & Mash journey through different timelines & possible encounters that changed them. The only possible way to experience that is to play the game since there are no anime adaptations, yet (Let's hope there'll be one or more). #Dialogue This part of the Anime is quite a problem. Most of the dialogue is used for exposition, to explore both the lore and philosophy. Since we basically jumped to the end of the storyline, people who're not familiar with the game and the previous story will have a bit of a hard time making sense of everything. The anime did a fair enough job at not losing the tension at each individual episode but it is a fact that a lot of things were left unexplained. While the exposition dump might bore a few, it won't be any confusing to follow, as long as you've a good idea of how masters & servants work (Though "Grand order" rules are a bit different to "Stay Night" rules). As for the philosophical dialogue, there's something. While most 'powerful' dialogue won't be that powerful, it doesn't really feel pretentious or out of place. It's not boring but not amazing either. Since the characterization is lacking, the dialogue, while sticks to the themes & situation, and while they're well enhanced by the voice actors, they don't feel all great because they somehow couldn't deliver the impact needed to make it feel great or grand. But given the Anime focusses more on the entertainment side rather than the storytelling side (there are clearly more fights than I expected), it did just enough. Not great but not bad either. #Miscellaneous A few things that are worth mentioning. - Each episode directly dwells into point without wasting any time, like starting each episode at the middle of a fight which can instantly hooks you, rather wasting time to recap a bit. - The anime is really pretty to look. Everything looks bright, even the villains who're actually pretty terrifying. - Like I said in the characters section, every character is given a character arc with a few exceptions who we might see in the next/final movie. And while it initially felt like a waifu collecting game, a lot of female characters suddenly form a pact with the MC (enough to call it a harem) but there are moments where it proved that it's going to be different. - And I still can't believe there's a waifu named "Da Vinci", and a beautiful one at that. - My favorite fight is probably Ushiwaka vs Morgon and my favorite character is probably Ushiwakamaru.

#Conclusion Certainly, one of the most enjoyable Fate, that focuses more on entertainment rather than story. Note :- Idk for sure, but it's better to leave FGO after watching all of the main Fate entries (Zero, UBW and HF) for a better understanding of a few characters that appear in main Fate, that also appear in FGO.