Not exploring Agartha with Helena was the most unforgivable part. Her writings on it is a key part of why she's a servant, and she doesn't get a moment to enjoy it.
Hell there only two changes that could be made that would have spared Helena the insult she got in Agartha. A few post demon pilar quests that told us of what she had been doing in Agartha until Columbus took over her region, and her being trapped by columbus until she finally was able to break free to save us at the last moment.
And they didn't even try to rescue her, doesn't Chaldea has some radar to detect magical energy form servants or something? But somehow didn't even realize Helena was there all along.
Honestly, since it's been a while, I legit forgot what role Helena played in Agartha, even after I saw her as one of the missing Servants from Chaldea. Drake was already talked about earlier, but I did remember her being the bad guy in one of the cities as soon as I saw her, shota Fergus was around enough for me to remember he existed at least, Herc was a badass as always, and easily the most memorable character. But for Helena I did a double take and thought "wait, Helena was in Agartha?"
I think another reason why columbus' betrayel sucks is this chapter comes just after shinjuku where moriarty very similarly is with you from the start and betrays you. However foxy grandpa's plan and the whole ordeal was a fantastic story for the character. Columbus just goes "oh yeah im evil btw" and it just feels like "really were doin this again"
just finished it yesterday and what pissed me off the most was we allowed Columbus making the contract with Herc instead of us because "oh just in case he doesn't crush you from wielding his strength" and "im rouge servant but im suppose to have limited mana" like first of all he's technically already contracted with us and we can contract with hundreds of servants ? also we usually always taunt or shit on the villains ideals before fighting them but there wasn't any of that there 😪
Betrayals of the Pseudo Singularities Shinjuku: Moriarty Agartha: Columbus Shimousa: Yagyu Salem: Mr. Carter (Abby as possessed? But turned back to normal)
The only thing i like in agartha is Megalos fight, I mean when youre a beginner in fgo and you know who's heracles berserker is, imagine fighting him but as a giant you know you feel intimidated when you first fight with him and his guts.
Frankly that fight just makes no sense to me. This is a BUFFED version of one of the strongest Berserkers out there and we take him on with B and C listers. Like, Columbus’s anchor could hold him, while normal Heracles broke the Chains of Heaven through sheer strength alone. What?
@@GoldLight73 no Heracles didn’t break the chains of heaven on will. As far as I’m aware it’s because after all his labors are completed he lost his divine status and without any divinity the chains are just chains
I think we should all remember that, due to Agartha, the writer is no longer allowed to work on FGO main story chapters. Whether or not that applies to events remains to be seen, but he’s not doing anything as major as Agartha anymore.
This is untrue - he wrote LB4 I think (so long as we're all correct and it was Minase who wrote Agartha) and it was a surprisingly good chapter. It was also similarly dripping with his hallmarks, though to a lesser degree - the story relentlessly makes mean spirited fat jokes about Jinako and I think even Da Vinci takes a couple of potshots. It's a great story outside of that, but undeniably a Minase story.
" quentrillion IQ plan by Scheherazade " Scheherazade: i will expose mystery to the world and stop the summoning system so i can't be summoned anymore. Throne of heroes: what about the parallels universes inside your timeline and the others timeline ? Scheherazade: ...
Actually in all stories about Achilles defiled Penthesilea's body after her death later told by Romans dirtying up the story. The real story was when Achilles killed her, he wanted her to have an honorable funeral because he saw her as a warrior, not just a woman as she thinks he thinks of her in FGO. But one of his friends Thersites taunts Achilles by accusing/mocking him of having fallen in love with a weak woman like Penthesilea and Achilles kills him. In other stories, Thersites also cuts out her eyes out from her corpse as a souvenir of war while bragging he did what Achilles couldn't do and again Achilles in a rage kills Thersites.
Consid Servants in this franchise are meant to be a culmination of all their myths and legends, that includes the Roman version. No wonder Penthesilea is pissed.
Astolfo's whole role in both legends and fate is being the ball of optimism that brings people up when things are derailing They coulda use his pechant for going out of his way to help people even if that goes against common sense and/or the mission to make him help the traumatized villains come to their senses and/or keep the main guys from going into despair at the terrible situation But nah, he's just the funny trap guy D'eon's whole character is being loyal AF to the point they'll change even their gender to suit their master. They coulda use it to contrast with the themes of betrayal all arround, or use his role as a spy to deal with the obvious backstabber right there in a way that actually made sense But nah, he's just funny trap #2 Getting those two as the main servants on our side isn't really a bad idea, it's just the author having no fucking clue what to do with them, much like the rest of the characters here.
@@michaelmcdoesntexist1459 So, in other words, "writer not competent enough to stick to characters he actually understands so he brings the one he doens't and trahses them" pretty common nowadays
Yeah.. I hope for both of them to at least get The Right recognition that they deserve to, plus Helena and Scheherazade.. I mean *"An Adventure in The Mysterious Underground World with their Reverse Society"* is already sounds interesting and has a lot of potential, yet they ruin it.. 🙃
The idea that Achilles defiled Penthesilea's body after her death seems to be a later, possibly Roman, invention. There's also stories that he killed someone who disrespected her after her death.
@@tweetugwe1270 He does respect her in FGO, but he's still very conceited so his respect comes off as condescending. He does on some level feel bad about how he hurt her, but he doesn't have the self awareness to properly articulate it.
Yeah. I looked all over her wiki page and all mentions of Achilles. Necrophilia is only mentioned once. The rest is him falling in love with her after he kills her and regretting it.
Huh... I didn't think I could hate Agartha more, but... I did not consider that kinda important part that you rightfully pointed out... It was OUR Drake and OUR Heracles. And we killed them. AND NO ONE GIVES A FUCK
I didn't even think of that lmao, Agartha is so fucking bad it took me like 3 months to finish. Thanks for giving me even more fodder for my hatred I guess lmao
Another (small) thing in Agartha that really annoyed me, despite being able to choose between playing as a male or female protagonist in the game, the entire chapter literally does not work at all if you're playing as Gudako. "Oh how are we going to sneak into the city if they only allow women?" I mean I'm playing as a girl so I should be able to-- "CLEARLY the only way is to have Astolfo and D'Eon dress up in fetish outfits!"
Ig you can kinda say its because Fergus was always by your side, but even then it'd still be something that probably wouldn't be too out of place in the city of lights
There's so much wrong with Scheherazade in fate is painfully bad I'm familiar with both the western and Arabic versions of 1001 arabian nights and she's just watered down to being "I'm afraid to die" which is coming from a servant... a spirit, as in she's already dead like excuse me what- Her design being heavily sexualized is a whole other problem, yes she was a concubine but she was still a queen by the end of her story so at least ONE of her ascensions should portray that Also your explanation is basically what I thought of her role in the story, using her as an antagonist was a really bad idea when she was never an evil figure to begin with There's so much more to say about how badly they butchered her character it's just plain sad man...
The thing is she purposely use those outfit because she prefers the master to take her to the bedroom instead the battlefield and yes she is a sprit and already dead but the trauma and her fear is so big it end up eating her so even in Dead she still fear of dead
The part about her that cool is really her NP and how versatile it can be as well as her cunning nature in setting up the whole singularity. hope future story if she comes back she can move on from her fear of death
@@moviedudexd5579 it sure does The only thing I like about it is the color scheme of the first ascension but that's about it I don't like the fact she's dressed like a belly dancer
@@hayabusahithosi9587 that's precisely the problem, she was designed that way to be fetish bait The fact that she's so hung up on her fear of death doesn't fit her character at all they changed her entire personality and demeanor so it would make sense for her to prefer sleeping with master over anything else which ruins her character and makes her very one dimensional
I didn’t even know they did that to Francis Drake because I skipped the entirety of Agartha. Safe to say I just don’t view it as canon personally, agartha is a fanfiction because there is no way you could make a plot that bad. The fact it doesn’t even add anything to the FGO story is a bonus
@@_Aeterno it's in the sense that it never really has a lasting impact, all changes in the characters are isolated to this chapter, none of them grew at all through it It's basically whole other thing that just happens to shares some characters and concepts
@@tiagobelo4965 It had the least lasting impact out of all EoR for sure, but every character that gets added with every quest contributes to the FGO story, so the original comment I was replying to is still wrong. It's not really fair to say none of the characters grew through it at all, although I get what you mean. Sche definitely grew, despite still being whiny and underused as a character atm (haven't read her second interlude on JP yet, but I will do that this year for sure). Shota Fergus grew, and I don't think that just because this side of Fergus been shown without it being summonable separately ever changed that we learned about another side to him and Fergus is still there in Chaldea. It's been so long, I can't remember about anything Wu did except growing from one of the enemies into the key figures to win save Chaldea with her NP. Penth situation I agree was kinda irrelevant since she was one of the usual mad berserkers just following Sche's story as antagonistic amazon. Not sure about Columbus and how much he was affected by Sche, though he isn't necessarily supposed to grow that much even past Agartha. His interlude was good where he reflected on his Agartha summoning and whatnot. There's a lot of characters that require an interlude after finishing the main quest imo tho and this quest had no shortage of that. Wu, Sche, Columbus, Penth, even Drake (got a big interlude after Agartha despite happening before EoR, meaning they wanted us to see it afterwards for some reason?) all needed an interlude due to how this quest was set-up. But not as much as LB3! Yes, if I were to give an example of this same kind of gacha design flaw in the later part (even more inexcusable) where you needed interludes even more than Agartha, it would be SIN purely because of how ridiculously abrupt that quest ended. While I could still say that Agartha had its moments enough to be okay to end as it did, LB3 for me just was not. You HAD to see Huang interlude due to how ridiculous his sudden choice of just stopping and sticking around (kinda same with Yu, though in a much lesser way and her horse). In that aspect, Agartha quest is not really the worst. Just being in part 2 will automatically make LB3 way more impactful, of course, but I still don't get why new players still wanted some super impactful quest after a mess that was Shinjuku at the end and right after the best and the most impactful EoR quest in the game which is CCC. Not playing the original CCC game or not following the event timeline alongside main story during EoR to not wish for a more relaxed quest like Agartha is entirely a skill issue of being a normie TM fan. Although that's still a perspective from someone who wasn't exactly experiencing the "ongoing" pacing and had to judge EoR pacing with each main quest alongside the events back-to-back and Agartha wasn't particularly ruining this pacing. After Agatha, though, you get ready for something more real, which you immediately get in Shimousa right from the start by already having the link to Musashi which appeared not too long ago on the EoR timeline during her New Year's trail quest. Agartha was a weak link during that EoR pacing, but going so far as to say it's not canon or it adds nothing at all is ridiculous. How does that guy feeling right now, I wonder? Does having character from Agartha appear later in LB4.5 or in events up until Summer 7 (atm) not add anything? This is why I asked him to clarify since if he does mean main story and not FGO story in general (which includes the events), then besides LB4.5 we indeed didn't receive much in main story of part 2 from those characters (doesn't particularly matter, many characters didn't). Anyway, I wish the manga adaptation got picked up by some translator again, so more people could see how the potential of this goofy ah Agartha setting been realized better to its completion. There's a new point to be made about Agartha nowadays and I'll get to it here. I saw people before complaining that the concept of underground world was wasted on this mid chapter, but then we got LB7 where that concept been realized to its possible in FGO maximum by Nasu himself. I gotta admit, it made Agartha seem kinda both better and worse after it dropped lol. I didn't particularly hate that we didn't get LB7 level use of the concept during EoR timeline and I wouldn't actually want that during EoR either. But some people do use it as an excuse to bash Agartha even harder nowadays, I guess? Not really fair to do that, still. If we start getting mad about EoR quests not being up to the level of part 2, then every single EoR quest could've been worked on more and improved. Sorry for the long comment but this topic being brought up again after 8 months had me fired up a little.
The entire reasoning that fetishes might have been a factor makes total sense now. From ntr, shota/loli to trap/femboy this chapter had it all. One thing that i was extremely dissapointed in was what they did with drake. She may not be number one waifu material for me, but i love her character in fate go but for some reason she is always either done dirty or killed of rather fast after the first singularity she was featured in. The same goes for herc. Another thing that was extremely terribly done was the idea of living in a society were one gender is only allowed to exist as slaves/sex slaves. In one scene we get a horrific execution of a random civilian and then we get some haha funny astolfo trap jokes. I can’t even describe how much i have grown to hate fergus as a character because of this chapte. Every time he was on the screen it just made me roll my eyes and his final speech just made cringe. The worst part was how for some reason out mc, after all the shit he/her went through in the singularities, decided to trust columbus from all servants and play right into his hands.
The part about Colombus becomes especially dumb when you consider that both Da Vinci and and Mash are like "Hmm.... there's something really sus about this man I dunno but it's really sussy" but never doing anything about it not to mention GUDA WAS BETRAYED BY AN OLD MAN WITH AMNESIA IN THE PREVIOUS SINGULARLY BRO HOW DO YOU GALL FOR IT TWICE IN A ROW???
I mean sure we didn’t see her do it but Drake beat *fucking* *Posiedon* by *herself* in Atlantis and she had plenty of screentime in Okeanos so she’s actually one of the few servants that’s fulfilled on the quota’s of cool feats and showings.
@@t_raywen8750 She would’ve helped alot in duking out with Odysseus so more servants might’ve made it through Atlantis but that would ruined Jason’s time to shine and the losing the whole New Argonauts being Atlantis-specific which really isn’t worth it for a character that was already fleshed out. She just wouldn’t have helped in Olympus because Olympus is packing the difficulty of *[FUCKYOU]* lorewise Actually the Protag not trusting Columbus would’ve been *horribly* against character. He/She is actually self-sacrificial, really forgiving, extremely trusting and stupid nice, these traits carry over to even the current point in the story. He/She just gets less naive and harder to make shocked/panic( *sips* *tea* *intensifies* ) and become an lorewise A+++ tier master(Atlas Mystic Code Master + Siegried > *Sigurd* + *Brynnhildr* ) even without all those equal to Kirshtaria statements and being among the only three known masters to be able to clear the Grand Order.
@@actuallyreallybored3552 I'm not sure man, we were saved a lot of times by..miracles, plot armor. We get lucky. I don't think the MC is that great. We can't even enhance our vision like Kadoc did. That kindness almost got us killed. We're in a war, we should dump that especially after seeing our world bleached white. I have never seen anyone that stay the same even after experiencing a lot of things.
DaVinci about Columbus, "Dont Trust that guy, he owes me a dinosaur" also whenever someone mentions Eric in a video i have to pause the video and actually look to see if they are talking about Erik(Bloodaxe) or Eric(Phantom of the Opera)
If we talk-no-jutsu'd Caster of the Nightless City out of her plan, that would have worked way better. Also, if we had Boudica, Nitocris and Enkidu in the chapter rather than the Astolfo, D'eon, and Fergus Lily shit would have made way more sense.
@@WelfareWaifu IIRC Narita didn't really allow the use of Enkidu outside of Nasu writing since despite Narita being in charge of him first in Strange Fake, he was mentioned in Fate Zero novel before (or could be even earlier if my memory's trash) and is still Nasu's character to an extent.
Exactly this, the MC should have just said: "Ok I understand why you have to do this, but y'know I have to kill you to get rid of this singularity right? So if you don't wanna die, hand over the grail and become my servant. Then you don't have to worry not dying anymore."
@@Cynicalhamptur But wasn't Sche portrayed as stubborn enough to require a beating before Fergus' spirited speech in a perfect moment made her slowly but surely start snapping out of it?
The funny thing is, they were talking to Wu Zetian and all and I think they could have gone somewhere or even make an agreement, but nop, Megalos did an Adam Smasher and "killed" her, then she returns out of nowhere later on. I don't know how but Wu is one of the few things I liked from Agartha
7:28 I'd say that it's more that she just doesn't want to be a Servant/Heroic Spirit in addition to the "I don't want to die" thing. Yeah, it got overplayed to death, and I'll give you that Fate is guilty of Flanderizing characters a lot, but I always took her motivation as her not wanting to go through another experience with the constant threat of death looming just outside and her having to stall for as long as possible. And since she's aware that she's become a Servant and knows about Holy Grail Wars, she doesn't want to have any part of what she sees as pointless dying over and over again. Is it still out of character? Sure, but it makes some sense to me as to why she had things play out like that. Furthermore, I'd also add that another part of her personality is that she doesn't like kings, or at least doesn't trust them or their intentions with her, as evidenced by both her boss fight and her interactions with Fergus (he does say that he's going to be a king one day, after all). And, yeah, they definitely did Helena dirty.
Agreed on almost everything said here, but one thing. It's not out of character for Sche to fear death this much in the slightest. The version of her we see in FGO is dead at the end of her 1001 nights and it affected her big time (as implied in her profile bio). It doesn't matter if it makes sense in context or that her interlude exists, some people just don't like this version of her because they're stubborn in wanting something else. And that's fine, since it's just means more salt and less fun for those people.
@@_Aeterno So, the version we summon/is summonable doesn't survive the 1001 nights? I don't have her, so I'm not sure and am surprised if that's actually the case.
@@_Aeterno Ah, I always forget about that section of the wiki. Usually, I just go on there to see what skills they have and check out event/main story nodes I'm doing.
For me, Agartha failed because of the inconsistent mood. One minute the story focuses on how terrible it would be to live in the societies as a man because your a second class citizen, or just breeding stock. Then there is jokes about Astolfo and D'eon being ambiguous gender wise and "haha virgin Fergus". To me it ruined the story. There are good ways to handle some comedy in dark stories, look at Babylonia where some of the comedy during the last chuck comes from the characters acting as themselves, like Merlin getting hurt because of Fou. The difference is that the serious stuff arrives and the writers understood that after a certain point, you back off on the comedy and get serious. Look at Salem; there is some comedy early on, but around the time Hopkins goes behind the parties back and hangs people around a play, and from then on, its a serious story for the most part. Also, the writer being the same as Fate Illya explains a lot. Fate Illya always made me really uncomfortable and I really dislike how accepting of the very loli pandering nature of the story.
It should be noted that the Manga for Prisma Illya is NOWHERE near as bad. Like, there's still some fanservice, but it's much more clearly focused on the action bits, which the anime doesn't even do justice (the focus of detail between the action and fanservice scenes were basically reversed.) Of all the people to put in charge of the anime adaptation, THIS GUY was likely the WORST possible option, and it's a shame because I personally LOVE the Manga, but HATE the anime.
@@eonnexus I've avoided that anime but then I've picked up some of the plot points from other fate discussions, so yeah it's awful to hear that the show is not worth it. I started the first episode a couple of times but it does just feel weird and not very Fate like. the series where they're in some moon cancer dream is difficult to start too
@@Omniseed Oath Under Snow, made the begining of Prisma Illya better as it gave some decent Fate context to help it feel like it belongs, then it starts going down hill into debatable levels of fanservice that feels like Fate brand CP to a lot of people.
bitching about loli and "pandering" as a type moon fan makes no sense nasu wrote the len scenes in kagetsu tohya, illya had similar scenes hinting to romance(or not) in hollow ataraxia, and was originally planned to have a route in fsn, the whole damn company started off making h-adjacent content
Criticizing Agartha probably isn't the most controversial take, but it's well-justified and you explain the problems really well. I think for me, the only good things to come out of the chapter are Penthesilea, and *maybe* Megaros and Columbus (who is at least a villain you can love to hate). I've got a very low tolerance for pedophilia bait, so I can't stand Wu; nobody ever really addresses that Drake was mind-controlled into sex in a way that's basically raping her; Fergus is used for a plot point that basically amounts to 'what women need for mental health is for random guys to perv on them even if they don't want it;' d'Eon and Astolfo are just there for the crossdressing kink; Helena of course is an afterthought; and Scheherazade... hoo boy. You covered a lot of this in the video, but to me, what they did to her was as if they took Achilles, canonically the bravest of Greek heroes, and made him into a sniveling coward with the catchphrase 'Not in the heel!' Sure, you could make arguments for it -- nobody could be on a battlefield for ten years without getting PTSD, how courageous could you really be if you're invincible, etc. -- but it's betraying the heart of the character. And that's what they did to Scheherazade. She was a brave and self-sacrificing hero who voluntarily put herself in an awful situation night after night and used her wits, charisma, and courage to redeem a monstrous villain and save a thousand lives. Ignoring all that and saying, 'no, she's just so terrified of death she's going to murder millions of people in a frankly stupid plan to try to avoid it...' That fails so hard as to almost be offensive to me. Sure, they tried to redeem her with later interludes and Ooku and so on, but it's trying to build on a foundation of quicksand. Nothing can justify her characterization for me. Penthesilea at least has a genuinely touching story, and I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who can empathize with the general theme of 'working hard to achieve great things, but still in the end feeling dismissed because of your looks and gender.' And it's explored further in her interlude, which gives both her and Achilles some sympathy, even as it maintains the gap between them. She's the one thing I'd keep from Agartha. The rest... burn it to the ground.
Honestly, other than Jack and Chloe, none of the little girl characters in Fate are blatant enough that you have to look at them sexually if you don’t want to, most of them come off more as little sisters/daughters to me. I will say I don’t know how a series that had something as horrific as Sakura’s backstory involving sexual abuse of a child can exist in the same series with Fanservice-Liner Prisma-Lolicon, just seems like tonal whiplash to the extreme.
@@krism.6598 The fate series is, while having a main writer in the form of Nasu, has many additional writers that have varying levels of supervision for their projects. What I've heard from the comments here is that on future projects this writer is given, he has a lot more supervision, often from Nasu himself. Keep in mind that's all hear-say, but I've heard of similar things happening with other, similar projects like MMOs. So its not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
When I was playing through Agartha I got so fed up with the story I began skipping at the end. This led to me forgetting that Helena was even part of the missing servants to begin with.
10:56 tbf, in Shinjuku, EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. knew not to trust Moriarty, but they were all just like "every fiber of my being is screaming that he's 1000% going to betray us but whatevs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" so it's not too surprising that they did it again in the next story.
Also also, Schez's plan doesn't make sense! Sure, if she succeeded, she wouldn't be summoned anymore... In the Grand Order timeline. There are multiple, if not infinite timelines, in which there will be no effect on her being summonable or not. So yeah, not even that works, really.
Reminds me of EMIYA in FSN partially wanting to kill Shriou in shallow hope that it changes anything for himself as a spirit, despite himself knowing it probably wouldn't and that he's only satisfying his own ego. But as for Sche, she's obviously confused about the whole Heroic Spirit thing (which gets addressed in her interlude) and her character does make sense overall.
@@_Aeterno Lmao I love EMIYA because he full on admits "Yeah, this probably isn't going to work. Now get over here, you red-haired, hero complex-having bitch and let me kill you."
Yeah, Astolfo has literally nothing to do with trauma. He has ties to high adventure, selflessness, friendship, compassion, recklessness, and even vanity, but not trauma. He's also, as stated, a much more light-hearted character, and not just in Fate but in his source material, too.
Wow... I knew Agartha was bad since it's the only main story chapter that I had to drag myself through to completion, but man I did not realize how bad it really was until this video. But hey at least we got Maid Knight and Sailor Astolfo
I have to say, have being a thanathophobe as well (still a little bit, but not as crippling as years ago) I kind felt attached to Scheherazade when I found out that she was one too WITHOUT knowing who she was (I know the 1001 nights tales, but not the story behind). When I did a little research on her, I kinda felt "dissapointed" (I don't know how to put it in a better way) about her characterization and as time passed, an idea started to form in my head: I really want Scheherazade Summer so she can at least have a break from her thanathophobia and just enjoy some good summer time.
Awesome way to put she was redeemed at the Ooku event while I hope for a summer version I hope it's not another she has more clothes on her then her OG outfit 😅
@@lookingforlove839 I fear death the most but what I fear more is the death of my allies-Sheherezade FGO Ooku, How could you have read that line and not think of a redeeming quality in that same line.
Agartha is literally the only part of FGO's story I've straight up skipped parts of I made it to the end finally was allowed to punch Columbus in the dick then schera turns from a 2d character into a 1d character somehow I roll my eyes and just Skip the rest.
Honestly, I'm glad that out of everyone introduced in this chapter, Wu came out of it with the best reputation. And like all the others she only got even better rep afterwards (even if she DID get screwed out of being a main character in LB3 even though it would have been the PERFECT GODDAMN PLACE TO INCLUDE HER).
Given that you took the time to truly dissect the Agartha chapter, I’d love to hear about how you would do a rewrite of the story if done with the characters you listed that go along with the stories message, or even how you would personally improve some of the early chapters of FGO.
I think, when you think about the gendered themes of Agartha's story, there is some logic in including two of the more gender nonconforming Servants as allies. They could have provided interesting insights and been given a chance to display some real underrepresented groups of people. It could have been sincerely empowering. You know what's not empowering? Treating them as a joke and as fetish fuel. While I will always appreciate how I was inspired to look into the historical Chevalier d'Eon from this story, that's something I got in spite of the terrible presentation here, not because of it.
I remember really disliking Scheherezade during the arc and disliking her more when I got her as a spook rolling for Okita. I found her more likeable after going through her interlude.
When I first heard about Agartha and how bad it was, it was mostly about people complaining on Scheherazade disrespecting Romano’s sacrifice at the end of part 1. And yeah that was a dick move, honestly I was more bothered by the feeling of “this feels like an early chapter that got delayed for fetish bait.” Why were the servants kidnapped and altered except for Helena? Don’t know. Why does Scheherazade think listening to a DGP is a good idea? Don’t know. Why is Scheherazade a complete 180 on her source material? Don’t know, wait, I do know. Writers already wanted fetish bait, so they probably wanted a submissive woman with tits bigger than year 1’s animation budget.
Helena was hand waved as something was wrong with her when she first manifested. But, then Columbus shot her before we arrived and by the time we see her again she is back to normal. Never shown what was wrong with her, just an off-handed "I was feeling off until recently" when she deus ex machina's the party.
Shinjuku was the perfect setup for the Epic of Remnant chapters - a story that revolves around taking the role of someone in a usual Grail War and trying to uncover the identities of the enemy servants, themes so far unexplored in Temple of Time like the tragedy of being a villain in someone's story and the ways someone versed in folklore can manipulate a Servant's legend into granting a huge boost in effectiveness, and the return of old characters who get even more character development. Overall, the Epic of Remnant chapters were set up to be this fascinating exploration of unique new areas and interesting new themes all while providing character development to older returning characters while still introducing new ones and allowing for their pasts to be explored while trying to uncover their True Names. Then Agartha came along with another amnesiac old man whose betrayal becomes blindingly obvious the moment you learn their True Names and another main antagonist hiding in plain sight while pretending to aide the main character and ANOTHER ending battle with the antagonist trying to hit the earth with a massive [meteor/floating island] as a secondary objective used to fulfill their true primary objective primarily driven by their legend. No themes or motifs. No tonal awareness. No originality of thought or ability to do anything beyond "hey that worked in Shinjuku let's copy it here". After that I skipped the rest of Epic of Remnant's cutscenes. Sure, they might have been better, but at that point I was mainly just there to get onto Cosmos in the Lostbelt.
If I remember correctly, she had at most like 3 scenes. I believe one was a flashback where she was injured with Columbus. Another was where she was apparently fused and/or disguised as Wu Zetian or something. And the last, where she deus-ex-machina us off of Agartha.
I had a Fate story of my own where Marie and Boudica were the two main foils (as a Ruler and Avenger respectively) and sometimes I think about what Agartha would’ve been like if they replaced Astolfo and D’Eon with them, and actually took it seriously instead.
As much as people don't like Agartha, and some people didn't like Scheherazade for genuinely good reasons for how they portrayed her... Despite Fate never really promising accurate potrayals of characters, but that's beside the point. The one thing that I do like about Scheherazade is that she brings up the rare moments of a Servant not liking the Holy Grail War/Servant Summoning System that we haven't really seen outside of like... Spartacus. Like, it's a damn shame that her hatred of being summoned in, what would commonly be a War where you kill each other is a fear that's not only justified but considering the shit that can happen in it, it's understandable. And it's a goddamn shame that such a thing ends up as a joke, due to that fact. It's the Spartacus thing all over again, where the serious part of his character and story ends up a joke past the initial story bits where she was involved. Like the jokes of her being afraid of dying ends up as 'lol moments' as opposed to serious conversation moments the same way Spartacus is. It's a shame really, and I do wish that they picked a more comedic/less serious haha gimmick for her so that the moments of her being afraid of dying would have some weight. It's somewhat fine with Spartacus, because the dude is fuckin' insane, but since Schez is sane (Debatably unless we consider the effects of her sanity from her legends) it comes off as the game and herself making fun of her genuinely understandable gripes to the Holy Grail War/Servant Summoning System.
@@michaelmcdoesntexist1459 Yeah. It's partially why I wished that Schez had a more Story Focus moment. The Ooku was nice, but it was kind of hard for others to experience since it was an event.
@@The57912 Yes, I'd really like if they put Ooku in the Main Interludes like they did with Seraph and Heian Kyo. I mean, Ooku covers the "redemption" arc of Kiara and the second half of Beast III, so it is at least as important as Seraph, and way more important that Christmass 3.
I do love the Guren Lagann moment with Fergus at the end. Yeah, it's real dumb, so dumb. But I was like okay I am here, why not. And I do like Fergus more now as a character, so I will give Agartha that.
Off topic but okeanos was really good especially looking at it pre Camelot. Jason was a fantastic rival to gudao who has actual agency as a main character for the first time.
This is why I'm glad that Scheherazade's Interlude exists -- it completely fills her out to be a real person and a much better character. I absolutely *love* The One Thousand and Second Night's story and its why I actually ended up liking her as a character -- and I honestly WISH this was the treatment she'd received in Agartha. Agartha was just so bad. Also having Da Vinci and Mash being totally out of character didn't help, especially when they openly start being weirdly transphobic about Astolfo and D'Eon's genders (to the point of Mash even saying we should look up D'Eon's skirt to find out the truth. They made *Mash* say something like that. It's so wildly off the mark given how respectful and kind Mash is.)
@@klidge She had a Similar sort orf arc as Jeanne Alter in a way Intorduced in a Main story chapter > fleshed out in events > re intoduced in a Main story chapter later on. The signifcant difference was Jalter being an [alter] showed Intentional Bastardisation while having the Glorified one around as well.
@@klidge I guess I need to pull her and do the interlude (and not skip Ooku when it drops next month) to change my mind, but because of how she was portrayed in Agartha and Summer 2, Schez is legit my second most disliked character in the entire FGO roster of characters, just barely in front of Kiara.
Out of this chapter that I really liked was Megalos's badass design and the fight that he got in with Penth, that was awesome to me. I also liked the design for Dahut as she is pretty much Drake Alter.
Agartha was the first time I ever skipped main story arrows on purpose. It happened again in Shimousa because you cannot pay me to care about a 1-on-1 tournament that takes that long (unsurprisingly, I also skipped most of the Swordsmaster summer event's story).
Honestly, Shimousa is best experienced in the manga, they do a really good job making the characters into much more than the nature of FGO would allow them to be It is also one of those rare adaptations where female MC isn't a crazy goblin creature hellbent on gatcha
The part that I will die mad about is that they turned Wu Zetian, quite possibly the most powerful woman in all of human history, into a loli. We see how amazing she looks grown up in the manga adaptation, why won’t they fix her?
I remember being so annoyed at everyone calling my master a guy when I usually play as the female main character and being a female irl. Like they forgot about the other half (well, maybe third) of the fanbase that exists.
This is the first time I ever heard about this kind of issue in this game. Even in the cross dressing scene in Shinjoku they managed to get the players genre right, it's probably ether a mistranslation or short time on the writers part.
The only thing that took me out of the story was when Scheherazade revealed that the city was called "La Puta". Yes I know it's intentional and they meant it as "the wh*re" but in my community puta mostly means "b*tch" so I just had to laugh.
the only thing I can give Agartha is that the manga has some funny panels, and Astolfo trying to be funny and trying to cheer up a master that is super depressed with a half frown on his face like "yea, I get it, it sucks for me too buddy" actually works because god damn it why does fgo have to be so limited with character expressions
I really loved Penth and Scheherazade but.. Kid-fergus was a stuff of nightmares for me, only way to make myself continue playing this "story" that sweet SQ reward and thats it. Now on my new account (lost my old one) I am gonna destroy everything using my lvl 110 NP4 Drake and erase it from my memory forever.
Inconsistent is the best way to put it. Tone, location, theming, I had no idea where the story wanted to go. It wanted to talk about the idea of reversing sexism all while having the worst sexist tropes I've ever seen. It was simply a mess.
Really good video Klidge. And yeah I feel you Agartha was pure missed potential. A cool setting, mostly good cast, and potential for a great message just messed up at every point. I like the idea that Schez started out heroic but was slowly worn down after almost 3 years of constant threat of death slowly stealing her courage. But they made that her whole character, and made her evil. The writing was just too bad to handle this concept. Glad Ooku and her interludes really fix this.
Agartha had to fall for the lostbelts to run really: the structure of Agartha is way too similar to that of a lostbelt. It seems like they did a test run to know where the pitfalls were.
What's funny about Columbus is that I didn't even know he was a bad dude. When I read about him in textbooks it was never mentioned that he was a slave trader. Maybe I just completely missed it in beginning but iirc the only time they warned us about him was when he finally used his NP or when they gave control of mega herc to him.
I think they should have had the Greek characters and Helena be the ones to help us through out this quest. That or the sexist male characters who still believe in the stuff the arc was trying to push. That way everyone could learn something from it instead of having Astolfo being an id¡0t and dragging D'Eon into his shenanigans all the time.
@@averagecommander actually yeah Mordred and fran seem like perfect tag alongs for a trauma story. Mordred is the embodiment of daddy issues and fran can’t even cry about her’s
Yeah, honestly Agartha was my least favorite part of the main story chapters. I enjoyed the earlier chapters of FGO, loved the Camelot and Babylonia chapters, felt really emotional with Solomon and went onto the ultimate nightout with Salter and Jalter. But Agartha I honestly felt fairly disappointed by for the reasons stated... heck it is wasted potential in a lot of regard. And dropping the ball pretty hard on some aspects. Thankfully Shimousa followed right after this.
I always hate using the joke characters to tackle serious subjects. Unless your characters have establisbed depth that the reader has explored, it does not work. Agartha really is one big "joke" and thats sad.
Silly thing is Astolfo _could_ be used to bring perspective on a more serious kind of issue... but not trauma. For example, you could use him as a voice of compassion since he forgave his wife for cheating on him, instead trying to understand who cheats and why, and he decided against killing Caligorante after he was rendered helpless by Vulcan's net (which, by the way, is Astolfo Saber's Noble Phantasm) because that would simply be unfair and cruel. You could use him as a voice of reckless selflessness, as he always immediately jumps in to help others even at detriment or risk to himself and will go to ridiculous lengths to help a friend. Both of these traits were used well in Apocrypha. Being a light-hearted character in origin, however, he's never been tied to trauma.
Dunno if you’ll see this comment since this is an old video. But thanks for breaking everything down, you saved me a hell lot of time, I reaaally enjoyed Shinjuku, and had a strange feeling about Argatha the moment I saw the button to it. I can safely say that I’m skipping that one and going into the next.
This sounds like a perfect storm of bad writing and I'm amazed that a company with so much money managed to hire someone who was so bad at writing actually now that I think about it I'm not amazed when you look at how terribly written most Disney movies are nowadays it makes sense because apparently money can't buy good writing.
I’ve just finished Agartha yesterday and yes I agree with you and from all the stories in past about women abuse basically created this pseudo singularity but it was fun for me(those berserker with bars scared me but Artoria caster helped me with both of them)
The manga adaptation of this at least did some of the things bit better like how Deon and Astolfo join the protag at the beginning. Instead of sneaking in, they are assinged to help Fujimaru already from the beginning.
Thank you for making this video presenting very interesting viewpoints of yours again! Do you think you can make a video discussing which servants in certain series have worst matching skills/noble phantasms? Thanks~!
Nothing in Argatha really irked me on its own, but there’s definitely huge exceptions, 1: the fact furgus never shuts up about being being unable to fight women, I wouldn’t be surprised if “uhhh, m-master, I’m sorry but I can’t fight women” is 50% of the script. 2: mash trying to make Guda look under D’eon’s skirt. That’s just extremely weird for her character, I’d expect that from black beard or something. 3: the story doesn’t acknowledge the fact Guda can be a girl, which is odd since the 1st summer event got that right. Literally all that was needed was for the enemies to call out only furgus if Guda is a girl. 4: the dragon boxes were turned into weaker holy grails. I now know the reason why the dragon palace was included due to Dahut becoming a mermaid after drowning in her legend, but the boxes hold a persons age, not grant wishes. 5: and the biggest issue, Helena. I don’t even really need to explain what’s the issue with her role in the story. I don’t see why they didn’t do the Dahut angle where she’s corrupted into a man hating monster. They could of had her possessed by some yokai or something, then we’re forced to “kill” her. That would of been a better use of her than Columbus stabbing her and a last minute rescue. I do like the idea behind this singularity (as someone that played MGQ) which is probably why I let it get away with some stuff, but I do agree it’s a hunormous wasted opportunity, especially with the trauma angle. Destiny 2 literally just had a season about trauma and it’s handling of the subject was masterful. Also where the fuck is my Dahut costume? They literally gave her a original cane throwing animation and never made her into a costume.
How to fix Agratha.... 1. Mash is super sick and Da Vinci is taking care of her so Holmes is the "ops commander" and black beard as peanut gallery commentary. 2. Have 8 go missing (the additional 4 would be Boudica [immune to shenanigans because Roman's are both male and female], Nitocris [caster so she blocked the edit], Eric Blood axe [wife axe stopped edit through her yandere love], and Gil de Raye [is schizo because his caster self merged with him to save Jean from being dragged in]. 3. Have "Dahut" find every guy lacking and only wanting master (despite sex of master) while giving us the costume in which Drake "looks at you funny". 4. Have Astolfo and D'eon be the pair but, Astolfo starts acting out of character and/or going to hard in character and before el Dorado it is revealed because we are underground, there is no moon madness and he has been fully lucid and self-aware the entire time and absolutely HATES what he has become (possiblity of Berserker Astolfo [pre Roland incident being lucid like vlad]). 5. Have Helena suffer "memory loss" and think Columbus is her dad. Columbus then uses his "escape card" on Helena (which by this point has regained her memory) to not see him lose (and weaken master as well). Columbus is an ass by our and then standards, but the Spanish church hated him for punishing bad "priests" who did things to children. 6. The DGP being in FAR more in control of things and the city dropping was it's idea, not Scheherazade's as she wanted to drop it on a hill near so people would explore, document and share the findings. 7. Have Fergus getting older in his final speech (actually showing his age progression) so it makes more sense and when they meet in Chaldea, Fergus is the most chill he has ever been and wants to help Scheherazade get over her trauma before doin her.
The timing of this video was perfect as I just finished Agartha myself last night. The ending shock plot twist was cool as I was expecting Columbus to betray us and be the Demon God pillar the whole time but they hit us with the DOUBLE reverse uno card lol, but other than that shock the entire story was just a drag. Starting shimousa later this week which I’ve only heard great things about so I’m excited for that ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ
Yep yep. After Agartha my motivation to continue on pseudo singularities wavered a lot. But the Lostbelt 1 and a bit of Shimousa helped me little by little.
Boudica would have been perfect in Agartha (Avenger Boudica when?!). But yeah, unless I'm missing some insights about pre-Hundred Years War Gilles, he is very much on the traumatizer side of the fence. For those that do not know, look up Bluebeard...nuff said.
Fate plays on the angle that he felt that the government and country he fought for betrayed Jeanne, the person he admired most, and used her as a political point by killing her off. This betrayal of everything he’d known mixed with the death of his idol is what spurred him to become Bluebeard. Again, that’s all the fate perspective but it certainly puts him in the position of traumatized
I thought the message of the story was that being discriminated against doesn’t give you the right to discriminate against others. It fits a lot of them, especially Heracles and Pen, but I guess that just adds to the issue of this story’s inconsistent portrayal
It's kinda funny that the only things this chapter is often remember for is the astolfo costume To the point it grew in fame even outside the Fate community
Agartha failed because We were stuck with kid fergus, who's plot went nowhere. Drake being possess and forced to ntr us. Helena being killed off and then somehow being able to come back to save us. NO PLOT REASON HOW WE WON AGAINST HERC AND COLUMBUS And having 2 joke character who didn't do much.
The difficulty is my biggest problem with Agartha, IT’S LITERALLY HARDER THAN *MOST LOSTBELTS* like, there’s so many unfair fights in Agartha from Megalos to Columbus AND Megalos, to The Demon God pillar and his annoying ass fucking charm, I wasted 27 quartz just trying to beat it.
Can I just add on to the stupidity of this chapter? The whole plan was to use the souls of six heroic sprits to fill a grail to do a wanabe colony drop. However, 2 of those 6 needed sacrifices didn't die and thus didn't fill the grail. And yet, they still launched the city into the air after assuming the last two servants had been defeated. This means one of two things either 1. If we had sat back and done nothing Agartha would have crashed long before it got over the intended target or 2. the whole psudo-grail war was completely unneeded and they could have done this whenever the heck they felt like. Adding on the reason Astolfo and d'Eon are even with us is because Manurie smuggled them into the rayshift. The way Da Vinci reacts to this implies that we weren't going to be sent in with servants otherwise meaning she was banking on us finding a friendly servant to contract with before we either got enslaved or killed. In every other rayshift we undertake we have at least one servant sent with us even if we get separated from them immediately like in Shinjuku or CCC. This just openly bastardizes the entirety of Chalda as they were going to send you to what very likely would have been your death otherwise.
Ok yeah now all the fetishes make sense, this came from the guy that wasted budget on kissing scenes instead of the plot which IS ACTAULLY GOOD in prisma illya, sad to see it but I think because of this the manga is just the superior way of experiencing prisma illya (except the movies and maybe 3rei, where they definitely told this specific script writer to tone it WAAAAAY down, just like [allegedly] LB4)
Well, this isn't so bad: skipping this chapter will help save time catching up with the story! How considerate of them to make one of the longer chapters... how should I say? Problematic.
You wanna know what I hated most about this? You don't even get a satisfying conclusion. Consider Scheherazade's arc in this story. Her reasons for doing this are entirely selfish, and she just doesn't want to die anymore. So, what happens at the end? Does she hold to her selfish desires, fighting to the bitter end with that Demon God Pillar? Does she see the end coming and run in terror, in an effort to survive because she can't stand the thought of dying? Does she do ANYTHING that is consistent with how her character was portrayed in Agartha? Nope. She hears a kid give a speech about not fearing death, and decides to stab her ally in the back because of said speech. Its so infuriating.
At least Agarthas scenery was pretty. Also I remember pretty much none of it. And don't remember enjoying it very much it was sort of there as something to do while waiting for events.
The weirdest part about all of this is that D'Eon absolutely could've fit into a story about trauma but Astolfo was an absolutely terrible pick for a party member for this; even if Astolfo was 1/1 with the historical figure. Achilles would've been a better fit since he at least had some connection with Pen. Hell; if they wanted to go even more bonkers, have it be Medea since Medea is basically the queen of trauma.
To be honest I started paying less attention to the MCU drama that FGO tries to illustrate in the FGO main storyline. Researching the actual historical and mythological stories of each servants on Wikipedia and actual books are much more fun than what FGO (More likely Delight Works or Lasengle) wants to tell us. I'm more interested in seeing FGO expand its own Nasuverse magic lore and possible multiversal lore. Hell, I want to see a huge new generation of heroes and villains and lore expansion like my new favorite show, Young Justice.
These "Character Assassination", especially for those of my favourites; historically or in mythologies. For example, Artemis and Orion at the beginning. I got disappointed when my beloved greek hero and goddess became these womanising teddy bear and possessive annoying deity respectively. Atleast, they gave them a redemption arc on Atlantis.
About Helena though, I have to say this: the panel in the manga adaptation where Colombus stabs her is peak dark comedy, complete with the goofiest faces from everyone involved.
Not exploring Agartha with Helena was the most unforgivable part. Her writings on it is a key part of why she's a servant, and she doesn't get a moment to enjoy it.
Hell there only two changes that could be made that would have spared Helena the insult she got in Agartha. A few post demon pilar quests that told us of what she had been doing in Agartha until Columbus took over her region, and her being trapped by columbus until she finally was able to break free to save us at the last moment.
What they did to Helena was terrible. They have her wounded and recovering and hiding right up until the point where chaldea needs to be saved
And they didn't even try to rescue her, doesn't Chaldea has some radar to detect magical energy form servants or something? But somehow didn't even realize Helena was there all along.
Honestly, since it's been a while, I legit forgot what role Helena played in Agartha, even after I saw her as one of the missing Servants from Chaldea. Drake was already talked about earlier, but I did remember her being the bad guy in one of the cities as soon as I saw her, shota Fergus was around enough for me to remember he existed at least, Herc was a badass as always, and easily the most memorable character. But for Helena I did a double take and thought "wait, Helena was in Agartha?"
Ironic how a Caster known for her great storytelling abilities fell victim to character assassination.
It's hilarious how she came up with the story and it turned out to be bad, that king must be turning in his grave
I think another reason why columbus' betrayel sucks is this chapter comes just after shinjuku where moriarty very similarly is with you from the start and betrays you. However foxy grandpa's plan and the whole ordeal was a fantastic story for the character. Columbus just goes "oh yeah im evil btw" and it just feels like "really were doin this again"
just finished it yesterday and what pissed me off the most was we allowed Columbus making the contract with Herc instead of us because "oh just in case he doesn't crush you from wielding his strength" and "im rouge servant but im suppose to have limited mana" like first of all he's technically already contracted with us and we can contract with hundreds of servants ? also we usually always taunt or shit on the villains ideals before fighting them but there wasn't any of that there 😪
Betrayals of the Pseudo Singularities
Shinjuku: Moriarty
Agartha: Columbus
Shimousa: Yagyu
Salem: Mr. Carter (Abby as possessed? But turned back to normal)
The only thing i like in agartha is Megalos fight, I mean when youre a beginner in fgo and you know who's heracles berserker is, imagine fighting him but as a giant you know you feel intimidated when you first fight with him and his guts.
Yeah, but if you want the same experience you can also have the nero fest challenge quest
Frankly that fight just makes no sense to me. This is a BUFFED version of one of the strongest Berserkers out there and we take him on with B and C listers. Like, Columbus’s anchor could hold him, while normal Heracles broke the Chains of Heaven through sheer strength alone. What?
me too and i loved the combat theme
@@GoldLight73 no Heracles didn’t break the chains of heaven on will. As far as I’m aware it’s because after all his labors are completed he lost his divine status and without any divinity the chains are just chains
At least three sq... took me
I think we should all remember that, due to Agartha, the writer is no longer allowed to work on FGO main story chapters. Whether or not that applies to events remains to be seen, but he’s not doing anything as major as Agartha anymore.
and I am thankful for that. We don't need someone who likes to waste an anime's entire budget on lolis making out...
This is untrue - he wrote LB4 I think (so long as we're all correct and it was Minase who wrote Agartha) and it was a surprisingly good chapter. It was also similarly dripping with his hallmarks, though to a lesser degree - the story relentlessly makes mean spirited fat jokes about Jinako and I think even Da Vinci takes a couple of potshots.
It's a great story outside of that, but undeniably a Minase story.
Nice argument Senator, why don't you back it up with a source
Is this true? Where’s the source?
@@pigreat6985 plz source
" quentrillion IQ plan by Scheherazade "
Scheherazade: i will expose mystery to the world and stop the summoning system so i can't be summoned anymore.
Throne of heroes: what about the parallels universes inside your timeline and the others timeline ?
Scheherazade: ...
Then again, that is sort of the point, summon a servant just strong enough to mess with the time line out of spite for "correcting the timeline"
When even early Mashu knows that guy is not trustworthy speaks volumes. Hell I was half expecting Geronimo to pop up and say "DON'T TRUST THAT GUY!"
Why would Geronimo say that? :O Colombus landed in the Bahamas, Cuba and Haiti :D
Actually in all stories about Achilles defiled Penthesilea's body after her death later told by Romans dirtying up the story.
The real story was when Achilles killed her, he wanted her to have an honorable funeral because he saw her as a warrior, not just a woman as she thinks he thinks of her in FGO. But one of his friends Thersites taunts Achilles by accusing/mocking him of having fallen in love with a weak woman like Penthesilea and Achilles kills him. In other stories, Thersites also cuts out her eyes out from her corpse as a souvenir of war while bragging he did what Achilles couldn't do and again Achilles in a rage kills Thersites.
The Romans, who were descended from Aeneas, who fled Troy after losing the war, really did Achilles dirty with that little bit of propaganda.
Consid Servants in this franchise are meant to be a culmination of all their myths and legends, that includes the Roman version. No wonder Penthesilea is pissed.
Astolfo's whole role in both legends and fate is being the ball of optimism that brings people up when things are derailing
They coulda use his pechant for going out of his way to help people even if that goes against common sense and/or the mission to make him help the traumatized villains come to their senses and/or keep the main guys from going into despair at the terrible situation
But nah, he's just the funny trap guy
D'eon's whole character is being loyal AF to the point they'll change even their gender to suit their master. They coulda use it to contrast with the themes of betrayal all arround, or use his role as a spy to deal with the obvious backstabber right there in a way that actually made sense
But nah, he's just funny trap #2
Getting those two as the main servants on our side isn't really a bad idea, it's just the author having no fucking clue what to do with them, much like the rest of the characters here.
The problem is that maybe you and me see Astolfo and D'eon that way. But for Minase they're just funny walking fetishes.
@@michaelmcdoesntexist1459 So, in other words, "writer not competent enough to stick to characters he actually understands so he brings the one he doens't and trahses them"
pretty common nowadays
That's... A very rude way to say it.
But absolutely accurate.
Yeah.. I hope for both of them to at least get The Right recognition that they deserve to, plus Helena and Scheherazade.. I mean *"An Adventure in The Mysterious Underground World with their Reverse Society"* is already sounds interesting and has a lot of potential, yet they ruin it.. 🙃
I too remember when astolfo was a character and not a fetish
Good times
The idea that Achilles defiled Penthesilea's body after her death seems to be a later, possibly Roman, invention. There's also stories that he killed someone who disrespected her after her death.
Didn't FGO goes with the latter story whete she does respect Penthesilea?
@@tweetugwe1270 He does respect her in FGO, but he's still very conceited so his respect comes off as condescending. He does on some level feel bad about how he hurt her, but he doesn't have the self awareness to properly articulate it.
Yeah. I looked all over her wiki page and all mentions of Achilles. Necrophilia is only mentioned once. The rest is him falling in love with her after he kills her and regretting it.
@@Taygon45 I'm pretty sure it wasn't that sort of defilement, IIRC he tied her body to his chariot and drug it through the battlefield like a trophy.
@@julianadams3710 pretty sure that’s hector, but he could’ve done it to both.
Some of the people who worked on this game, both authors and artists, did amazing work. Some of them, both authors and artists need to McFucking GO.
If you remove the "Mc" part it could have been Fucking/GO
@@XPsykic162 Beautiful.
@@XPsykic162 so uhhhh
High effeciency mana transfer, the game?
Huh... I didn't think I could hate Agartha more, but... I did not consider that kinda important part that you rightfully pointed out...
It was OUR Drake and OUR Heracles.
And we killed them.
AND NO ONE GIVES A FUCK
He did mentioned that it was our servants, he even said we were NTR because of that
Come on, our Heracles is used to die anyway. At least 4 times per battle.
I didn't even think of that lmao, Agartha is so fucking bad it took me like 3 months to finish. Thanks for giving me even more fodder for my hatred I guess lmao
IIRC wasn't Drake Alter supposed to be an actual gacha servant but the reception to this "Drake" was so bad, that they just scrapped that idea?
Another (small) thing in Agartha that really annoyed me, despite being able to choose between playing as a male or female protagonist in the game, the entire chapter literally does not work at all if you're playing as Gudako. "Oh how are we going to sneak into the city if they only allow women?" I mean I'm playing as a girl so I should be able to-- "CLEARLY the only way is to have Astolfo and D'Eon dress up in fetish outfits!"
It would have worked better if the dialogue options you pick dictated the story leading up to the fight
Yes!!! That's what annoyed me so much!
You sneak in without any servants, then what?
Ig you can kinda say its because Fergus was always by your side, but even then it'd still be something that probably wouldn't be too out of place in the city of lights
There's so much wrong with Scheherazade in fate is painfully bad
I'm familiar with both the western and Arabic versions of 1001 arabian nights and she's just watered down to being "I'm afraid to die" which is coming from a servant... a spirit, as in she's already dead like excuse me what-
Her design being heavily sexualized is a whole other problem, yes she was a concubine but she was still a queen by the end of her story so at least ONE of her ascensions should portray that
Also your explanation is basically what I thought of her role in the story, using her as an antagonist was a really bad idea when she was never an evil figure to begin with
There's so much more to say about how badly they butchered her character it's just plain sad man...
I don't like Scheherazade's design because it gave off uncomfortable Orientalist vibes.
The thing is she purposely use those outfit because she prefers the master to take her to the bedroom instead the battlefield and yes she is a sprit and already dead but the trauma and her fear is so big it end up eating her so even in Dead she still fear of dead
The part about her that cool is really her NP and how versatile it can be as well as her cunning nature in setting up the whole singularity. hope future story if she comes back she can move on from her fear of death
@@moviedudexd5579 it sure does
The only thing I like about it is the color scheme of the first ascension but that's about it
I don't like the fact she's dressed like a belly dancer
@@hayabusahithosi9587 that's precisely the problem, she was designed that way to be fetish bait
The fact that she's so hung up on her fear of death doesn't fit her character at all they changed her entire personality and demeanor so it would make sense for her to prefer sleeping with master over anything else which ruins her character and makes her very one dimensional
I didn’t even know they did that to Francis Drake because I skipped the entirety of Agartha.
Safe to say I just don’t view it as canon personally, agartha is a fanfiction because there is no way you could make a plot that bad. The fact it doesn’t even add anything to the FGO story is a bonus
How does it not add anything to the FGO story? Do you just mean the main story of part 2 or something? Because otherwise it's wrong.
@@_Aeterno it's in the sense that it never really has a lasting impact, all changes in the characters are isolated to this chapter, none of them grew at all through it
It's basically whole other thing that just happens to shares some characters and concepts
@@tiagobelo4965 It had the least lasting impact out of all EoR for sure, but every character that gets added with every quest contributes to the FGO story, so the original comment I was replying to is still wrong.
It's not really fair to say none of the characters grew through it at all, although I get what you mean. Sche definitely grew, despite still being whiny and underused as a character atm (haven't read her second interlude on JP yet, but I will do that this year for sure). Shota Fergus grew, and I don't think that just because this side of Fergus been shown without it being summonable separately ever changed that we learned about another side to him and Fergus is still there in Chaldea. It's been so long, I can't remember about anything Wu did except growing from one of the enemies into the key figures to win save Chaldea with her NP. Penth situation I agree was kinda irrelevant since she was one of the usual mad berserkers just following Sche's story as antagonistic amazon. Not sure about Columbus and how much he was affected by Sche, though he isn't necessarily supposed to grow that much even past Agartha. His interlude was good where he reflected on his Agartha summoning and whatnot. There's a lot of characters that require an interlude after finishing the main quest imo tho and this quest had no shortage of that. Wu, Sche, Columbus, Penth, even Drake (got a big interlude after Agartha despite happening before EoR, meaning they wanted us to see it afterwards for some reason?) all needed an interlude due to how this quest was set-up. But not as much as LB3!
Yes, if I were to give an example of this same kind of gacha design flaw in the later part (even more inexcusable) where you needed interludes even more than Agartha, it would be SIN purely because of how ridiculously abrupt that quest ended. While I could still say that Agartha had its moments enough to be okay to end as it did, LB3 for me just was not. You HAD to see Huang interlude due to how ridiculous his sudden choice of just stopping and sticking around (kinda same with Yu, though in a much lesser way and her horse). In that aspect, Agartha quest is not really the worst. Just being in part 2 will automatically make LB3 way more impactful, of course, but I still don't get why new players still wanted some super impactful quest after a mess that was Shinjuku at the end and right after the best and the most impactful EoR quest in the game which is CCC. Not playing the original CCC game or not following the event timeline alongside main story during EoR to not wish for a more relaxed quest like Agartha is entirely a skill issue of being a normie TM fan. Although that's still a perspective from someone who wasn't exactly experiencing the "ongoing" pacing and had to judge EoR pacing with each main quest alongside the events back-to-back and Agartha wasn't particularly ruining this pacing. After Agatha, though, you get ready for something more real, which you immediately get in Shimousa right from the start by already having the link to Musashi which appeared not too long ago on the EoR timeline during her New Year's trail quest. Agartha was a weak link during that EoR pacing, but going so far as to say it's not canon or it adds nothing at all is ridiculous. How does that guy feeling right now, I wonder? Does having character from Agartha appear later in LB4.5 or in events up until Summer 7 (atm) not add anything? This is why I asked him to clarify since if he does mean main story and not FGO story in general (which includes the events), then besides LB4.5 we indeed didn't receive much in main story of part 2 from those characters (doesn't particularly matter, many characters didn't).
Anyway, I wish the manga adaptation got picked up by some translator again, so more people could see how the potential of this goofy ah Agartha setting been realized better to its completion.
There's a new point to be made about Agartha nowadays and I'll get to it here. I saw people before complaining that the concept of underground world was wasted on this mid chapter, but then we got LB7 where that concept been realized to its possible in FGO maximum by Nasu himself. I gotta admit, it made Agartha seem kinda both better and worse after it dropped lol. I didn't particularly hate that we didn't get LB7 level use of the concept during EoR timeline and I wouldn't actually want that during EoR either. But some people do use it as an excuse to bash Agartha even harder nowadays, I guess? Not really fair to do that, still. If we start getting mad about EoR quests not being up to the level of part 2, then every single EoR quest could've been worked on more and improved.
Sorry for the long comment but this topic being brought up again after 8 months had me fired up a little.
The entire reasoning that fetishes might have been a factor makes total sense now. From ntr, shota/loli to trap/femboy this chapter had it all. One thing that i was extremely dissapointed in was what they did with drake. She may not be number one waifu material for me, but i love her character in fate go but for some reason she is always either done dirty or killed of rather fast after the first singularity she was featured in. The same goes for herc. Another thing that was extremely terribly done was the idea of living in a society were one gender is only allowed to exist as slaves/sex slaves. In one scene we get a horrific execution of a random civilian and then we get some haha funny astolfo trap jokes. I can’t even describe how much i have grown to hate fergus as a character because of this chapte. Every time he was on the screen it just made me roll my eyes and his final speech just made cringe. The worst part was how for some reason out mc, after all the shit he/her went through in the singularities, decided to trust columbus from all servants and play right into his hands.
The part about Colombus becomes especially dumb when you consider that both Da Vinci and and Mash are like "Hmm.... there's something really sus about this man I dunno but it's really sussy" but never doing anything about it not to mention GUDA WAS BETRAYED BY AN OLD MAN WITH AMNESIA IN THE PREVIOUS SINGULARLY BRO HOW DO YOU GALL FOR IT TWICE IN A ROW???
I mean sure we didn’t see her do it but Drake beat *fucking* *Posiedon* by *herself* in Atlantis and she had plenty of screentime in Okeanos so she’s actually one of the few servants that’s fulfilled on the quota’s of cool feats and showings.
@@actuallyreallybored3552 yea she is super badass. I just wished she would have sticked with us in atlantis, but that might have been to busted :(
@@t_raywen8750 She would’ve helped alot in duking out with Odysseus so more servants might’ve made it through Atlantis but that would ruined Jason’s time to shine and the losing the whole New Argonauts being Atlantis-specific which really isn’t worth it for a character that was already fleshed out. She just wouldn’t have helped in Olympus because Olympus is packing the difficulty of *[FUCKYOU]* lorewise
Actually the Protag not trusting Columbus would’ve been *horribly* against character. He/She is actually self-sacrificial, really forgiving, extremely trusting and stupid nice, these traits carry over to even the current point in the story. He/She just gets less naive and harder to make shocked/panic( *sips* *tea* *intensifies* ) and become an lorewise A+++ tier master(Atlas Mystic Code Master + Siegried > *Sigurd* + *Brynnhildr* ) even without all those equal to Kirshtaria statements and being among the only three known masters to be able to clear the Grand Order.
@@actuallyreallybored3552 I'm not sure man, we were saved a lot of times by..miracles, plot armor. We get lucky. I don't think the MC is that great. We can't even enhance our vision like Kadoc did. That kindness almost got us killed. We're in a war, we should dump that especially after seeing our world bleached white. I have never seen anyone that stay the same even after experiencing a lot of things.
DaVinci about Columbus, "Dont Trust that guy, he owes me a dinosaur"
also whenever someone mentions Eric in a video i have to pause the video and actually look to see if they are talking about Erik(Bloodaxe) or Eric(Phantom of the Opera)
There is only one Eric I care about and that is the bloodaxe man
Eric the bloodaxe King who wields a bloody axe?
@@michaelmcdoesntexist1459What weapon did you say he uses?
@@Fermin-hw5pd dunno, some kind of bladey thing at the end of a stick. He has two of those
I would actually really like seeing someone rewrite this story for a project, the explanation you gave showed just how much potential the story had.
If we talk-no-jutsu'd Caster of the Nightless City out of her plan, that would have worked way better. Also, if we had Boudica, Nitocris and Enkidu in the chapter rather than the Astolfo, D'eon, and Fergus Lily shit would have made way more sense.
>Having more moments with Enkidu similar to his interlude
Take my money please
@@WelfareWaifu IIRC Narita didn't really allow the use of Enkidu outside of Nasu writing since despite Narita being in charge of him first in Strange Fake, he was mentioned in Fate Zero novel before (or could be even earlier if my memory's trash) and is still Nasu's character to an extent.
Exactly this, the MC should have just said: "Ok I understand why you have to do this, but y'know I have to kill you to get rid of this singularity right? So if you don't wanna die, hand over the grail and become my servant. Then you don't have to worry not dying anymore."
@@Cynicalhamptur But wasn't Sche portrayed as stubborn enough to require a beating before Fergus' spirited speech in a perfect moment made her slowly but surely start snapping out of it?
The funny thing is, they were talking to Wu Zetian and all and I think they could have gone somewhere or even make an agreement, but nop, Megalos did an Adam Smasher and "killed" her, then she returns out of nowhere later on.
I don't know how but Wu is one of the few things I liked from Agartha
7:28
I'd say that it's more that she just doesn't want to be a Servant/Heroic Spirit in addition to the "I don't want to die" thing. Yeah, it got overplayed to death, and I'll give you that Fate is guilty of Flanderizing characters a lot, but I always took her motivation as her not wanting to go through another experience with the constant threat of death looming just outside and her having to stall for as long as possible. And since she's aware that she's become a Servant and knows about Holy Grail Wars, she doesn't want to have any part of what she sees as pointless dying over and over again. Is it still out of character? Sure, but it makes some sense to me as to why she had things play out like that. Furthermore, I'd also add that another part of her personality is that she doesn't like kings, or at least doesn't trust them or their intentions with her, as evidenced by both her boss fight and her interactions with Fergus (he does say that he's going to be a king one day, after all). And, yeah, they definitely did Helena dirty.
Agreed on almost everything said here, but one thing. It's not out of character for Sche to fear death this much in the slightest. The version of her we see in FGO is dead at the end of her 1001 nights and it affected her big time (as implied in her profile bio). It doesn't matter if it makes sense in context or that her interlude exists, some people just don't like this version of her because they're stubborn in wanting something else. And that's fine, since it's just means more salt and less fun for those people.
@@_Aeterno So, the version we summon/is summonable doesn't survive the 1001 nights? I don't have her, so I'm not sure and am surprised if that's actually the case.
@@jeffreyherrera5069 You don't need to have her in-game, the profiles of all servants are written on FGO fandom wiki.
@@_Aeterno Ah, I always forget about that section of the wiki. Usually, I just go on there to see what skills they have and check out event/main story nodes I'm doing.
For me, Agartha failed because of the inconsistent mood.
One minute the story focuses on how terrible it would be to live in the societies as a man because your a second class citizen, or just breeding stock. Then there is jokes about Astolfo and D'eon being ambiguous gender wise and "haha virgin Fergus".
To me it ruined the story. There are good ways to handle some comedy in dark stories, look at Babylonia where some of the comedy during the last chuck comes from the characters acting as themselves, like Merlin getting hurt because of Fou. The difference is that the serious stuff arrives and the writers understood that after a certain point, you back off on the comedy and get serious.
Look at Salem; there is some comedy early on, but around the time Hopkins goes behind the parties back and hangs people around a play, and from then on, its a serious story for the most part.
Also, the writer being the same as Fate Illya explains a lot. Fate Illya always made me really uncomfortable and I really dislike how accepting of the very loli pandering nature of the story.
It should be noted that the Manga for Prisma Illya is NOWHERE near as bad. Like, there's still some fanservice, but it's much more clearly focused on the action bits, which the anime doesn't even do justice (the focus of detail between the action and fanservice scenes were basically reversed.) Of all the people to put in charge of the anime adaptation, THIS GUY was likely the WORST possible option, and it's a shame because I personally LOVE the Manga, but HATE the anime.
@@eonnexus I've avoided that anime but then I've picked up some of the plot points from other fate discussions, so yeah it's awful to hear that the show is not worth it. I started the first episode a couple of times but it does just feel weird and not very Fate like. the series where they're in some moon cancer dream is difficult to start too
@@Omniseed Oath Under Snow, made the begining of Prisma Illya better as it gave some decent Fate context to help it feel like it belongs, then it starts going down hill into debatable levels of fanservice that feels like Fate brand CP to a lot of people.
They dropped the Loli gimmicky from Prisma a decade ago dude wtf you talking about. Plus the show added the CP in. The studio is to blame.
bitching about loli and "pandering" as a type moon fan makes no sense
nasu wrote the len scenes in kagetsu tohya, illya had similar scenes hinting to romance(or not) in hollow ataraxia, and was originally planned to have a route in fsn, the whole damn company started off making h-adjacent content
Criticizing Agartha probably isn't the most controversial take, but it's well-justified and you explain the problems really well. I think for me, the only good things to come out of the chapter are Penthesilea, and *maybe* Megaros and Columbus (who is at least a villain you can love to hate). I've got a very low tolerance for pedophilia bait, so I can't stand Wu; nobody ever really addresses that Drake was mind-controlled into sex in a way that's basically raping her; Fergus is used for a plot point that basically amounts to 'what women need for mental health is for random guys to perv on them even if they don't want it;' d'Eon and Astolfo are just there for the crossdressing kink; Helena of course is an afterthought; and Scheherazade... hoo boy.
You covered a lot of this in the video, but to me, what they did to her was as if they took Achilles, canonically the bravest of Greek heroes, and made him into a sniveling coward with the catchphrase 'Not in the heel!' Sure, you could make arguments for it -- nobody could be on a battlefield for ten years without getting PTSD, how courageous could you really be if you're invincible, etc. -- but it's betraying the heart of the character. And that's what they did to Scheherazade. She was a brave and self-sacrificing hero who voluntarily put herself in an awful situation night after night and used her wits, charisma, and courage to redeem a monstrous villain and save a thousand lives. Ignoring all that and saying, 'no, she's just so terrified of death she's going to murder millions of people in a frankly stupid plan to try to avoid it...' That fails so hard as to almost be offensive to me. Sure, they tried to redeem her with later interludes and Ooku and so on, but it's trying to build on a foundation of quicksand. Nothing can justify her characterization for me.
Penthesilea at least has a genuinely touching story, and I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who can empathize with the general theme of 'working hard to achieve great things, but still in the end feeling dismissed because of your looks and gender.' And it's explored further in her interlude, which gives both her and Achilles some sympathy, even as it maintains the gap between them. She's the one thing I'd keep from Agartha. The rest... burn it to the ground.
Honestly, other than Jack and Chloe, none of the little girl characters in Fate are blatant enough that you have to look at them sexually if you don’t want to, most of them come off more as little sisters/daughters to me.
I will say I don’t know how a series that had something as horrific as Sakura’s backstory involving sexual abuse of a child can exist in the same series with Fanservice-Liner Prisma-Lolicon, just seems like tonal whiplash to the extreme.
@@krism.6598 The fate series is, while having a main writer in the form of Nasu, has many additional writers that have varying levels of supervision for their projects. What I've heard from the comments here is that on future projects this writer is given, he has a lot more supervision, often from Nasu himself. Keep in mind that's all hear-say, but I've heard of similar things happening with other, similar projects like MMOs. So its not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
When I was playing through Agartha I got so fed up with the story I began skipping at the end. This led to me forgetting that Helena was even part of the missing servants to begin with.
10:56 tbf, in Shinjuku, EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. knew not to trust Moriarty, but they were all just like "every fiber of my being is screaming that he's 1000% going to betray us but whatevs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" so it's not too surprising that they did it again in the next story.
Also also, Schez's plan doesn't make sense! Sure, if she succeeded, she wouldn't be summoned anymore... In the Grand Order timeline. There are multiple, if not infinite timelines, in which there will be no effect on her being summonable or not. So yeah, not even that works, really.
Reminds me of EMIYA in FSN partially wanting to kill Shriou in shallow hope that it changes anything for himself as a spirit, despite himself knowing it probably wouldn't and that he's only satisfying his own ego. But as for Sche, she's obviously confused about the whole Heroic Spirit thing (which gets addressed in her interlude) and her character does make sense overall.
@@_Aeterno Lmao I love EMIYA because he full on admits "Yeah, this probably isn't going to work. Now get over here, you red-haired, hero complex-having bitch and let me kill you."
Yeah, Astolfo has literally nothing to do with trauma. He has ties to high adventure, selflessness, friendship, compassion, recklessness, and even vanity, but not trauma. He's also, as stated, a much more light-hearted character, and not just in Fate but in his source material, too.
Wow... I knew Agartha was bad since it's the only main story chapter that I had to drag myself through to completion, but man I did not realize how bad it really was until this video.
But hey at least we got Maid Knight and Sailor Astolfo
I still wish Sailor Astolfo was a usable outfit, though. Him and D'Eon playing off of each other was definitely among my favorite things in Agartha.
I was pretty motivated by the setting, but both Fergus and Scheherazade kept getting on my nerves halfway in
I have to say, have being a thanathophobe as well (still a little bit, but not as crippling as years ago) I kind felt attached to Scheherazade when I found out that she was one too WITHOUT knowing who she was (I know the 1001 nights tales, but not the story behind).
When I did a little research on her, I kinda felt "dissapointed" (I don't know how to put it in a better way) about her characterization and as time passed, an idea started to form in my head: I really want Scheherazade Summer so she can at least have a break from her thanathophobia and just enjoy some good summer time.
That's a really good idea! she and Nitocris deserve to have summer vacay together ;3;
Awesome way to put she was redeemed at the Ooku event while I hope for a summer version I hope it's not another she has more clothes on her then her OG outfit 😅
She’s going to be covered head to toe with floaties
@@tonyinfinite5174 not really. I don't think she was redeemed in ooku
@@lookingforlove839 I fear death the most but what I fear more is the death of my allies-Sheherezade FGO Ooku, How could you have read that line and not think of a redeeming quality in that same line.
Agartha is literally the only part of FGO's story I've straight up skipped parts of
I made it to the end
finally was allowed to punch Columbus in the dick
then schera turns from a 2d character into a 1d character
somehow
I roll my eyes
and just
Skip the rest.
This is a great idea for a video! Would love to see you tackle/breakdown/talk about the other singularities/lost belts!
Honestly, I'm glad that out of everyone introduced in this chapter, Wu came out of it with the best reputation. And like all the others she only got even better rep afterwards (even if she DID get screwed out of being a main character in LB3 even though it would have been the PERFECT GODDAMN PLACE TO INCLUDE HER).
Given that you took the time to truly dissect the Agartha chapter, I’d love to hear about how you would do a rewrite of the story if done with the characters you listed that go along with the stories message, or even how you would personally improve some of the early chapters of FGO.
I think, when you think about the gendered themes of Agartha's story, there is some logic in including two of the more gender nonconforming Servants as allies. They could have provided interesting insights and been given a chance to display some real underrepresented groups of people. It could have been sincerely empowering.
You know what's not empowering? Treating them as a joke and as fetish fuel. While I will always appreciate how I was inspired to look into the historical Chevalier d'Eon from this story, that's something I got in spite of the terrible presentation here, not because of it.
I remember really disliking Scheherezade during the arc and disliking her more when I got her as a spook rolling for Okita. I found her more likeable after going through her interlude.
Ooku also fleshes her out more than people give credit for, I mean it did good for Kiara too but it was pretty enjoyable for Scheherazade
Her interlude and Ooku absolutely redeem her as a character.
@@ColorOfSakura her summer event roles as well.
When I first heard about Agartha and how bad it was, it was mostly about people complaining on Scheherazade disrespecting Romano’s sacrifice at the end of part 1. And yeah that was a dick move, honestly I was more bothered by the feeling of “this feels like an early chapter that got delayed for fetish bait.” Why were the servants kidnapped and altered except for Helena? Don’t know. Why does Scheherazade think listening to a DGP is a good idea? Don’t know. Why is Scheherazade a complete 180 on her source material? Don’t know, wait, I do know. Writers already wanted fetish bait, so they probably wanted a submissive woman with tits bigger than year 1’s animation budget.
Her design is disgusting. It looks like a plastic surgeons nightmare
Helena was hand waved as something was wrong with her when she first manifested. But, then Columbus shot her before we arrived and by the time we see her again she is back to normal. Never shown what was wrong with her, just an off-handed "I was feeling off until recently" when she deus ex machina's the party.
The sex jokes with D'Eon, Astolfo, and especially Scheherezade were so forced and added nothing at all to the story. It really took me out of it.
Happy to see I wasn't the only one who got angry at Roman's mention, I thought I liked him way too much, but both Mash and Fujimaru got angry as
Shinjuku was the perfect setup for the Epic of Remnant chapters - a story that revolves around taking the role of someone in a usual Grail War and trying to uncover the identities of the enemy servants, themes so far unexplored in Temple of Time like the tragedy of being a villain in someone's story and the ways someone versed in folklore can manipulate a Servant's legend into granting a huge boost in effectiveness, and the return of old characters who get even more character development. Overall, the Epic of Remnant chapters were set up to be this fascinating exploration of unique new areas and interesting new themes all while providing character development to older returning characters while still introducing new ones and allowing for their pasts to be explored while trying to uncover their True Names.
Then Agartha came along with another amnesiac old man whose betrayal becomes blindingly obvious the moment you learn their True Names and another main antagonist hiding in plain sight while pretending to aide the main character and ANOTHER ending battle with the antagonist trying to hit the earth with a massive [meteor/floating island] as a secondary objective used to fulfill their true primary objective primarily driven by their legend.
No themes or motifs. No tonal awareness. No originality of thought or ability to do anything beyond "hey that worked in Shinjuku let's copy it here".
After that I skipped the rest of Epic of Remnant's cutscenes. Sure, they might have been better, but at that point I was mainly just there to get onto Cosmos in the Lostbelt.
Okay, I'll be honest here. I don't even remember Helena is in there.
Being helena is rough in fgo story
If I remember correctly, she had at most like 3 scenes. I believe one was a flashback where she was injured with Columbus. Another was where she was apparently fused and/or disguised as Wu Zetian or something. And the last, where she deus-ex-machina us off of Agartha.
I had a Fate story of my own where Marie and Boudica were the two main foils (as a Ruler and Avenger respectively) and sometimes I think about what Agartha would’ve been like if they replaced Astolfo and D’Eon with them, and actually took it seriously instead.
Sounds like a great pairing
Honestly, avenger boudica sounds awesome, but it would require keeping my man romulus under even greater protection
As much as people don't like Agartha, and some people didn't like Scheherazade for genuinely good reasons for how they portrayed her... Despite Fate never really promising accurate potrayals of characters, but that's beside the point.
The one thing that I do like about Scheherazade is that she brings up the rare moments of a Servant not liking the Holy Grail War/Servant Summoning System that we haven't really seen outside of like... Spartacus.
Like, it's a damn shame that her hatred of being summoned in, what would commonly be a War where you kill each other is a fear that's not only justified but considering the shit that can happen in it, it's understandable. And it's a goddamn shame that such a thing ends up as a joke, due to that fact.
It's the Spartacus thing all over again, where the serious part of his character and story ends up a joke past the initial story bits where she was involved. Like the jokes of her being afraid of dying ends up as 'lol moments' as opposed to serious conversation moments the same way Spartacus is.
It's a shame really, and I do wish that they picked a more comedic/less serious haha gimmick for her so that the moments of her being afraid of dying would have some weight. It's somewhat fine with Spartacus, because the dude is fuckin' insane, but since Schez is sane (Debatably unless we consider the effects of her sanity from her legends) it comes off as the game and herself making fun of her genuinely understandable gripes to the Holy Grail War/Servant Summoning System.
Well, at least Spatty got that epic moment on China.
@@michaelmcdoesntexist1459 Yeah. It's partially why I wished that Schez had a more Story Focus moment. The Ooku was nice, but it was kind of hard for others to experience since it was an event.
@@The57912 Yes, I'd really like if they put Ooku in the Main Interludes like they did with Seraph and Heian Kyo. I mean, Ooku covers the "redemption" arc of Kiara and the second half of Beast III, so it is at least as important as Seraph, and way more important that Christmass 3.
"FINALLY HELENA IS HERE!"
me at first
"HELENA WAS DEAD ALL ALONG"
me then
"HELENA CAME BA... ck...? but why?"
me in the end
I do love the Guren Lagann moment with Fergus at the end. Yeah, it's real dumb, so dumb. But I was like okay I am here, why not.
And I do like Fergus more now as a character, so I will give Agartha that.
Off topic but okeanos was really good especially looking at it pre Camelot. Jason was a fantastic rival to gudao who has actual agency as a main character for the first time.
This is why I'm glad that Scheherazade's Interlude exists -- it completely fills her out to be a real person and a much better character. I absolutely *love* The One Thousand and Second Night's story and its why I actually ended up liking her as a character -- and I honestly WISH this was the treatment she'd received in Agartha.
Agartha was just so bad. Also having Da Vinci and Mash being totally out of character didn't help, especially when they openly start being weirdly transphobic about Astolfo and D'Eon's genders (to the point of Mash even saying we should look up D'Eon's skirt to find out the truth. They made *Mash* say something like that. It's so wildly off the mark given how respectful and kind Mash is.)
Oh yeah between her interlude and her portrayal in the Ooku event she’s become a much better character. Really rough start with her though
@@klidge Her relationship with Nitocris also helped flesh her out much more and it was Kind of endearing how they genuienely care for One another
@@klidge She had a Similar sort orf arc as Jeanne Alter in a way Intorduced in a Main story chapter > fleshed out in events > re intoduced in a Main story chapter later on. The signifcant difference was Jalter being an [alter] showed Intentional Bastardisation while having the Glorified one around as well.
@@klidge I guess I need to pull her and do the interlude (and not skip Ooku when it drops next month) to change my mind, but because of how she was portrayed in Agartha and Summer 2, Schez is legit my second most disliked character in the entire FGO roster of characters, just barely in front of Kiara.
@@Jack_Rakan I prefer Kiara. I mean she is nasty but in a good way
Out of this chapter that I really liked was Megalos's badass design and the fight that he got in with Penth, that was awesome to me.
I also liked the design for Dahut as she is pretty much Drake Alter.
Agartha was the first time I ever skipped main story arrows on purpose. It happened again in Shimousa because you cannot pay me to care about a 1-on-1 tournament that takes that long (unsurprisingly, I also skipped most of the Swordsmaster summer event's story).
Honestly, Shimousa is best experienced in the manga, they do a really good job making the characters into much more than the nature of FGO would allow them to be
It is also one of those rare adaptations where female MC isn't a crazy goblin creature hellbent on gatcha
The part that I will die mad about is that they turned Wu Zetian, quite possibly the most powerful woman in all of human history, into a loli. We see how amazing she looks grown up in the manga adaptation, why won’t they fix her?
Apparently she's getting a grown-up swimsuit version in the current summer event.
I remember being so annoyed at everyone calling my master a guy when I usually play as the female main character and being a female irl. Like they forgot about the other half (well, maybe third) of the fanbase that exists.
This is the first time I ever heard about this kind of issue in this game. Even in the cross dressing scene in Shinjoku they managed to get the players genre right, it's probably ether a mistranslation or short time on the writers part.
The only thing that took me out of the story was when Scheherazade revealed that the city was called "La Puta". Yes I know it's intentional and they meant it as "the wh*re" but in my community puta mostly means "b*tch" so I just had to laugh.
the only thing I can give Agartha is that the manga has some funny panels, and Astolfo trying to be funny and trying to cheer up a master that is super depressed with a half frown on his face like "yea, I get it, it sucks for me too buddy" actually works because god damn it why does fgo have to be so limited with character expressions
Man I still can't get over just how done dirty Helena was in Agartha.
I really loved Penth and Scheherazade but..
Kid-fergus was a stuff of nightmares for me, only way to make myself continue playing this "story" that sweet SQ reward and thats it.
Now on my new account (lost my old one) I am gonna destroy everything using my lvl 110 NP4 Drake and erase it from my memory forever.
Imagine if they use Agartha to actually redeem Gilles
He was already redeemed for me in fate/zero
@@smugofbishamonten1447 I agree, he was a fun villan
He was redeemed in Fate/Apocrypha, if Zero didn't already.
Uncool was kinda fun in FGO. He has some good moments in his Interlude and Prison Tower
Inconsistent is the best way to put it. Tone, location, theming, I had no idea where the story wanted to go. It wanted to talk about the idea of reversing sexism all while having the worst sexist tropes I've ever seen. It was simply a mess.
Really good video Klidge. And yeah I feel you Agartha was pure missed potential. A cool setting, mostly good cast, and potential for a great message just messed up at every point. I like the idea that Schez started out heroic but was slowly worn down after almost 3 years of constant threat of death slowly stealing her courage. But they made that her whole character, and made her evil. The writing was just too bad to handle this concept. Glad Ooku and her interludes really fix this.
Agartha had to fall for the lostbelts to run
really:
the structure of Agartha is way too similar to that of a lostbelt. It seems like they did a test run to know where the pitfalls were.
I had never considered this story through the lens of Trauma. That just makes me more upset that the story wasn't told correctly!
What's funny about Columbus is that I didn't even know he was a bad dude. When I read about him in textbooks it was never mentioned that he was a slave trader. Maybe I just completely missed it in beginning but iirc the only time they warned us about him was when he finally used his NP or when they gave control of mega herc to him.
Not just a slave trader, but one so brutal that even the Spanish monarchs thought he went too far.
I think they should have had the Greek characters and Helena be the ones to help us through out this quest.
That or the sexist male characters who still believe in the stuff the arc was trying to push.
That way everyone could learn something from it instead of having Astolfo being an id¡0t and dragging D'Eon into his shenanigans all the time.
Tl Dr: it needs more Mordred
and Fran
@@averagecommander actually yeah Mordred and fran seem like perfect tag alongs for a trauma story. Mordred is the embodiment of daddy issues and fran can’t even cry about her’s
Not to hate on Mo but I think her whole character arc has been a bit overdone in the fgo story. Fran would've been nice though
@@mochii813 well she’s got time to make up for what with being mostly sidelined in apocrypha
Yeah, honestly Agartha was my least favorite part of the main story chapters. I enjoyed the earlier chapters of FGO, loved the Camelot and Babylonia chapters, felt really emotional with Solomon and went onto the ultimate nightout with Salter and Jalter. But Agartha I honestly felt fairly disappointed by for the reasons stated... heck it is wasted potential in a lot of regard. And dropping the ball pretty hard on some aspects.
Thankfully Shimousa followed right after this.
Just see it the other way around. After Shinjuku and Solomon, Agartha being that bad help us appreciate Shimousa better.
Salem just creeped me out even after I finished the story in broad daylight.
I always hate using the joke characters to tackle serious subjects. Unless your characters have establisbed depth that the reader has explored, it does not work. Agartha really is one big "joke" and thats sad.
Silly thing is Astolfo _could_ be used to bring perspective on a more serious kind of issue... but not trauma. For example, you could use him as a voice of compassion since he forgave his wife for cheating on him, instead trying to understand who cheats and why, and he decided against killing Caligorante after he was rendered helpless by Vulcan's net (which, by the way, is Astolfo Saber's Noble Phantasm) because that would simply be unfair and cruel. You could use him as a voice of reckless selflessness, as he always immediately jumps in to help others even at detriment or risk to himself and will go to ridiculous lengths to help a friend. Both of these traits were used well in Apocrypha. Being a light-hearted character in origin, however, he's never been tied to trauma.
If I had to count how many fetishes and missed opportunities were in this chapter, then a legend accurate Cú would run out of room.
Me skipping every Pseudo-Singularity In Existence :
Yes, You're actually right!! I agree!!
Dunno if you’ll see this comment since this is an old video. But thanks for breaking everything down, you saved me a hell lot of time, I reaaally enjoyed Shinjuku, and had a strange feeling about Argatha the moment I saw the button to it. I can safely say that I’m skipping that one and going into the next.
This sounds like a perfect storm of bad writing and I'm amazed that a company with so much money managed to hire someone who was so bad at writing actually now that I think about it I'm not amazed when you look at how terribly written most Disney movies are nowadays it makes sense because apparently money can't buy good writing.
Who wrote the story for this?
Hazuki Minase. Scriptwriter of Prisma Illya.
I’ve just finished Agartha yesterday and yes I agree with you and from all the stories in past about women abuse basically created this pseudo singularity but it was fun for me(those berserker with bars scared me but Artoria caster helped me with both of them)
The manga adaptation of this at least did some of the things bit better like how Deon and Astolfo join the protag at the beginning. Instead of sneaking in, they are assinged to help Fujimaru already from the beginning.
Thank you for making this video presenting very interesting viewpoints of yours again! Do you think you can make a video discussing which servants in certain series have worst matching skills/noble phantasms? Thanks~!
Nothing in Argatha really irked me on its own, but there’s definitely huge exceptions,
1: the fact furgus never shuts up about being being unable to fight women, I wouldn’t be surprised if “uhhh, m-master, I’m sorry but I can’t fight women” is 50% of the script.
2: mash trying to make Guda look under D’eon’s skirt. That’s just extremely weird for her character, I’d expect that from black beard or something.
3: the story doesn’t acknowledge the fact Guda can be a girl, which is odd since the 1st summer event got that right. Literally all that was needed was for the enemies to call out only furgus if Guda is a girl.
4: the dragon boxes were turned into weaker holy grails. I now know the reason why the dragon palace was included due to Dahut becoming a mermaid after drowning in her legend, but the boxes hold a persons age, not grant wishes.
5: and the biggest issue, Helena. I don’t even really need to explain what’s the issue with her role in the story. I don’t see why they didn’t do the Dahut angle where she’s corrupted into a man hating monster. They could of had her possessed by some yokai or something, then we’re forced to “kill” her. That would of been a better use of her than Columbus stabbing her and a last minute rescue.
I do like the idea behind this singularity (as someone that played MGQ) which is probably why I let it get away with some stuff, but I do agree it’s a hunormous wasted opportunity, especially with the trauma angle. Destiny 2 literally just had a season about trauma and it’s handling of the subject was masterful.
Also where the fuck is my Dahut costume? They literally gave her a original cane throwing animation and never made her into a costume.
How to fix Agratha....
1. Mash is super sick and Da Vinci is taking care of her so Holmes is the "ops commander" and black beard as peanut gallery commentary.
2. Have 8 go missing (the additional 4 would be Boudica [immune to shenanigans because Roman's are both male and female], Nitocris [caster so she blocked the edit], Eric Blood axe [wife axe stopped edit through her yandere love], and Gil de Raye [is schizo because his caster self merged with him to save Jean from being dragged in].
3. Have "Dahut" find every guy lacking and only wanting master (despite sex of master) while giving us the costume in which Drake "looks at you funny".
4. Have Astolfo and D'eon be the pair but, Astolfo starts acting out of character and/or going to hard in character and before el Dorado it is revealed because we are underground, there is no moon madness and he has been fully lucid and self-aware the entire time and absolutely HATES what he has become (possiblity of Berserker Astolfo [pre Roland incident being lucid like vlad]).
5. Have Helena suffer "memory loss" and think Columbus is her dad. Columbus then uses his "escape card" on Helena (which by this point has regained her memory) to not see him lose (and weaken master as well). Columbus is an ass by our and then standards, but the Spanish church hated him for punishing bad "priests" who did things to children.
6. The DGP being in FAR more in control of things and the city dropping was it's idea, not Scheherazade's as she wanted to drop it on a hill near so people would explore, document and share the findings.
7. Have Fergus getting older in his final speech (actually showing his age progression) so it makes more sense and when they meet in Chaldea, Fergus is the most chill he has ever been and wants to help Scheherazade get over her trauma before doin her.
@@crocidile90 Yeah, that works.
Blackbeard is too good a guy to just sexually assault someone. He's a Pervert, but he's a Pervert with standards.
I want dahud as a servant, that alter esque design for drake is really nice and edgy
Yeah... When I heard about Agartha I thought jokingly that maybe the writer of loli Fate wrote this story
You'd be surprised
The timing of this video was perfect as I just finished Agartha myself last night. The ending shock plot twist was cool as I was expecting Columbus to betray us and be the Demon God pillar the whole time but they hit us with the DOUBLE reverse uno card lol, but other than that shock the entire story was just a drag. Starting shimousa later this week which I’ve only heard great things about so I’m excited for that ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ
Yep yep. After Agartha my motivation to continue on pseudo singularities wavered a lot. But the Lostbelt 1 and a bit of Shimousa helped me little by little.
The author speculation would explain a lot and also why I never made it past the 2nd episode of the Illya spin-offs.
what do you mean what went wrong in agartha? almost every shit went wrong in that
thank christ the guy who wrote that dumpster fire isn't allowed to write fgo chapters anymore.
I now want to see someone rewrite Agatha
Boudica would have been perfect in Agartha (Avenger Boudica when?!). But yeah, unless I'm missing some insights about pre-Hundred Years War Gilles, he is very much on the traumatizer side of the fence. For those that do not know, look up Bluebeard...nuff said.
Fate plays on the angle that he felt that the government and country he fought for betrayed Jeanne, the person he admired most, and used her as a political point by killing her off. This betrayal of everything he’d known mixed with the death of his idol is what spurred him to become Bluebeard. Again, that’s all the fate perspective but it certainly puts him in the position of traumatized
Agartha?Don't know what you guys are talking. Never heard of it, never seen it, never played. Let's leave at that 👍🏼
Skipped this chapter for Castoria SQ and now I’m doubly glad I did lmfao
I thought the message of the story was that being discriminated against doesn’t give you the right to discriminate against others. It fits a lot of them, especially Heracles and Pen, but I guess that just adds to the issue of this story’s inconsistent portrayal
It's kinda funny that the only things this chapter is often remember for is the astolfo costume
To the point it grew in fame even outside the Fate community
Agartha failed
because We were stuck with kid fergus, who's plot went nowhere.
Drake being possess and forced to ntr us.
Helena being killed off and then somehow being able to come back to save us.
NO PLOT REASON HOW WE WON AGAINST HERC AND COLUMBUS
And having 2 joke character who didn't do much.
Discovered your channel from the enuma elish vid, just wanna say that i love your content and have earned a sub my good man 😃
The difficulty is my biggest problem with Agartha, IT’S LITERALLY HARDER THAN *MOST LOSTBELTS* like, there’s so many unfair fights in Agartha from Megalos to Columbus AND Megalos, to The Demon God pillar and his annoying ass fucking charm, I wasted 27 quartz just trying to beat it.
Boudica would have actually been a PERFECT choice!
Can I just add on to the stupidity of this chapter? The whole plan was to use the souls of six heroic sprits to fill a grail to do a wanabe colony drop. However, 2 of those 6 needed sacrifices didn't die and thus didn't fill the grail. And yet, they still launched the city into the air after assuming the last two servants had been defeated. This means one of two things either 1. If we had sat back and done nothing Agartha would have crashed long before it got over the intended target or 2. the whole psudo-grail war was completely unneeded and they could have done this whenever the heck they felt like.
Adding on the reason Astolfo and d'Eon are even with us is because Manurie smuggled them into the rayshift. The way Da Vinci reacts to this implies that we weren't going to be sent in with servants otherwise meaning she was banking on us finding a friendly servant to contract with before we either got enslaved or killed. In every other rayshift we undertake we have at least one servant sent with us even if we get separated from them immediately like in Shinjuku or CCC. This just openly bastardizes the entirety of Chalda as they were going to send you to what very likely would have been your death otherwise.
Ok yeah now all the fetishes make sense, this came from the guy that wasted budget on kissing scenes instead of the plot which IS ACTAULLY GOOD in prisma illya, sad to see it but I think because of this the manga is just the superior way of experiencing prisma illya (except the movies and maybe 3rei, where they definitely told this specific script writer to tone it WAAAAAY down, just like [allegedly] LB4)
Well, this isn't so bad: skipping this chapter will help save time catching up with the story! How considerate of them to make one of the longer chapters... how should I say? Problematic.
Hercules... fucking Hercules. we had him as a boss in Okanos... we didn't need him in Agartha. Legit, he was the worst boss in Agartha for me.
8:47 I agree it ugly we couldn’t get that Dahut skin and her LB 5 skin too
You wanna know what I hated most about this? You don't even get a satisfying conclusion. Consider Scheherazade's arc in this story. Her reasons for doing this are entirely selfish, and she just doesn't want to die anymore. So, what happens at the end?
Does she hold to her selfish desires, fighting to the bitter end with that Demon God Pillar? Does she see the end coming and run in terror, in an effort to survive because she can't stand the thought of dying? Does she do ANYTHING that is consistent with how her character was portrayed in Agartha?
Nope. She hears a kid give a speech about not fearing death, and decides to stab her ally in the back because of said speech. Its so infuriating.
Diomedes defiled Penths corpse,Achilles was horrified by that action.
At least Agarthas scenery was pretty. Also I remember pretty much none of it. And don't remember enjoying it very much it was sort of there as something to do while waiting for events.
I love your videos so I’m not complaining at all, I just find it funny this could’ve been a short of the last 5 seconds
The weirdest part about all of this is that D'Eon absolutely could've fit into a story about trauma but Astolfo was an absolutely terrible pick for a party member for this; even if Astolfo was 1/1 with the historical figure. Achilles would've been a better fit since he at least had some connection with Pen. Hell; if they wanted to go even more bonkers, have it be Medea since Medea is basically the queen of trauma.
To be honest I started paying less attention to the MCU drama that FGO tries to illustrate in the FGO main storyline.
Researching the actual historical and mythological stories of each servants on Wikipedia and actual books are much more fun than what FGO (More likely Delight Works or Lasengle) wants to tell us.
I'm more interested in seeing FGO expand its own Nasuverse magic lore and possible multiversal lore.
Hell, I want to see a huge new generation of heroes and villains and lore expansion like my new favorite show, Young Justice.
These "Character Assassination", especially for those of my favourites; historically or in mythologies. For example, Artemis and Orion at the beginning. I got disappointed when my beloved greek hero and goddess became these womanising teddy bear and possessive annoying deity respectively. Atleast, they gave them a redemption arc on Atlantis.
About Helena though, I have to say this: the panel in the manga adaptation where Colombus stabs her is peak dark comedy, complete with the goofiest faces from everyone involved.