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.
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