Review of Fate/Grand Order: Absolute Demonic Front - Babylonia

SPOILERS for the entire show**** Wow, I did not anticipate this day would come but even Apocrypha was better than this shit. I decided to watch this anime for 2 reasons. One : Being a huge fan of Fate/zero, Unlimited blade works and Heaven's feel. Two : The score on mal.. Should I say I am flabbergasted, thunderstruck, utterly overwhelmed with speechlessness at how high the score is for this anime? I am not sure if it is just the mobile game players giving it a 7 or more because they got an anime adaptation with half naked waifus for the game they like so much? Even ifthat's the case, I can't imagine how someone even with a brain tumour will give this anime even a score of 4.

PLOT
Since I'm an anime-only, I came prepared to not being able to understand certain connections or inter-verse references. Considering how much I was hooked to the story of Fate Stay/Night, you think I might want to play the Fate games. I am pretty much a novice gamer myself but firstly, I didn't want to play porn and secondly, in case of Fate Grand/Order being a mobile game, I didn't want to play it either. So, I told myself - not being able to understand some stuff was inevitable and it was fine as long as I can enjoy the likes of Gilgamesh and Rin again.

But all of that positive outlook didn't matter because not understanding certain plot points or details were the least of my problems. It's not about understanding the references- there is nothing to understand because there is nothing. It doesn't exist. The plot doesn't exist.

Firstly, you will never know that this story was based around ancient Babylonia other than the sheer namedrops of Uruk, Mesopotamia etc. Then, it must have been more along the lines of 'Tell don't show' right? But the show doesn't even tell much - That tells a lot (Tried to pun, laugh, bitch).

Not to mention, I found myself enjoying sweet long naps during the first 7-8 episodes. It was weirdly fascinating how I closed my eyes while witnessing Mash and Fujimaru drinking tea and then, woke up from my indefinite slumber to Mash and Fujimaru picking flowers. My point is, if I am in the mood for a slice of life anime, I'd be watching Mushishi or Natsume. The fact that the viewer is watching 'Fate' is maybe, because they want to watch 'Fate'? Maybe? Am I tripping? I didn't sleep during the rest of the episodes, as they were so absurd and unbelievably laughable, I couldn't even blink.
Even without playing the game, I could figure out that the plot of these first couple of episodes are supposed to be the culmination of certain quests in the game that you are supposed to complete before taking orders from the king or something similar. But that's the biggest problem here, this might work in a game where you have the freedom to choose between options before proceeding further in the story but to present the exact same scenarios in an anime format created with pre-determined choices makes it bland, boring and extremely unengaging. Unlike the games, where you're actively participating in every turn of event, here in the anime, the viewer is just a still consumer of the media. For the same reason, the protagonist also doesn't work in such bad adaptations but we'll talk about that later. I'm not praising the game to be the epitome of thrill or anything since I haven't played it. That said, a good friend of mine who is like head over buttocks for gacha games referred to FGO as a cash grabber and overall very 'messy' in terms of how the world works. And he plays FGO a looot, like a lot - so I'll take his word for it and safely assume that it's not the greatest game in existence. Anyway my point is, inspite the game being actually decent or not, the way they decided to formulate the same story into an anime format is horrendous. How a game works and how a solely visual media works is very very different and to prove that point, Absolute demonic front babylonia exists.

ANIMATION AND SOUND
From what I heard from people who liked Babylonia and from reviews on the Internet— almost everyone seems to appreciate the beautiful animation. When I was watching this shit, I was utterly dumb founded and laughing in disbelief at how untrue that is. Yes, once in a while the animation looked nice. Only thing I actually enjoyed in terms of animation and sound was the Noble phantasms. Every one of them. Not that they had any substance but hype as fuck for sure. Other than that, everything else is just tear-inducing. I can't fathom people appreciating the terrible terrible TERRIBLE CGI. At least, AT LEAST they should have put some effort in the final boss and not make her this ugly ass CGI doll. The sound design is just so funny, it's just the same noise again and again everytime there is an explosion - kind of reminded me of Fire force. Also this anime suffers very badly from same-face syndrome.

CHARACTERS
Again, I did not know that this day would come but even Shiro and Seig were better than this main character (or maybe so much time has passed since I watched those two, I forgot how much I hate them). Because the protagonist is the playable character in the game, you can already understand why does he have all these basic of the basic traits of the basic-est straight nice guy. Watching him was awfully painful because he is soooooo boring and time & time again, the supporting characters (characters that we are 'supposed to' respect and like) just keep praising the protagonist (as usual) for I don't know what. Like, for having the courage to hold a conversation with 'said enemy' at that point - an enemy who clearly overwhelms Fujimaru in terms of power so of course all he can do is talk. Talk about how 'said enemy' is not a bad Goddess :). Yes it's always a Goddess. Why the fuck will he talk to a God you moron? We are not letting men become a part of his harem, that's gay. Oh, where was I? Talk about how kind 'said enemy' is. Talk about how he is going to save everyone. And not surprisingly, the result of all this talk is, the supposed Goddesses - who are supposed to be literal 'Goddesses', start blushing at every sight of the MC from here on. Oh, and throwing hands all over bland MC #9999 for taking the sheer initiative of saying 'Thank You' to said Goddess while his canon wife character stands nearby having accepted that self-insert is a chic magnet. Also, all the female supporting characters who are, again, supposed to be literal 'Goddesses' and 'Heroes of the past' somehow find Fujimaru as the the first person to ever comfort them/ the first person to ever become a friend/ the first person to understand them - you get the gist. You want to make me believe, that in this fictional historical setting, all these Gods and legends, who have lived for years and years (in fate time) have never taken a liking to a single human being? What about all the other significant figures in their pasts that they have historically have had formed deep platonic and romantic relationships with? Not to mention the thousands and millions of people they have come across in their long lives (in fate time). But this one character has all the qualities to cater to the 'type' of all these Goddesses. The worst case example of this is Ereskigal. This cute fawning school girl is the Goddess of the Underworld? Pffffft. At least Ishtar does some cool stuff here and there, all blondie does is wet herself at the mention of Fuj— Oops, someone bring a change of clothes.
Maybe next time, when you are pandering to horny men, be a little more sneaky.

Coming back to the protagonists, Mash is pretty boring as well but at least she takes the initiative to protect Fujimaru during fights. Sure she can't do shit but you know she atleast tries... to take the initiative.. to try and save the MC..

Ahem! that said, nobody ever even mentions Mash while giving praise or appreciating something Mash and bland MC #85465 'supposedly' achieved together as a Team, even though Mash is the one who does the fighting while Fujimaru ..talks. Not even a mention of my girl? How dare you!? Didn't you see how she made Enkidu flee?... 'oh that was Merlin' Er, Didn't you see how she made Enkidu flee a second time!? ... 'oh that was Gilgamesh.' So what, didn't you see how she almost defeated hebi titan milkers ? 'Uh that was basically suicide, Ana killed herself. Actually she didn't die anyway soo..' Nevermind.
What I am saying is, Mash is pretty underwhelming but Fujimaru is just so much worse. Every praise catered towards the Chaldea team goes to Fujimaru as if he is the leader or something... wait, he is? Nevermind again.

And ofcourse, the women are there almost always in swimsuits, like they literally have no clothes on and when they do have clothes on, you know they are about to get in a compromised position for *drumroooool* - an ASS shot! Even during fights which would be otherwise decent to follow through, the women will suddenly bend over and obviously the ideal direction for the camerapan to fully capture the AS— erm, Fight, is from the back! Almost the entirety of the fight scenes involving the girls are flooded with underskirts. Hell they didn't even leave child Medusa. Trying to glide on the ground? here's a buttshot! Trying to sit? here's a buttshot from behind! Hey the wind sure is nice— oops another pantyshot! YAAY! Not to mention, one of the Goddesses from the Three-Goddess-alliance and also the Final Boss Goddess — both have humongous CGI tiddies. The final Goddess transforms into a dragon, you thought it'd be a normal dragon? Hah! Mongrel! It's a dragon with HUMONGOUS CGI TIDDIES.

For the male characters and others, I was so frustrated in seeing human Gilgamesh being kind of powerless in front of the enemy but then again he came back with his aura in his servant form but eh, it was very lackluster. I mainly started watching this for Gilgamesh but finished this liking Merlin instead. Honestly, I like Merlin and Romani quite a lot. I would like to see more about these characters but I am too scared to take the risk of watching another abomination and damaging my brain permanently (Update : I ended up watching the Solomon movie anyway, so kill me). I also had High Hopes for Enkidu but yeah... whatever happened to his plot..

VERDICT
Sweet innocent me, thinking I get to rewatch some infamous characters but all I got was tumour and luckily a lot of warm sleep during the runtime of the show.