Looks like I got in just under the deadline in time for episode 1 of Fate/Grand Order: Absolute Demonic Front – Babylonia, which I will review soon. I wanted to make sure to catch Episode 0 for the same reason I watched El-Melloi II Case File’s Episode 0: to gain some context so I wouldn’t be too confused when the main show commenced.
Episode 0, also titled Initium Iter or Beginning of the Journey, starts simply, with a demi-servant experiment seemingly going wrong, as the servant is only awakened within the human subject for a short time. In that time, the subject is suddenly transformed to a Shielder-type servant, and tries her best to break through the multiple bounded fields that protect the researchers.
That subject is Mash Kyrielight (Takahashi Rie), a designer baby with a shortened lifespan, and her primary physician at the Chaldea facility is Dr. Romani Archaman. Initium Iter focuses on the start of their relationship, as Romani is one of her only connections to humanity.
The rowdy servant that still dwells deep within her could make Mash a time bomb in the wrong hands, but Romani is committed not just to maintaining her physical and emotional health, but teaching her what it is to be, well, a person, not just a vessel.
When some kind of singularity is detected which will cause “the history of all humanity” to cease to exist by 2016, the Rayshift experiment is proposed and approved by the UN, and Mash leads a group of “spiritrons” whose mission is to travel to various points in history and “intervene in matters” with the overarching goal of making sure humanity has a future.
This prologue doesn’t really go into great detail about the mechanics behind this mission, and we only see various glimpses into the adventures Mash goes on, which presumably comprise the content of the main series to come. Suffice it to say a lot happens (or will happen), there’s a lot of characters involved, wearing a lot of elaborate outfits.
Romani makes Mash aware from the start that she may only last eighteen years at most, but Mash is accepting of that span, and like him, hopes to make the most of it. Eventually she is able to leave the clean room that was her world for years and walk about the Chaldea facility as a fellow researcher.
At some point, some kind of calamity befalls Chaldea, and seemingly only two people survive the devastation: Mash, and a young lad with black hair whom we see interacting with Mash as a comrade in arms, companion, and perhaps more. With that, the beginning ends, and their journey begins in earnest.
RABUJOI - An Anime Blog 
Just to clarify, this anime will adapt only the story of the last part/singularity of the first part of FGO, it will skip the first 6 chapters that you saw in the montage at the end.
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Okay, so, you’re definitely gonna need an explanation. No need to reply to this, but if you wanna watch this, really do read this. (and I do promise you I think it’s going to be well worth a watch)
The Fate/Grand Order anime adapt bits of a mobile game called Fate/Grand Order. The First Order special you watched… well, literally nearly three years ago, adapted that game’s prologue.
And this full length TV anime… well, it’s adapting the game’s /seventh/ story chapter.
That montage you saw? That was the first six chapters. That is all you’re going to see of them. Well, there will be a movie adaptation of the sixth chapter next year, but by that time this TV anime of the seventh chapter will be over.
Luckily for you, Fate/Grand Order’s first seven story chapters were connected to each other so little that they could more or less afford to do this. Most of what you need to know is in the montage; Mashu learned life lessons from a variety of Servants that have helped her grow from someone empty into a fully rounded person and put together her life philosophy and heart.
Things you do need to know that the show won’t bother to explain to you:
– It does expect you to remember the stuff from First Order even if you watched it nearly three years ago. To sum it up, humanity has been destroyed because someone messed with seven points in the past (singularities) through placing Holy Grails in them, and it’s up to the Chaldea organization to send Ritsuka and Mashu back in time to retrieve the Holy Grails and restore the past to how it should be. There are lots and lots of Servants.
– This isn’t actually important but it is a nice little detail. Olga Marie Animusphere, who you saw quite recently in Case Files, was the Director of Chaldea but died terribly in First Order. The Director of Chaldea in this Episode 0, Marisbilly Animusphere, is her dad. This right here in Fate/Grand Order is the world she speculated about in the last episode of Case Files where the Grail met her father’s expectations and he didn’t abandon her, and it resulted in her terrible death so the Olga over in Case Files / the main timeline really does have it better. Nice synergy between Fate writers
– The ominous guy in the fourth part of the montage is Grand Order’s main villain, seemingly the biblical King Solomon and the 72 demons he controls (the guy with the hat Lev was one of them, Flauros). He desires the incineration of humanity as the means to some end, not as the goal of in of itself.
– The name of the Heroic Spirit Mashu derives her power from is Sir Galahad of the Round Table.
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You know how we do it here at RABUJOI…usually completely ignorant of source material, and proud of it!
Still, thanks for the primer on the scenario. I actually did watch First Order, but…it wasn’t that great? Now I see it’s because they were trying to do too much in too small a space.
For the record, despite pretty much casting aside the other six missions, I think this episode 0 (and First Order) work as a preface to Babylonia’s episode 01. This episode in particular really drove home the point that through her talks with Romani and her many adventures that followed, she is now in a firm position to represent humanity’s best interests, since she has become the best of humanity, not just the last of it.
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