English Dub Review: Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia; “The New Humanity”

 

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Fujimaru’s party, with the fully powered Ana at the helm, begin their battle against Gorgon. What awaits them afterward, however, is a far cry from victory, as new threats suddenly emerge in full force. 

Our Take

The fight between Gorgon and Ana wastes no time erupting straight into an abundance of laser beams and low-frequency sound effects. Gorgon spares little effort in trying to obliterate her younger self, unleashing countless beams of darkness, which Ana handily deflects. The encounter is fast-paced, brightly lit, and thunderous; it looks more like some sort of rave than it does a life or death battle. There’s a lot of back and forth of Gorgon and Ana using their Mystic Eyes on each other, creating a couple of slightly odd moments where the fight pauses so one can just stare the other down. 

In addition to the laser show, Gorgon also users her array of giant snakes to great effect. While Ana deftly navigates the winding barrage of serpents, Mash and Ishtar are less successful in traversing them and are relegated to providing support on the periphery. Even Merlin makes a rare appearance as a combatant in this fight, deploying some of his magic. Visually, this fight lacks for nothing except length, which seems to be becoming a trend. 

Throughout the fight is the typical back and forth of dialogue, between Ana and Gorgon. There’s a scene that condenses their backstory into about a ten-second chunk which is helpful in case you forgot the one time they prattled on about it seven episodes ago. Ana reiterates this backstory in a verbal assault against Gorgon, which, like many other verbal assaults in this show, seems strangely effective. 

The reason this fight gets cut short is that Ana lands a decisive strike with her scythe, which is a rare weapon that can kill immortals. This is yet another incredibly useful piece of information that is glossed over until the precise moment where it could be utilized to full dramatic effect. Considering the fact that the majority of the opponents that they face are immortal, this scythe would’ve been indispensable in all of the fights up until now, even as just a threat. This is probably the reason that Ana got knocked away during those fights, or just wasn’t present. 

The decisive blow kills Gorgon, which also seems to kill Ana at the same time. I guess it’s because they’re the same person? But if Ana is a younger version of Gorgon, wouldn’t that mean she’d be fine? There’s probably a good reason for this that they won’t mention, and this won’t be the last instance of that in this episode. 

With all three goddesses of the alliance handled, this seems like the end. But of course, it isn’t, due to our dear friend and resident gigantic asshole, Kingu. He’s the one who had the Holy Grail all along, and also the one who’s going to clean up Gorgon’s mess. 

A large-scale space-time catastrophe erupts throughout Mesopotamia. There’s a deliberately vague, magical bullshit explanation behind how this all came to be. The short version is that there’s a real Tiamat who was asleep, and when Gorgon died she woke up, which triggered this catastrophe. All of this is part of Kingu’s plan to kill all humans and replace them with a new species. The event causes Merlin’s body to start dissipating for whatever reason, and before he fades away he gives an important message to Fujimaru to deliver to Gilgamesh.

This catastrophe brings about the appearance of massive amounts of new demonic beasts that terrorize Mesopotamia. These things are 100% disgusting, looking like some sort of gross, shiny black, quadrupedal alien spiders with large cartoonish human mouths protruding where its head would be that talks in gleeful gibberish. They look like something that belongs in an obscurely terrifying, Japanese sci-fi horror B-movie. What’s far worse is that they start stampeding cities and begin indiscriminately slaughtering and mutilating the citizens, stabbing and chopping up bodies for sport, further adding to the horror element. The arrival of these creatures honestly pushes the morbidity and terror factor way too far. What was once an epic fantasy adventure is now starting to venture into the realm of a splatter flick. 

To further compound the tension, Fujimaru’s party has a tough time killing them, in contrast to how easily they sliced up demonic beasts before. Only Quetzalcoatl, with her large sword and super strength, is able to damage one. Fortunately, all of the beasts suddenly retreat and exit the city for no apparent reason, leaving Uruk crippled and demoralized. 

Fujimaru and crew join up with Gilgamesh, where they start explaining everything that just happened. Merlin’s message reveals that Tiamat is one of the seven “Evils of Humanity,” which are magical beasts that represent the bestial nature of humanity. Gilgamesh expends some effort trying to elucidate Fujimaru on these Evils, but his explanation doesn’t reveal much else. This is definitely another topic that will most likely receive all the necessary elaboration when it’s most dramatically convenient for the plot. Additionally, they decide to call these new horrifying, emergent creatures the “Lahmu.” 

Upon learning that Gilgamesh’s secretary Siduri was taken hostage by the Lahmu in Eridu, Fujimaru and his party head there to save her. Upon arriving, they find the Lahmu engaging in further acts of inhuman depravity, making the citizens fight each other to the death and rewarding the victor with his own cruel death. As the party comes to save the citizens, they comment on the fact that the Lahmu don’t need to eat or carry out any organic function. This observation means that their gratuitously bloodthirsty behavior seems entirely needless, which it is, in every aspect.  

Fujimaru takes a closer look at one of the Lahmu and somehow interprets it’s “hand” signals as some form of communication and comes to the conclusion that that Lahmu is actually Siduri. How or why humans are being turned into Lahmu is yet another question raised regarding the unclear origins of these creatures. 

Kingu makes another one of his abrupt, intrusive entrances, killing a sizeable amount of the Lahmu as he does, much to everyone’s surprise. Evidently, he also finds the Lahmu’s behavior reprehensible, which is an unexpected but not unwelcome opinion. Regardless, he musters them up and sets his sights on Fujimaru. 

Fujiimaru’s party responds with some insults, which is evidently their new favorite tactic against all of their opponents now. They bring up the whole Enkidu/Kingu debate once again, providing some proof that he is a puppet created from the corpse of the real Enkidu. They use this to claim that he is not of divine origin and therefore not a child of Tiamat, which I suppose is what would upset him. But unlike all of the other recipients of their pointed arguments, Kingu isn’t perturbed by these insults at all, sticking to his claim that he and the Lahmu are divine brothers. 

The Lahmu don’t seem to agree, however, as they suddenly turn on him and stab him. Even when all of his plans are going off without a hitch, Kingu can’t seem to catch a break. I’d almost feel bad for him if he wasn’t such a smarmy bastard. 

The sudden, cataclysmic events in this episode represent a sharp 90-degree turn into a much darker and sinister atmosphere. At the same time, all of this new chaos is completely unorganized, with all of the new threats popping up out of nowhere and threatening the old threats. It seems like we’ve peeled off the first layer of bad guys, revealing a new hellscape of fresh bad guys underneath.