Post — Aaron Ngo

Major Spoilers are included in this movie review. Please read with caution.

On September 3, 2020, I watched Fate / Grand Order: First Order, a 2016 movie based on the mobile Fate / Grand Order—Fate GO or FGO—and the events of its Prologue. The Fate series is continuously growing bigger with its countless anime adaptations, various game spin-offs, and the next movie—Fate/stay night Heaven’s Feel Part 3—set to release sometime in 2020.

So, of course the next big thing will be to make an anime adaptation on the famous mobile app game with over 2 million users in America (myself included) to help expand on that audience. There is also an ongoing anime series that furthers FGO’s story and a planned movie for the Camelot Arc too. After viewing this movie—which had recently dropped on Netflix—I will have to dedicate time in my schedule for the Babylon anime.

Fate / Grand Order: First Order opens with an introduction of the Chaldea Security Organization, a group made up of high-level mages and brilliant scientists dedicated to preserving mankind’s history. One day, the organization learns the timeline had been changed and mankind is now set to become extinct by the end of 2016. As a result, the organization enlists the help of multiple mages with the potential to become Masters, planning to send them back in time to correct history and save mankind from becoming extinct.

However, everything goes wrong when all the potential Masters die in an experiment except for one boy (Master), Ritsuka Fujimaru, and one girl (Demi-Servant), Mash Kyrielight—our main protagonists. Luckily, one doesn’t need to have played the mobile app to understand the movie’s events, but one would need to have prior knowledge of previous Fate series—like Fate/Zero and Fate/stay night—to understand certain events and characters. How the Fate franchise is structured is very gatekeeping in nature, so newbies wouldn’t have a good time watching this without prior information keeping them going.

The exposition in the first 15 to 20 minutes of the movie also crammed a lot of backstory regarding the Chaldea Security Organization, but a lot of it doesn’t fully matter in the context of the film as it becomes clear that the references to previous Fate series are oddly more important to know based on where the movie’s plot momentum goes. The film’s main conflict is heavily based on one of the Heaven’s Feel route’s bad endings, giving us a darker interpretation on Fuyuki City’s Holy Grail War and the Servants who fought in it like Lancer being a Caster and Saber being corrupted into Saber Alter.

Aside from the Fate lore though, the plot is fairly straightforward: Master and Servant must go back in time, stop bad thing from ruining history, and save the future. At least that’s easy enough to understand. The short length—only an hour and twelve minutes—does help the movie feel somewhat enjoyable without needing to spin its wheels or overstay its welcome.

The fight scenes were also fantastic to watch—specifically Caster vs Lancer and Caster vs Archer—but whenever Mash enters a fight scene, all she manages to do is get beat around a lot. It’s understandable given she’s fairly new as a Servant, but it still sucks.

Overall, I’m not sure how to recommend a Fate series to anyone at this point. This is one of the few Fate movies I would recommend for newbies because it’s the easiest one to understand out of all the ones I’ve seen so far, and the short length helps with that assessment too. Those who are Fate fans though, you’ll have a decent time with this movie especially if you’ve played the mobile game app.

Thanks for reading this movie review, everyone! I can’t wait to see what else Fate has in store for us!

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