This is the tale of a certain knight.
This is the story of the mythology at the end of the world.
— Trailer 1
Fate/Grand Order - Divine Realm of the Round Table: Camelot is a two-movie anime based on the "Camelot" chapter from the mobile game Fate/Grand Order. It is produced by Production I.G, and its first film, -Wandering; Agateram- was released December 5, 2020. The second film, -Paladin; Agateram-, was released on May 15, 2021.
In the present day, the Chaldea Security Organization, already struggling to reverse the incineration of human civilization, has located the sixth of seven disturbances in the space-time continuum. As the sixth singularity linked to humanity's destruction, Chaldea sends Ritsuka Fujimaru and Mash Kyrielight back in time to put an end to it and retrieve the Mage King's Holy Grail. Their journey takes them to the land of Jerusalem in the wake of the Ninth Crusade; however, things have gone horribly off-track, even by the standards of the incineration of humanity. A conflict over the Holy Grail has just concluded, yet the singularity will not close, instead being forced open by an unknown entity. It is up to Chaldea to retrieve the Holy Grail and ensure that the Singularity will resolve itself, which causes their goals to intertwine with the goals of a mysterious knight on a journey of atonement...
Previews: Teaser Trailer
, Trailer 1, Visual Trailer, Trailer 2, Trailer 3.
The anime provides examples of:
- Adapted Out:
- Ally servants Hassan of the Hundred Personas and Tawara Touta have been cut out in order to squeeze the singularity's story into 2 films.note
- The particulars of the Knights of the Round Table's war crimes were reduced to Gawain's massacre of the population undergoing Selection. Tristan's particularly despicable one (i.e. shooting surrendering villagers) was also left unshown—with him just joining Lancelot in the massacre of the Hassans' village, a no-less horrific crime.
- Chaldea does not venture out in the desert to find the Atlas Academy summoned from the present along with Tri-Hermes, which they would use to find the truth about the Human Order Incineration and Romani's Mysterious Past, also meeting with Holmes in the process. Here, Ozymandias just summons it and has it output the Awful Truth for Chaldea to behold, with Holmes not appearing at all.
- Adding onto that, Mash learning that the Servant who gave her their power being Sir Galahad, is revealed to her by Bedivere, rather than from Holmes.
- Adaptation Distillation: To fit the lengthy Camelot chapter into 2 movies, many chapters only kept some key moments or merges many fewer story-relevant chapters to fit the time restraints:
- The movie cuts out the opening chapters where Sanzang leaves the Holy City and the Protagonist's group is lost in the desert unable to contact Chaldea before meeting with Ozymandias. Instead, it starts with Ritsuka, Mash, and Da Vinci already traveling to the Holy City with their first meeting with Ozymandias happening in the middle part.
- The chapters where Ritsuka and the group are traveling, whether to the Holy City or to the mountains are scaled down to montages. In the game, those are usually several story nodes.
- The visit to Ozymandias removes the fight encounters against the Sphinx and Ozymandias himself, jumping to the group wandering around the ancient city and the Pharaoh kicking them and Sanzang out of his city the next day.
- Since Hassan of the Hundred Personas is Adapted Out, she is replaced by Serenity instead. The plot also skips out the journey to the West Village and Arash states that she is kidnapped there. The fight with Mordred is changed so it happens when the protagonists raid the fortress to save Serenity, instead of on the West Village.
- In the second movie, Gawain's flashback shows that Gareth sided with the knights against the Lion King's plan and was killed along with the other dissenters. In the game, Gareth sided with the Lion King and died in battle against the Fake Richard the Lionheart. In both cases, Gawain is the one who dealt the lethal blow to Gareth.
- During the second movie, Mordred's last stand against the player and Sanzang's sacrifice to open the gate, two separate events in the game, are merged in the final battle. Mordred now fights solely with Sanzang as her designated opponent atop Ozymandias' pyramid, with Sanzang instead using her Noble Phantasm to nullify Mordred's Noble Phantasm, resulting in a Mutual Kill. On that note, Sanzang's in-game feat of opening the gate is given to Ozymandias instead, with him using the Dendera Light to blast it open.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Several characters have changes to their wardrobe that amount to a combination of two of their ascension forms in the game. For example, Ozymandias wears both the black shirt from his first ascension and the white cape from his second and third ascensions.
- Adaptation Expansion: The second film heavily expands on the duel between Lancelot and Agravain, which occurred almost entirely offscreen in the game. Agravain is shown in action for the first time, using his dark chains and summoning an army of his shadowed knights to battle Lancelot as Ramesseum Tentyris descends behind them.
- Anachronic Order: These films adapt Chapter 6 of the game. An anime series adapting Chapter 7 (Babylonia) has already aired ahead of these, running from October 2019 to March 2020. That said, a television movie adapting the prologue chapter of the game was made and released in 2016, and Babylonia's episode 0 covers a large chunk of the game's backstory which was not in the game's version of these chapters.
- Art Shift: The artistic style changes for Bedivere's dreams, giving a surreal nightmare-ish feel to the whole experience.
- Artificial Limbs: Bedivere's right arm is clearly artificial, and seems to be made out of silver.
- Badass Cape: Many. The Lion King, most of the Knights of the Round Table (Mordred being the sole exception), and Ozymandias all wear capes. Even Fujimaru dons one, at least while in the desert.
- Broad Strokes: In regards to the previous Babylonia anime, which depicted the Adapted Out Hassan of the Hundred Personas and Tawara Touta in Episode 0's Camelot flashback and had a flashback with Sherlock Holmes who was also cut
- Call-Forward: Fujimaru's interaction with Ozymandias, seeking assistance for the current crisis to a high-powered Servant who currently possesses the Singularity's Grail, is near-identical to his position later when negotiating with King Gilgamesh in Babylonia. It also helps hammer home how similar in disposition Ozymandias and Gilgamesh have been in the franchise.
- The Cameo:
- In Bedivere's Nightmare Sequence, behind Tristan amidst the flames is not only Agravain, but an unnamed, face fully-concealed Knight whose design is clearly Gareth's 2nd Ascension armor.
- In the second movie Kay, Percival, and Gareth appear with the rest of the Knights of the Round Table in a flashback to when the Lion King first summoned them to the Singularity. There are also two currently unknown knights in the same shot (likely Palamedes and Gaheris, though which one is which is unknown Palamedes being the one with the scimitar).
- Chekhov's Gun: The little boy Rushd's red gem pendant was revealed to have a hidden map (revealed by sunlight) that shows the location of the hidden village of the Hassans. Later on, Hassan of the Cursed Arm is revealed to have a similar red gem in his possession, hinting at a yet-undeclared connection between them.
- Cold Ham: The Knights of the Round Table (save Mordred) bear themselves as such in public, but the Lion King understandably takes the cake out of them—with all her actions never involving a raised voice, but always grave and ominous.
- Combat Breakdown: The final fight between Bedivere and Gawain starts with them unleashing their Noble Phantasms, with Gawain in particular launching powerful sunfire blasts and slicing through entire stone buildings. It devolves into them repeatedly hacking away at each other with their swords and piling up injuries, and by the end they're down to grappling and stabbing each other with knives, with Gawain at one point trying to strangle Bedivere with his bare hand and Bedivere returning the favor by smashing a loose brick against Gawain's head.
- Continuity Nod: The flashback of Fujimaru finding Mash in the burning control room shows up, keeping the Retcon that Babylonia changed from First Order so Mash is in a combat uniform instead of her civilian garb and the slab crushing her is smaller.
- Cool Car: Chaldea's group has a land vehicle (created by Da Vinci, natch) that they use to cross the desert. Its appearance is different from the one in the game, but it still looks cool.
- Cutlass Between the Teeth: After Tristan mutilates Serenity's hands during their battle to disarm her, she resorts to a last-ditch charge with her kunai between her teeth. It doesn't work.
- Darker and Edgier: While the mobile game didn't shy away from the dark and gritty themes in the Camelot chapter, the movies cranked it up. Almost all the lighthearted and comedic scenes are removed in the adaptation and there is more focus on how the people in the Singularity suffered under the Lion King and the Round Table's brutality.
- Death by Adaptation: In the original game, Cursed Arm barely survives the fight with Tristan after unleashing his arm's curse to kill the latter, being saved by the First Hassan. In the second film, however, this is not shown, and after landing the fatal curse on Tristan, the Hassan's arm is severed as the city crumbles, and he falls a great height to his apparent death, not being seen again.
- Death by Irony: In this iteration of Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table serving the Lion King are shown to fall in this fashion, in direct contravention of their avowed desires in their current life:
- Tristan's life has been defined by sadness and he saw himself sullied by the atrocities he had to commit. He dies smiling after falling by the hand of Cursed-Arm Hassan, who takes pride in the simplicity of his mountain tribe and the power of Zabaniya, finding the whole thing truly interesting.
- Mordred sought to die as her father's loyal Knight, presumably to make up for her role in the Fall of Camlann—even desiring Cessation of Existence to make up for it. She would be defeated and shown the mercy of the Buddha by Sanzang, which is likely one of the few acts of kindness she has received throughout her life (not counting her self in another timeline).
- Lancelot and Agravain struggled throughout this storyline to either please the Lion King or live by their ideals independent of her. Yet, occupied by their mutual hate of each other, they would fall to each other's sword, ending up dying and not even playing a part in the Lion King's very final fight.
- Gawain, the Knight of the Sun, frequently intones wanting to make up for failing to be by his king's side in Camlann. Yet, once again, consumed by his desire to win against a fellow knight in a duel, he falls to Bedivere's hand, dying just as the sun goes down.
- Demoted to Extra: Doctor Roman really gets hit by this, as he's only heard a few times via communicator.
- Despair Event Horizon: A running theme in the first film is how much can humanity persist while undergoing it.
- As Arash points out in the 1st film, those who seek refuge at Camelot are already either there or teetering at the edge of it. The process of selection, however, seems to offer hope then destroy it at the very last moment, with the Lion King selecting a tiny fraction of the refugees for survival, while Gawain rains arrows on the rest. Then, as Tristan lays injured, he blurts out to a despairing Bedivere that their choice of engaging in the culling of humanity was also their sole way of trying to survive past it. In the 2nd film, it is shown that nearly all of the Knights are in there too, only driven on by their Undying Loyalty to the Lion King—with Gawain being shown as having killed his sister Gareth, Mordred and Tristan in full-on Death Seeker mode and in no illusion how monstrous their side is, and Agravain similarly driven in his manic support for his king. Lancelot's moroseness was clearly caused by this too, until being defeated by Mash/Galahad convinces him to Take a Third Option.
- The Egyptians, despite living in relative comfort under Ozymandias and Nitocris, are under no illusion that their way is sustainable, yet persist in considering they're still the best of the lot in the current situation.
- The village of the Hassans are definitely the most impoverished faction, yet they manage to keep their spirits up by sharing and collective action. Their being the weakest faction, however, is exactly why they fall to the Knights' night attack on their village.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation:
- Implied to have happened with Gareth. While she does die in the hands of Gawain in the movie, the original "Camelot Zero" explains how the despair-ridden Gareth deliberately jumps in the way of fake Richard's attack to hold him back, asking any of the Knights to kill them both, with Gawain accepting her request. In the movie, it is shown that Gareth seemed to have sided against the Lion King instead for her, with Gawain having to put down his younger sister.
- In the game Sanzang dies in a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy Camelot's front gate so the rest of the heroes can enter the city. In the movie, since the gate is instead opened by Ozymandias, Sanzang fights Mordred and the two take each other down in a Mutual Kill.
- Disney Death: The first film features Da Vinci's explosive Heroic Sacrifice to delay the pursuing Lancelot, at the apparent cost of her life. Come the second film, after Lancelot is defeated and defects from the Lion King, Da Vinci is revealed to be alive and well, saved from her own explosion by Lancelot himself and secreted away with other rescued refugees in Lancelot's private army camp.
- Downer Ending: The first film's climax involves Tristan and Lancelot massacring the village with their knights, even fatally injuring Arash. While the group was successful in rescuing Hassan of Serenity, their absence was what precisely allowed the Knights to overrun them—with Hassan of the Cursed Arm sinking to his knees in righteous anger. While Bedivere sought to knock some sense into Tristan (who's clearly undergoing some mental breakdown in the process), it was only through Mash and Fujimaru's assistance that he was finally able to slash him down. Then, with everyone spent, Rhongomyniad descends from heaven, aimed at obliterating all of them. It was only Arash's Heroic Sacrifice with Stella that saves them all. Mash and Fujimaru are last seen tired and mourning, while Bedivere, tears in his eyes, determinedly declares that he will have to kill his King.
- Eldritch Transformation: Cursed Arm defeats Tristan by unleashing his eponymous arm's curse on him. This visually manifests as his arm growing and mutating into a blob of flesh, which ensnares, melds with, and consumes Tristan's body until he expires, half-turned into a grotesque mess.
- Fingore: During the final battle for the Holy City, Tristan slowly gains the upper hand on Serenity by cutting up her hands and arms, to the point where she is forced to wield her kunai in her mouth to fight.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Serenity dies at Tristan's hands from being impaled through the chest by his sword, which he then rips out by swinging it up through her entire upper body. The result is predictably messy, and it quickly cuts away to only show her blood painting the windows red.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The mastermind behind the incineration of humanity is Solomon, the King of Mages. However, he only factors indirectly into the story here, being the catalyst that set it all in motion and letting it play out without him. In the meantime, the protagonists have their hands full trying to deal with two opposing factions here.
- Guest-Star Party Member: In most Singularities, Leonardo da Vinci acts as Mission Control alongside Dr. Roman. Here, she's decided to get in on the action herself.
- Guilt-Induced Nightmare: Combined with Flashback Nightmare, Bedivere has a dream in which he witnesses the last moments of Camelot, warped through his own perspective. He keeps calling out to the other Knights of the Round to help save Altria, but all of them are fighting each other and ignore him, while he is rooted in the spot unable to move. And finally, when Altria collapses from her wounds and he holds her in his hands, she suddenly transforms into the Lion King and curses him for failing to kill her. All of this reflects Bedivere's guilt at being too powerless to help, but also helps foreshadow - as anyone who has played Fate/Grand Order already knows - that it was his failure to follow her last wishes that led to the Lion King's birth.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Da Vinci launches a kamikaze attack against the pursuing Lancelot to let the rest of their group escape into the desert (however, it's later revealed in the second film she survived).
- After the mountain village is attacked, the Lion King summons Rhongmyniad to completely destroy the village from above. Arash unleashes his Noble Phantasm, Stella, to block the Light of Judgement, annihilating himself in the process.
- Sanzang uses her Five Elements Buddha Palm, to block Mordred's Clarent Blood Arthur and protect Ozymandias' pyramid, resulting in both of them dying in the process, Sanzang comforting Mordred as she dies.
- Almost immediately after, with the pyramid of Ramesseum Tentyris too damaged by Mordred, Ozymandias sacrifices himself by ramming the rising Rhongomyniad with the entire pyramid itself (which isn't technically a Heroic Sacrifice). Nitocris attempts to do a sacrifice of her own to try and save Ozymandias (which is), blocking the Tower's light with Anpu Neb Ta Djeser, but the pharaoh stops her, the pyramid's destruction already inevitable, and letting them both disappear as the light consumes them.
- Hypocrite: Mordred chastises Bedivere for working with rebels against the Lion King, only for him to retort that she was the one who killed their king.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
- Serenity is killed by Tristan by being run through the chest by his sword after she attempts a last-ditch charge out of desperation. To make things even crueller, he rips the sword out by swinging it up through her upper body, the only result we see is it painting the windows with blood.
- Lancelot deals with Agravain's entire entourage of Enforcement Knights with a single thrown halberd, with enough force to not only pin them all to the wall, but shatter the surrounding balcony structure, covering Agravain with flying rubble.
- Bedivere's final charge to return Excalibur to the Lion King ends with her impaling him with the entirety of Rhongomyniad. However, he is unfazed, and lives long enough to complete the return of the holy sword, restoring her memory and saving the day.
- Inconsistent Spelling: Bedivere's silver arm is known in-universe and in the official North American translation as Airgetlám, named after the artificial arm of Nuada; however, the film title spells it Agateram.
- Large Ham: Ozymandias and Nitocris, being the regents of the appropriately-flashy Egyptian faction, bear themselves in such fashion, to contrast with the Knights of the Round Table. Mordred, consistent with her more Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy Jerkass iteration in this Singularity, almost always never speaks without spitefully screaming.
- Legacy Character: Hassan-i-Sabbah. Both Cursed Arm and Serenity took up the name and sit at different points on the line of succession. In the end, the name was held by 19 different assassins.
- Magic Knight: Agravain is the most explicit to be so compared to the other Knights of the Round Table—with him mostly using spells to bind people or empowering his Knight retinue to do the fighting for him.
- Meaningful Background Event: The second film's final battle often displays battles occurring simultaneously, with multiple events occurring in the same shot, mostly focused around Ozymandias ramming the Holy City with Ramesseum Tentyris, including:
- Agravain watching the balcony he's on begin to crumble just barely obscuring his entire entourage of knights being shish-kebabed by a single thrown halberd, visible through the windows.
- Ramesseum Tentyris ramming Rhongomyniad in the background while Lancelot and Agravain duel.
- Lancelot charging against Agravain's army of shadow knights is briefly visible while Gawain stares in awe at Ramesseum Tentyris.
- A foreground inversion occurs as Ramesseum Tentyris begins to crumble. The focus of the shot and scene is the pyramid's structure falling apart, but as it does, Lancelot and Agravain briefly move past in the foreground, still clashing swords.
- Mêlée à Trois: The conflict of this story pits three factions against each other: an ancient Egyptian faction including Ozymandias and Nitocris; the Holy City, which includes the remaining Knights of the Round Table sans Bedivere (Gawain, Tristan, Lancelot, Mordred, and Agravain) and is led by the Lion King; and the indigenous people of the mountains, who are protected by Arash, the Hassans, and Sanzang.
- Mercy Kill: Sanzang's defeat of Mordred is framed as a mercy, putting her out of her misery caused by her own self-loathing and her Gift making her burn herself out. In the end, Sanzang ends up comforting Mordred as she dies, who is pleasantly surprised that Sanzang isn't all talk as a monk.
- Musical Nod: "Starlight" from the Garden of Avalon drama CD OST is used in the second film when Altria realizes who Bedivere is and he confesses what he failed to do that led into his arrival to this Singularity.
- My Greatest Failure: Compounding on Bedivere's own current traumas and anxieties about the unjust state of Camelot, he also sees himself as at fault for failing to prevent the entire Battle of Camlann and the destruction of Camelot. In his Nightmare Sequence, not only does the conflagration prevent him from getting through his fellow Knights, he also witnesses Altria die at Mordred's hands—and then, while cradling her dying body, suddenly sees it transform into the armored Lion King's, reproaching him for failing to end her life.
- Mythology Gag:
- The way Stella goes through the light of Rhongomyniad (a shining light burning through an ominous pillar with ribbons of dark-and-red insides) is near-identical to how Saber/Altria's Excalibur burns through the awakening Holy Grail in Unlimited Blade Works). For extra Dramatic Irony, whereas it was Altria who was defending humanity in UBW, in this film she is the threat to humanity.
- Agravain empowering his Knight retinue turns each of them into red-and-black Palette Swap—which, ironically enough, makes them look akin to Lancelot's Berserker state. They even attack Sanzang in battle in the same feral stance.
- Despite her form being that of the Lion King in this storyline, one statue of Altria seen amongst the ruins of Camelot is that in her idealized, most popular form—Saber.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The Visual Trailer groups Sanzang with Nitocris and Ozymandias when in the game she joins Chaldea's side right away and has minor interactions with the pharaohs. Her association with them seems to be due to her role in the story being more heavily intertwined with their section. Which is the case here, as an adaptational change makes her introduction in the film involve her staying with the pharaohs as a guest before being ordered by Ozymandias to accompany Chaldea.
- Pyramid Power: The Egyptian faction's stronghold takes the form of a city with a large pyramid at its center. The entire complex is actually Ozymandias' Noble Phantasm, Ramesseum Tentyris, which summons his temple in a manner similar to a Reality Marble.
- Ramming Always Works: With Mordred having completely destroyed the Dendera Light, Ozymandias is forced to ram the Holy City with the full mass of the flying Ramesseum Tentyris pyramid, at the cost of his and Nitocris' lives. The sheer mass of the ship physically pushes the castle's entire floating top level to collide with a tower on the lower levels, literally carving a direct path for Fujimaru and Mash to reach the top levels and thus the Lion King's throne.
- Readings Are Off the Scale: In the opposite direction, at least. When Romani reveals that Bedivere is actually a regular human, it shows that their Mana stat is listed as being F. Note that Parameters go from E to A/EX, meaning that Bedivere has almost no mana to speak of.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Unlike the other fights in the second film accompanied by orchestra for their music, Lancelot and Agravain's duel is scored solely by a piano piece titled "Piano Movement for Four Hands" (It's also the only track written for a fight to not name its fighters).
- The Stinger:
- Wandering; Agateram's post credits is a short trailer for Paladin.
- Paladin; Agateram's post credit scene has a dying Agravain reach the Lion King in the throne room, apologizing for failing to create the ideal kingdom while the Lion King puts him at ease, ultimately ending as the Singularity completely fades away.
- Suddenly Voiced: Agravain is voiced for the first time by Hiroki Yasumoto, as his appearances in the game were limited to the unvoiced cutscenes and has remained, so far, unsummonable as a servant.
- Supporting Protagonist: Though nominally Fujimaru is the protagonist, being the Player Character in the game, the focus of these films is first and foremost on Bedivere.
- Uncertain Doom: Cursed Arm is last seen falling towards the ground after unleashing his curse against Tristan. In the the game he survived thanks to the First Hassan's intervention, but the film gives no answer on what happen to him.
- Warrior Monk: Sanzang, as is expected. Ozymandias sends her to join Fujimaru's side when the latter decides not to come under Ozymandias's authority, as a peace offering.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Unlike all other major fights in the second film's climax, no conclusion is shown for the duel between Lancelot and Agravain, the last we see of their clash being them clashing swords in the foreground as Ramesseum Tentyris crumbles. Agravain is revealed to be alive in The Stinger as in the game, but his lines explicitly revealing Lancelot's death are cut, and Lancelot is never seen or mentioned again for the rest of the film.
- You Are Already Dead: This is how Lancelot's Arondight Overload works. Lancelot slashes the target with Arondight, and then a few seconds later the resulting cut erupts with the light of the mana he packed into the slash to tear his foe apart from the inside. Arash ends up fatally injured by it, which motivates his own Heroic Sacrifice to save everyone from Rhongomyniad.
