#fate babylonia | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

derekscorner · 6 months ago

Text

Fated Rantings: The Grandest of Orders Part 2

The Babylonia Front

For the first part I incoherently rambled about FGO and some Chaldean cast. There was no rhyme nor reason to it, I was trying to get my brain churning but more importantly they were things that I've wanted to say for a while.

I began this Fate journey with lore videos and FGO and for the near two years since I've slowly crawled through it as I watched other Fate series. I finished the initial Solomon arc about a month before I did the anime.

In other words I had lot to get out of my system and I didn't even touch on everything. FGO, the mobile game, is novel length in each singularity. There is too much to remember or squeeze into a blog post.

So I just got out of my system what still stands out to me...which was mostly Mash praise but enough of that! Let's talk about the actual anime~

The Age of Gods babyyyyy

I was actually very curious to watch this even though FGO's anime only covers singularities six, seven, and the finale against Goetia. Even then singularity six and Goetia are made into movies.

FGO's only real anime is the adaption of singularity seven the Babylonia Front. My curiosity for this story was only made stronger thanks to the mobile game itself.

It had unexpected highs and spectacle to it. Everything from seeing how Rin's personality can distort Ishtar into a jewel obsessed girl failure to seeing Gilgamesh while he was a live.

A demigod in the flesh, a Gilgamesh that was focused on being a king. Hell, we even got to see Merlin!

Merlin is usually locked in his tower but thanks to time paradox tom foolery he makes an appearance.

This era of Fate's world fascinates me because the gods still exist. Sadly, it's toward the end of their reign but the physical and metaphysical still interconnect.

This the era that the mages of the modern Fate world desperately cling to with their ways of secrecy and lineage. They can only hope to reach the root and obtain true magic, they can only hope to have magecraft as potent as Medea.

It is a truly fantastical setting and the kind I adore. It is probably the closest we'll ever get to seeing a truly magical place within Type-Moon.

The actual expanse that the age of gods covers is also quite long. The only thing I know of older than this age would be dragons. The pinnacle of evolution and mystery and beings that radiate magic just by breathing.

Type-Moons history is actually full of some crazy stuff. Dragons older than the gods who themselves had been shaping life since dinosaurs walked.

Machines from a dead universe whom the Atlanteans worshipped as gods and who eventually became the Olympian gods of Greece.

A white titan that slew gods left and right, the very being that set the age of gods towards its downfall. The same titan that killed Ares, took his sword, and uses it to this very day if summoned as a servant.

Things get wild and inconsistent with history. Either due to mage society hiding events or due to events seemingly having no evidence due to the age of gods ending which separates mankind from the reverse side of the world.

The metaphysical space where things like the Underworld, Heaven, or other such mythical places actually exist.

What about the Age of Man?

I gush over this because it not only shows the rich history in this world but it also really highlights how important Uruk is to the Age of Man and the planet's future.

Gilgamesh is a smug bastard but that confidence is not without merit. Even Romani, a man of the current day, is amazed by Gilgamesh's city planning and the sheer smooth machine that day to day life is in Uruk.

The anime, more so than the game imo, really highlights how important Uruk is to the future. Humans have existed for a long time, probably longer than science claims in the Fate world. However, mankind's age didn't begin till here.

Modern society traces it's origin to Uruk as Gilgamesh ran it in his final chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh. When he became a wise king he founded a society so fundamental to human life that the entire human race ran with it.

They made alterations, societies fell, they improved upon it, they keep changing based on the environment. Nothing made by man is perfect, even Uruk, but it's fundamental.

It's the last singularity but it's the only one that Solomon himself tampered with because he knows the age of man starts here.

The anime will make you feel that through Mash, Ana, and Fujimaru. The mobile game had you do missions with the same purpose in mind but that doesn't do as well as seeing it in motion I think.

Watching Ana say she hates humans only to become attached to an old woman running a flower shop, seeing Leonidas train soldiers, Ushiwakamaru and Benki coming home after a long day battling beats, everyone gathering at Chaldea's own embassy like it's a home, Gilgamesh stopping to learn a new game being played children, etc.

It is a lot of small things that add up. You gain a true grasp of how people lived in this city. You could make a whole spin off of Uruk and it's day to day events and I would watch it.

I want to drive home how much I enjoyed those little scenes. It not only fulfilled my world building itch but these moments of humanity at it's purest made the various dialogues between inhuman characters more interesting.

Ana & Merlin

The most standout to me is the scene of Ana and Merlin discussing what it means to be an inhuman surrounded by humans. Merlin actually has a few good scenes of this topic but this one is the best for giving you insight into the minds of them.

Sure, you also have servants but many of them were human once. Ana, Merlin, and even Gilgamesh were not and so their views on humanity is by far more intriguing.

For Merlin, emotions are a lie. He feeds on human dreams to have and comprehend emotions. He openly admits he likes humanity as a whole but not individuals.

Ana, beings the goddess who becomes Medusa, has hatred for man and god but she also can't help but love them. She's even fearful of that love in a sense.

You have to keep in mind that Medusa is a very old myth. The one you know of about Poseidon raping her and Athena cursing her is actually the most recent one despite being a couple thousand years old. Both in Fate and our world her myth goes back further than this with no clear point of origin.

Ancient Greece did not have a solidified religion. The city states had a shared origin and a shared pantheon but the stories about said pantheon could vary based on the city and the age of that myth. Assuming it was even put to written record in the first place.

Ana in Fate is a nod to this. She was originally some long lost earth goddess before becoming what she was. Her hatred of the gods is solely the fault of Olympus but her hatred for man is from perceived abandonment.

Between Heaven's Feel and FGO I've come to have a soft spot for Medus as a whole. Conflicting feelings aside, she didn't deserve it and knowing that her curse caused her to eat her sisters and become a monster is just tragic.

I'd love for them to do a game or show with Medusa as your main servant one day.

Abandoned Gods

The contradictory nature mentioned above in regards to Ana is shared with all the gods we meet in the anime as well. Even the beasts of humanity have this conflicted feeling albeit the things they're conflicted on differ.

Tiamat in particular having the worst case of it by far. She's become a beast of humanity but she's original a primordial goddess. A dragon from which the primordial sea sprang.

She's trying to destroy humanity to keep it, she doesn't want her "children" (aka all life) to abandon her again. Knowing that and her true fate within this universe makes it arguably more tragic than the mythology of her murder via Marduk.

And to give you context of that I need to elaborate a bit on the planet.

The planet itself is a sentient being and in a rough sense humanity is it's progeny. The end goal of human evolution, as seen by Gilgamesh via his clairvoyance, is leaving the planet for the stars.

This growing separation from nature and man is the reason that the Counterforce even exists. As humans grow they become more at odds with the planet thus the Earth has two predominant forces.

"Gaia" who is the planet's will and "Alaya" the collective will of man. However, there was only originally "Gaia" and as the planet took shape so too did beings to shape it.

The oldest I know of is Ea. Yes THE Ea from Mesopotamian mythology. Ea shaped the world only for Tiamat and her husband to come after and seed life into the world he shaped.

So yes, when Gilgamesh boasts that his sword split the heaven's and earth he's being literal. Gil's sword of rupture is quite literally Ea's "sword" he used in those early days of creation.

What makes this a tragedy is that Tiamat, Ea, and Abzu predate death. They cannot kill Tiamat in the anime because she does not know the concept of death. She is truly immortal.

When Tiamat and Abzu's job was done they were chucked back into the void. Tiamat has been in Imaginary Number Space this entire time. No, I'm not explaining Imaginary Number Space. It's a concept bordering on zero. (complicated)

In this sense, once Tiamat was dethroned by Marduk she was just left to her own devices in the void all alone and I find that incredibly fucked up.

That gives her no right to just wipe out all life but that level of used and abused is wrong.

I legitimately felt bad for Tiamat here because I knew this expanded backstory. She wants to cling to humans in an unhealthy way since she's now a beast but at her core that is because her love as a mother is boundless. A facet of her that is true in IRL myths as well, in our myths she killed her husband for her children's sake.

I also found the anime did the final exchange with Tiamat much better because it boils down to a normal man and the mother of life. She asks him what she did wrong but he can't answer that.

Fujimaru can't answer that for her, all he can do is thank her for bringing life to the planet and say goodbye. It's so sad....

The planet wasn't even kind to her here. I mentioned Gaia and Alaya earlier, well the Throne of Heroes is originally something they use. Alaya is also known as "the Counterforce".

Summoning heroes as servants is a human ritual but the basis for it is what Alaya does when the mankind or the planet is in danger. One of those core dangers are the beasts of humanity.

The whole reason Hassan appeared is because the conditions for that were right. Hassan was sent to that era as a Grand Assassin to instill the concept of death into Tiamat. The planet itself was making sure that she truly died here.

Other Goddesses

Now I gush about Tiamat due to some bias but truthfully this abandonment issue is felt by several other gods as well. Quetzalcoatl does not seem to peeved yet she also pushes for people to do their best. "If you want to survive show it to me" in a sense.

Ishtar and Ereshkigal are heavily influenced by Rin Tohsaka's personality so it's hard for me to say how much of what they say is their true feelings. Given how Ishtar is said to behave in Fate/Strange Fake I'd wager her true feelings aren't represented.

Ereshkigal however I think is. She states that she thinks it's okay for people to blame what they don't know on the gods but she only says this because she knows that the age of gods is ending.

Soon man will seek answers for their issues and not gods for comfort or scapegoats. She'll be abandoned and she's yet to even truly enjoy their presence.

I'll admit, I felt a bit of pity and attachment for Ereshkigal as well. She just wants out of the cosmic basement and it's so sad that she can't. She did not choose to be there and as a goddess of death humans have nothing but fear of her.

She cages souls for centuries for a semblance of companionship.

Out of all the silly things the game did to make servants faun over Fujimaru it was only Ereshkigal's scenes that I believed due to this. She, very badly, pretends to be Ishtar to have talks with Fujimaru.

They're cute in the anime but I liked the games version of these moments more since the conversations were more frequent and longer. I could easily believe that she's grown attached to him.

Hell, I even found it funny when Ishtar was asking Mash things about the MC due to how obvious Ereshkigal is about her feelings.

And while many a Fate fan will gush over that due to some...questionable self insert delusions I found it cute for her but endearing. She's never had a human not cower in fear of her let alone one talk to her normally.

She so desperately wants a friend that I hope she escaped her cosmic basement once Kur disappeared to the reverse side of the world.

She so desperately wanted love that I fully feel that her feelings as a goddess against humans made sense. If the gods era truly ends she may be forever alone.

Let's rapid fire shall we?

This too has gotten quite long but I don't have it in me to make a part three so I'll gush about smaller things I enjoyed.

Such as Ishtar. I thought I'd have a bigger segment on her but she's basically just Rin that flies. My biggest impression was;

"The fact that Ishtar can be bought off with jewelry is by far the funniest thing Rin did to her personality."

And that still stands. I loved her character to be blunt, she was entertaining and she had some amazing scenes. The animation of her shooting Venus as a noble phantasm is gorgeous.

I also love how both Ishtar and Ereshkigal suffer from Rin's "girl failure" moments. But, again, that's due to Rin. Rin's mentality is...well it is what it is but what it is is such a perfect match for Ishtar they meld in a good way.

You could say the same about Ereshkigal, I know, but Ishtar isn't trapped in a cosmic dungeon for eternity. That backstory gave Ereshkigal ever the slightest bit more uniqueness to her character.

Also, fun fact, this Ishtar couldn't find her bull of heaven because the real Ishtar summoned it. So in a weird way Fate/Strange Fake had an affect on the FGO timeline.

Quetzalcoatl my throttle

She was an amusing character. I found nothing too stand out but nothing offensive. She did however have some of the best fight chorography in the anime and her noble phantasm was hands down the best one.

She drops kicks with the force of the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. Just put that into perspective, she is kicking with the force of a meteor. A meteor that wiped out most of the life on earth.

And before anyone asks, Quetzalcoatl is a woman because the Mesoamerican gods in Fate's lore were parasites that took on hosts. They were deified over time and this female form is simply Quetzalcoatl's latest host.

No, I will not comment on the voice. The poor accent is a part of the charm and I will die on that hill!

Hassan the Goat!

Between the sixth and seventh singularities in both game and anime form I have come to respect the beast that is Hassan I. This man is to be feared.

He made a primordial goddess aware of death. He even beheaded Ozymandias before he was even aware Hassan was in the room.

I also like that we got to see a grand servant being summoned in the intended way.

Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and Kingu

I won't make too long a segment on Gilgamesh since I'd really like to do a post on him one day. I haven't yet simply because I haven't seen his depiction in the Extra timeline and I'd love to see Strange Fake.

He's a complex character and the later entries seem to lessen the bastard you'll see in Fate/Stay Night to a degree.

But I will say that I enjoyed seeing him alive and as the wise king of Uruk. I was also impressed by the sheer magical power he had to summon several servants in a means closer to how they're meant to be summoned.

None of the man-made ritual used by a grail war or Chaldea.

The dynamic between Gil and Kingu was interesting though. Fuel for that eventual Gilgamesh post in the future.

Technically, Enkidu doesn't appear in this story however that bond he has with Gilgamesh is so profound that it affects Kingu and it's interesting to see how Gilgamesh treats Kingu due to it.

It is also through Kingu that we see how the citizens of Uruk felt about Enkidu. It really paints this beautiful relationship that's hidden just off screen. Still, Kingu was never truly his own being at the end.

That also goes to show just how powerful Enkidu's own persona was. Enkidu may have seen themselves as just a weapon and disputed it when told otherwise by others but that fact alone proves it to be true.

Enkidu was far more than a tool otherwise their influence wouldn't have been so great. Sadly, Kingu could only be more than a tool when fighting against Tiamat.

Siduri deserved better

That dynamic also made me curious about Siduri. When I was playing Samurai Remnant Gil says her name once and between the game and this anime I got a real glimpse of a person truly close to Gilgamesh.

He may deny that and Merlin isn't wrong when he says Gilgamesh only sees value in what humans make but there are exceptions to every rule.

He didn't necessarily value her as highly as Enkidu but I do believe that on some level Gilgamesh valued her as a person.

Her fate as a lahamu was just heartbreaking. I didn't even realize it when playing the game....

Conclusions and other things

All in all I really enjoyed the anime and the games story. Probably far more than I could squeeze into either of the two posts I made. I'm sure I'll be kicking myself for forgetting to add something later.

(like the passive aggressive banter between merlin and romani)

Get mad that I didn't elaborate on something as much as I had intended.

(such as Ushi and Benki)

Still, I'll stop here. I can't write anything else, my brains fried.

I loved this story and I'm sad so much of the anime will lose impact when the mobile game eventually shuts down. Bye for now~

========================

For my other experiences with Fate go here: https://derekscorner.tumblr.com/tagged/fated-rantings

#fgo #fated rantings #fate grand order #fate babylonia

10 notes · View notes