History YMMV / FateApocrypha

* InformedWrongness: Amakusa Shirou's wish to [[spoiler: make all of humanity immortal]] is treated like it's too heinous to allow, but the wish itself is nothing but beneficial to the human race. Amakusa's arguments for the wish are far too compelling to debate against either, only opposed by the heroes platitudes and little else. While there is a reason the wish wouldn't be for the best, it only exists within supplementary material that neither party has access to. All this contributes to the RootingForTheEmpire the Red Faction gets from fans.

* InformedWrongness: Amakusa Shirou's wish to use the Third Magic on humanity is treated like it's too heinous to allow, but the wish itself is nothing but beneficial to the human race. Amakusa's arguments for the wish are far too compelling to debate against either, only opposed by the heroes platitudes and little else. While there is a reason the wish wouldn't be for the best, it only exists within supplementary material that neither party has access to. All this contributes to the RootingForTheEmpire the Red Faction gets from fans.

** Sieg, who in addition to his canon love interest Jeanne also gets shipped with Astolfo for [[HeterosexualLifePartners their friendship]] (and the fact Astolfo's [[BiTheWay bisexual]]) and with Mordred for their FoeYay and eventual rivalry.

* MagnificentBastard: Shirou Kotomine is a [[SinisterMinister Church minister]] presiding over the Red Faction and is the Master of Assassin Semiramis. In reality, he is Amakusa Shirou Tokisada, Ruler Servant summoned in a prior Grail War. Noble and benevolent, his methods are ruthless and cunning. Seeking humanity's redemption out of pure love for mankind, Shirou bid his time, gathered items as catalysts to summon a Servant in the Middle East, and waited for Yggdemillenia of the Black Faction to show themselves. Midway during the next Grail War, Shirou launched an ambitious attack that sees him singlehandedly take over the Servants of the Red Faction, reclaim the lost Greater Grail, and out-gambit his enemy Darnic. He intends to invade the Greater Grail's innards to access True Magic and begin humanity's salvation. Ever calm and collected, it is only when he is minutes close to achieving his dangerously alluring dream that Shirou rants to Sieg not to ruin humanity's salvation.

** [[spoiler:Sieg gaining access to Fran's two Noble Phantasm's, Blasted Tree and Bridal Crest during the final battle against Shirou. The story tries to justify this by saying that when Fran sacrificed herself to try and kill Mordred using [[HeroicSacrifice Blasted Tree]], she willed a piece of herself to become a part of him after Mordred killed him meaning that he gained the power to use her abilities when he was revived, and this is a result of her "will" actually being contained in the lightning that originally gave her life and runs through her body. While this is already pretty bad since her lightning reviving Sieg to begin with is questionable writing, the bigger issue is with how this fact isn't revealed until the fighting starts between Sieg and Shirou, meaning the ability literally comes out of nowhere to justify Sieg beating Shirou. Adding to the issue is that Sieg already got a power-up when he was given Siegfried's heart and could thus use his powers temporarily and with great cost to himself. It would have made more sense for Sieg to turn into Siegfried to win, or better yet turn into the Dragon Fafnir like he does in the end to defeat Shirou, but given he used all his Command Seals to beat Karna, Fran's abilities end up feeling like a last minute twist]].

** Jeanne got hit with this as well. To some, she's a great character with moments to show for it such as her exorcism of Jack the Ripper. To others, they find her underdeveloped and somewhat bland when compared to [[EnsembleDarkhorse Mordred]]. However, it's when she starts developing feelings for Sieg that some fans started to really have a problem with her character. The most common criticism being that her feelings for him feels contrived/forced due to a lack of chemistry and proper build up, with some also feeling that Jeanne shouldn't even be in a relationship considering her history. This is only made worse with how controversial Sieg is in the first place. It's telling that it's her appearances in ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'' and ''[[VideoGame/FateExtellaTheUmbralStar Fate/Extella]]'', both of which lack the presence of Sieg, that fans have little to no problems about her.[[note]]''Fate/Grand Order'' actually still had Jeanne remember Sieg, but it was handled less like a romantic lover, more like a concerned big sister, so people are more okay with her treatment there.[[/note]]

** The Black Faction may make for less-than-ideal "good guys". They are led by an ex-Nazi collaborator, one of its members is a serial rapist, and another is a serial killer. After these are disposed of in the second half, leaving the better members of the Black Faction in charge, this then turns off fans who were into their moral grayness to begin with.

* TheyCopiedItSoItSucks: Many accused the epilogue, where [[spoiler:Sieg meets Jeanne in the afterlife]], of ripping off of [[spoiler:''[[VisualNovel/FateStayNight Realta Nua]]''[='=]s Last Episode, where Shirou reunites with Artoria in Avalon]]. As such, ''Apocrypha'''s epilogue is seen in a negative light among those who [[spoiler:are fans of the Shirou x Saber ship]].

* AmericansHateTingle: Sieg was received okay in Japan, where he won a spot in a Top 10 Anime Characters poll in a Japanese magazine, and in general is looked at in a more positive light. However, Chinese fans ''absolutely loathe him'', considering him having disproportionate screentime and considered a 'cardboard'. American viewers also aren't really as fond of him as Japan is, the most lenient opinion about him is that he's overall boring, otherwise they share similar loathing with the Chinese.

* RootingForTheEmpire: The show eventually had the Red Faction becoming the main antagonist faction. But there are some that believed that they deserve to win:
** First, the members. Shirou Amakusa is a WellIntentionedExtremist whose end goal could be said to be admirable, Karna being an overpowered yet honorable Servant, Achilles being a sociable bro and also overpowered Servant, Atalanta for her very pure wish (and the tragedy that comes with it) and tough attitude and [[LittleBitBeastly adorable cat ears and tails]], Shakespeare for his ham in just about everything leading to hilarity even when he's the antagonist, and Semiramis for being a classy, sexy dominating queen with [[UnusualEars oddly adorable elven ears.]] Even their deserter, Mordred, gets a LOT of love due to her overall badass daredevil attitude and accomplishment that fans may also want her and Shishigou to snatch the Grail. While Spartacus might not get very high levels of love due to being eliminated early and unfortunately being considered 'wasted potential', his craziness and meme factor in his short run was also welcomed. While the original masters except Shishigou were reduced to props without personality, it's not quite considered a damning factor and instead wins the favor of the camp that believed that the best part of Fate series are the Servants, not Masters.
** Next, the first half's members of the Black Faction. While we had Fiore and Caules as genuinely good Masters of the faction and Gordes' fault was just being a haughty jerk; it's worth noting that the leader, Darnic, was a former Nazi collaborator that consumed the souls of children (his way of [[KickTheSonOfABitch dealing with Zouken]] might not be enough to cleanse those). And Celenike is a serial rapist with no redeeming features. And their last master, Reika, is a crazy serial killer who directs Jack the Ripper, the one responsible for the terror in London for a long time[[labelnote:Note]]Not to mention, Reika wasn't the intended master of Jack, her place was supposedly filled by magus (possibly under Darnic's command) Hyouma Sagara who [[KickTheDog attempted to use Reika as a sacrifice for the summoning]] that Jack killed him on spot and switched to Reika, who went crazy afterwards.[[/labelnote]]. At first, this sets up for the show being GreyAndGrayMorality to facilitate on rooting for the Red Faction.
*** A minor point but Shirou [[spoiler: was originally a servant to an Einzbern homunculous and was distraught when the latter was killed by Darnic. Anybody who was fond of the other Einzbern homunculi tend to be slightly biased in favor of Shirou.]]
** Next, the second half's members of the Black Faction. By that point, both Darnic and Celenike have been killed due to their own evil actions and Gordes had a change of heart, whereas both Sieg and Jeanne entered the faction, turning the Black Faction to be the more bonafide good guy team (Reika is eliminated in a latter time). This upsets people who were more into moral grayness and thought it was unfair that the Black Faction was cleaned up to be a less subtle "good guys" team, and it didn't help that Sieg was the show's biggest BaseBreakingCharacter, furthering the desire for people to cheer for the Red Faction which was considered to have more nuances.
** Finally, the Servants of the Black faction, while pretty good, have been much more of a mixed bag. Siegfried might be the one who would make the faction cool, but then he killed himself very early to revive Sieg. Chiron is overall pretty cool and his relations with Fiore was well-liked, but a lot thought of him as more of a supporting cast to Achilles' development. Vlad was cool on his run, but got the short end of the stick when Darnic forced him to turn into Dracula and then was quickly eliminated by Amakusa. Avicebron committed a despicable treachery and for this was struck down like a traitor that fans overall ignored him until he got a better showing in ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder''. Jack's design put off a lot of fans and her role as a SerialKiller didn't help her. Frankenstein is a [[BaseBreakingCharacter mixed bag]] overall. When Jeanne came in, people eventually got pissed with her budding romance with Sieg that she was considered ruined, leaving only Astolfo as the only cool Servant there, but [[BaseBreakingCharacter even he had his own detractors.]]

** For ''Fate'' spin-offs, this is the point when {{Fanservice}} in character design becomes egregious. The larger set of Servants makes room for two Saberfaces[[note]]Jeanne and Mordred[[/note]], two (debatably three) GenderFlip characters[[note]]Frankenstein's Monster and Mordred, with the technically unknown Jack the Ripper as the third[[/note]] and one [[DudeLooksLikeALady androgynous man]]. Female characters are also noticeably bustier and/or more {{Stripperific}} than in ''LightNovel/FateZero'' and ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight''.

** Mordred's FanNickname is Moedred because of her tomboyish cuteness. yearning for her father to acknowledge her and [[spoiler: the truth behind her desire to replace Artoria as king]].

* MagnificentBastard: Shirou Kotomine is a [[SinisterMinister Church minister]] presiding over the Red Faction and is the Master of Assassin Semiramis. In reality, he is Amakusa Shirou Tokisada, Ruler Servant summoned in a prior Grail War. Noble and benevolent, his methods are ruthless and cunning. Seeking humanity's redemption out of pure love for mankind, Shirou bid his time, gathered items as catalysts to summon a Servant in the Middle East, and waited Yggdemillenia of the Black Faction to show themselves. Midway during the next Grail War, Shirou launched an ambitious attack that sees him singlehandedly take over the Servants of the Red Faction, reclaim the lost Greater Grail, and out-gambit his enemy Darnic. He intends to invade Greater Grail's innards to access True Magic to begin humanity's salvation. Ever calm and collected, it is only when he is minutes close to achieving his dangerously alluring dream that Shirou rants to Sieg not to ruin humanity's salvation.

** Mordred's FanNickname is Moedred.

** As of Episode 23, Shakespeare using his Noble Phantasm First Folio [[spoiler: to MindRape Jeanne. First, he uses his illusions to create scenarios, like her mother begging her not to go to war, or making her see the dead soldiers blame her for their deaths, but these have no effect on her. That is until the third scenario, where it is pictured almost exactly like the time she was burned at the stake, except, he makes it so its Sieg who gets burned. This effects Jeanne visibly, but she doesn't break. The final scenario, where her old friend and comrade in arms, Gilles de Rais shows up, with Seig's severed head, and gives her a massive BreakingSpeech about how she really loves the poor lad, when she is supposed to a love everyone equally as Saint, while slowly transforming into his murderously insane self in the process. By the look of satisfaction on his face, [[TheSociopath Shakespeare]] probably knew the first two scenarios wouldn't work on Jeanne, but it did anyway simply to test her, before moving on to acts three & four to really [[BreakTheCutie break her spirit]].]]

** The heroes plan for assaulting the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in the finale? An army of airjet liners. The sheer absurdity of this is both outright hilarious, but also provides the awesome Chiron and Achilles fight, and provides a nice change of scenery from the previous fights, making it work surprisingly well.

* RootingForTheEmpire: The show eventually had the Red Faction becoming the main antagonist faction. But there are just some that believed that they deserve to win:

** Next, the first half's members of the Black Faction. While we had Fiore and Caules as genuinely good Masters of the faction and Gordes' fault was just being a haughty jerk; it's worth noting that the leader, Darnic, was a former Nazi collaborator that consumed the souls of children (his way of [[KickTheSonOfABitch dealing with Zouken]] might not be enough to cleanse those). And Celenike is a serial rapist with no redeeming features. And their last master, Reika, is a crazy serial killer who raised Jack the Ripper and responsible of the terror in London for a long time[[labelnote:Note]]Not to mention, Reika wasn't the intended master of Jack, her place was supposedly filled by magus (possibly under Darnic's command) Hyouma Sagara who [[KickTheDog attempted to use Reika as a sacrifice for the summoning]] that Jack killed him on spot and switched to Reika, who went crazy afterwards.[[/labelnote]]. At first, this sets up for the show being GreyAndGrayMorality to facilitate on rooting for the Red Faction.

** Next, the second half's members of the Black Faction. By that point, both Darnic and Celenike have been killed due to their own evil actions and Gordes had a change of heart, whereas both Sieg and Jeanne entered the faction, turning the Black Faction to be the more bonafide good guy team (Reika is eliminated in a latter time). This upsets people who were more into moral grayness and thought it was unfair that the Black Faction was cleaned up to be a less subtle good guys, and it didn't help that Sieg was the show's biggest BaseBreakingCharacter, furthering the desire for people to cheer for the Red Faction which was considered to have more nuances.
** Finally, the Servants of the Black faction, while pretty good, have been much more of a mixed bag. Siegfried might be the one who would make the faction cool, but then he killed himself very early to revive Sieg. Chiron is overall pretty cool and his relations with Fiore was well-liked, but a lot thought of him as more of a supporting cast to Achilles' development. Vlad was cool on his run, but got the short end of the stick when Darnic forced him to turn into Dracula and then quickly eliminated by Amakusa. Avicebron committed a despicable treachery and struck down like a traitor that fans overall ignored him until he got a better showing in ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder''. Jack's design put off a lot of fans and her role as a SerialKiller didn't help her. Frankenstein is a [[BaseBreakingCharacter mixed bag]] overall. When Jeanne came in, people eventually got pissed with her budding romance with Sieg that she was considered ruined, leaving only Astolfo as the only cool Servant there, but [[BaseBreakingCharacter even he had his own detractors.]]

** Both Achilles and Atalanta at times got this about their characterizations. Achilles is usually accused of getting too much of a HistoricalHeroUpgrade, since a lot of [[{{Jerkass}} his historical douchebag moments]] were not mentioned at all and he came off as a friendly bro-style character similar to [[VisualNovel/FateStayNight Cu Chulainn]], it was mostly accepted as awesome, but felt detached from Achilles' legend. In case of Atalanta, some feels like that her motivation about being children protector stemming from [[ParentalAbandonment her being abandoned as a baby]] was [[{{Flanderization}} something minor that got exaggerated]], instead of her motivation being based from some of her other famous moments like joining the Argonauts or murdering her would-be suitors that lost against her in a footrace, distracted by the golden apple, and then getting turned into a lion. They instead went to her [[AllThereInTheManual written backstories.]]

** The premise of the story is basically: "What if the Grail War was teams?", and the first half of the story focuses on this idea for the most part by introducing both factions and having them fight each other a few times. Yet despite the setup and premise of a team deathmatch story for the Grail, once Shirou Kotomine steps up as the BigBad, the story shifts to Sieg and focuses on ''only'' him, leaving almost all the other Servants and Masters aside from Kairi and Shirou as throwaway characters. And they ''really'' became throwaways come the final part of the story, where Sieg is the one who saves the day at the cost of most of the cast.
** The idea of Shirou Kotomine, being an AlternateUniverse version of [[VisualNovel/FateStayNight Shirou Emiya]] that was raised by Kotomine and thus grew up to become a member of the Church, is an interesting idea that could have been used by the story to explore the ideas of an AlternateUniverse that still has connections to the original story, while also providing a {{Deconstruction}} of Shirou's beliefs and actions. It would have been unique to have the protagonist of the original continuity face off with the protagonists of the new setting, and help develop the world more than it was already. [[spoiler: Instead, Shirou Kotomine is the Heroic Spirit Amakusa Shirou Tokisada, meaning that the entire point of his name was a RedHerring to bait viewers. The real Shirou Emiya is only given lip service in the material books, having not gone through the same fate as his counterpart.]]

** Atalanta's original life wasn't a walk in the park already (abandoned as a child in the forest, rejected by her peers because she's a woman, being forced to marry someone and setting up deadly footraces, losing due to being cheated by other Gods, then 'almost' turned into a lion), so she only had one simple wish: A world where children were loved... [[spoiler:which turned out to be a TragicDream that was realistically unattainable, her mind gets wrecked by Jack the Ripper by playing onto her love for children, she fell into a mad rage and hate, especially towards Jeanne who could only give out blunt truths against her, and the only way out of that is death, which her friend, Achilles, delivered. In the last sane moments of her life, she was crying in regret of not knowing what should be done about the unattainable dream that deep down she knew, but couldn't let go. The hug Achilles gave her was ''damn'' needed.]]

* InformedWrongness: Amakusa Shirou's wish to use the Third Magic on humanity is treated like it's too heinous to allow, but the wish itself is nothing but beneficial to the human race. Amakusa's arguments for the wish are far too compelling to debate against either, only opposed by the heroes platitudes and little else. While there is a real the wish wouldn't be for the best, it only exist within supplementary material that neither party has access to. All this contributes to the RootingForTheEmpire the Red Faction gets from fans.

* InformedWrongness: Amakusa Shirou's wish to use the Third Magic on humanity is treated like an EvilPlan that's too heinous to allow, but the wish itself is nothing but beneficial to the human race. Amakusa arguments for the wish are far too compelling to debate against either, only opposed by the heroes platitudes and little else. While there is a real the wish wouldn't be for the best, it only exist within supplementary material that neither party has access to. All this contributes to the RootingForTheEmpire the Red Faction gets from fans.

* InformedWrongness: Shirou Amakusa's wish to use the Third Magic on humanity is treated like an EvilPlan that's too heinous to allow, but the wish itself is nothing but beneficial to the human race. Amakusa arguments for the wish are far too compelling to debate against either, only opposed by the heroes platitudes and little else. While there is a real the wish wouldn't be for the best, it only exist within supplementary material that neither party has access to. All this contributes to the RootingForTheEmpire the Red Faction gets from fans.

* FightSceneFailure: A complaint leveled towards the anime adaptation is that the fights are all way to difficult to watch and rely on extremely large and over the top angles and usage of colors, resulting in most of the fights being downright difficult to even tell what is going on. Notable examples include the fight between Siegfried and Karna, Sieg and Mordred, and Sieg and Karna.

** For ''Fate'' spin-offs, this is the point when {{Fanservice}} in character design becomes egregious. The larger set of Servants makes room for two Saberfaces[[note]]Jeanne and Mordred[[/note]], two (debatably three) GenderFlip characters[[note]]Frankenstein's Monster and Mordred, with the technically unknown Jack the Ripper as the third[[/note]] and one [[DudeLooksLikeALady androgynous man]]. Female characters are also noticeably bustier and/or more {{Stripperific}} than in ''LightNovel/FateZero'' and ''Anime/FateStayNightUnlimitedBladeWorks''.

* HarsherInHindsight: Seeing Mordred of the past and present showing many of her more likable traits would hit you in the feels when if you watch the very end of Fate/Zero, you realized that Mordred is among those bodies Saber is standing on.

** Artoria during Mordred's flashback. Did the former really not hate Mordred for who she was or did Artoria simply lie about how she felt as part of her Perfect King persona? Apocrypha fans who have never seen ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'' or ''LightNovel/FateZero'' before would likely be unable to tell. ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'' seems to imply the latter interpretation is true, as during its first summer event, Artoria was passive aggressive with Mordred at best, hostile at worst.

** Fiore, Astolfo, Frankenstein and Roche being the prime examples.

** In the very next episode, Avicebron/Caster of Black crossed it by [[spoiler:sacrificing his own Master Roche to complete his Golem, despite his screams of anguish of being betrayed by his own Servant/professor, which subverts his reasoning to the Red Faction about defecting to them as long as his Master is unharmed, because he'll be the one who does the 'harming' ''personally'', for his own goal of recreating Paradise since he dislikes mankind, and in his own words, it has nothing to do with the Holy Grail at all so all along, he's on neither side.]] He seals it with his own words, "You have every right to hate me.", and now you see why the normally affable professor is amongst the more amoral characters in both factions.

** It's worth noting--with regards to the animation issue--that this is just the most recent major example of the split that exists in the anime fandom with regards to style vs consistency. It's essentially a sequel to the heated arguments regarding the [[Manga/{{Naruto}} Naruto vs. Pain]] fight (specifically the latter part), which is oft-criticized for completely ignoring the show's established art style. Many prefer on-model, consistent art, with some erroneously assuming it's bad 'animation' if the style shifts, ''particularly'' if the style becomes looser and more exaggerated. That's not to say anyone is wrong for disliking the change--it's purely a matter of taste--simply that it doesn't mean the animation is 'bad'. Many animators (like those stated above) tend to see great value in an animator being allowed to show their own style without being heavily corrected by supervisors for consistency, for reasons likely obvious to most. Fans, of course, are free to disagree and ''very'' often do.

** It's worth noting--with regards to the animation issue--that this is just the most recent major example of the split that exists in the anime fandom with regards to style vs consistency. It's essentially a sequel to the heated arguments regarding the Naruto vs Pein fight (specifically the latter part), which is oft-criticized for completely ignoring the show's established ArtStyle. Many prefer on-model, consistent art, with some erroneously assuming it's bad 'animation' if the style shifts, ''particularly'' if the style becomes looser and more exaggerated. That's not to say anyone is wrong for disliking the change--it's purely a matter of taste--simply that it doesn't mean the animation is 'bad'. Many animators (like those stated above) tend to see great value in an animator being allowed to show their own style without being heavily corrected by supervisors for consistency, for reasons likely obvious to most. Fans, of course, are free to disagree and ''very'' often do.

** Taking aside the fact that it's being made by [[BrokenBase the divisive]] Creator/A1Pictures, the Apocrypha anime gets hit with this hard when compared to the Creator/{{Ufotable}} anime adaptations of ''LightNovel/FateZero'' and ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight''. Heck, it's even compared to the 2006 FSN anime and 2010 FSN UBW movie by Creator/StudioDEEN which some consider to be still better than the Apocrypha anime. It doesn't help that the story and characters of Apocrypha are considered lacking in comparison to FSN and Zero. It reached the point that several people were bashing ''Nasu himself'' for giving praise to the fight scenes in [[CriticalDissonance Episode 22]], despite the fact that if ''anyone'' would be qualified to judge the series, it would be him.

** It's worth noting, with regards to the animation, that this is just another major example of the split that exists in the anime fandom on animation. It's essentially the sequel to the arguments regarding the Naruto vs Pein fight. Many prefer on-model, consistent art, with some erroneously assuming it's bad 'animation' if the style shifts. That's not to say anyone is wrong for disliking the change, simply that it doesn't mean the animation is 'bad'. Animators, of course, tend to see great value in an animator being allowed to show their own style without being heavily corrected by supervisors for consistency. Fans, of course, are free to disagree and often do.

** Artoria during Mordred's flashback. Did the former really not hate Mordred for who she was or did Artoria simply lie about how she felt as part of her Perfect King persona? Apocrypha fans who have never seen ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'' or ''LightNovel/FateZero'' before would likely be unable to tell. ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'' seems to imply the latter interpretation is true, as during the ''Chaldea Summer 2017'' event, Artoria was passive aggressive with Mordred at best, hostile at worst.

** Artoria during Mordred's flashback. Did the former really not hate Mordred for who she was or did Artoria simply lie about how she felt as part of her Perfect King persona? Apocrypha fans who have never seen ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'' or ''LightNovel/FateZero'' before would likely be unable to tell.