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"I ask of you this: Are you my master? No... are you worthy of being my master?"
Saber

Fate/EXTRA Last Encore is an original anime story based on the 2010 JRPG Fate/EXTRA. It was written by Kinoko Nasu and produced by Studio Shaft, and first aired in the Spring of 2018.

The timeline of Fate/EXTRA diverges from Fate/stay night sometime in the 1970s, after an incident caused the world's supply of magical energy to rapidly decline. As a result, modern-day magic users called "Wizards" (or "spiritron hackers") have learned to use magecraft within virtual space by drawing power from the Moon Cell Automaton: a mysterious and omniscient alien supercomputer which contains such endless reservoirs of magical energy that it was called the "Holy Grail". The purpose of the Moon Cell was to observe and record the entirety of human history, and if a historical figure was venerated enough by humanity, then it could be digitally recreated as a "Heroic Spirit" equipped with the powers and armaments that personified its legend.

At a certain time 20 Minutes into the Future, a great number of Wizards uploaded their souls to the vast cyberscape of the Moon Cell to take part in a "Holy Grail War". Each Wizard was granted a Heroic Spirit "Servant" as their partner and ally, and together they fought in a single-elimination tournament for the prize of a single wish granted by the Moon Cell's near-omnipotent power.

Hakuno Kishinami is one such participant: a seemingly-average highschooler with no memories and no wish for the Moon Cell. Hakuno is partnered with a boisterous and flamboyant Servant of the "Saber" class who is clad in red and wields a sword wreathed in flame.

Yet a ring of golden light in the sky heralds a fatal error within the Holy Grail War, and now the path to victory is locked at the highest ascent of seven "stratums", each controlled by a Floor Master who must be defeated to progress. With no choice but to ascend or be killed, Hakuno and Saber must fight upwards through the Moon Cell to reach the answers and salvation they both seek at the heart of the Holy Grail.

The first part of the anime adaptation, subtitled Oblitus Copernican Theory, aired on Japanese television from January 27, 2018 to April 1, 2018. This 10-episode arc covers the events up to the end of the sixth stratum. The two-hour finale, subtitled Illustrias Geocentric Theory, aired on July 29, 2018. Netflix picked up the series as a "Netflix Original" and streamed Oblitus Copernican Theory from June 30, 2018 with subtitles and dubs in multiple languages, with Illustrias Geocentric Theory following on October 30, 2018.


The anime provides examples of:

  • Action Prologue: The series opens up with a scene with half-dead female Hakuno laying around with Saber futilely trying to fight against Saver before he demolishes her.
  • Adaptational Badass:
    • Rin is shown in episode 3 to have some power that let her completely defeat Darius III, Fergus mac Roich, and Leonidas. Episode 7 reveals that she's a Demi-Servant with her previous Servant, Cu Chulainn.
    • Hakuno's Dead Face gives him super strength and super speed as shown in episode 5.
  • Adaptation Inspiration: The show loosely borrows structural and thematic elements from Dante's The Divine Comedy, specifically the Inferno, with Hakuno and Saber ascending through seven levels of a "Digitized Hell" where each floor master loosely embodies elements of the Seven Deadly Sins, such as Julius and Wrath, Rin/Rani and Sloth, and Leo and Pride.
  • Adaptational Jerkass:
    • The trauma of betrayal and mass murder in the first episode renders Hakuno colder and much more aloof than his video game counterpart. He grows out of this in the end, smiling a lot more and gaining numerous Pet the Dog moments, such as refusing to allow Nero to die alone.
    • Downplayed with Shinji who did kill Hakuno in the first episode. But episode 3 shows he does think of Hakuno as a friend and the thought of killing more people horrified Shinji to the point he made the first floor a paradise to stop the killing and hoped that by gathering all these people, something could happen. He also shows real loyalty to Rider and agrees to die with her when she loses.
    • Dying 999 years ago in the previous war and then being revived due to a mistake has turned Dan Blackmore from one of the most honorable characters in the story to a half-crazed recluse whose cold brutality manages to even shock his Servant.
  • Adaptational Modesty: Saber's dress hangs lower to avoid her perpetual Panty Shot Technically  while still showing off her legs.
  • Adapted Out:
    • The game's initial Decoy Protagonist and Taiga Fujimura do not appear. The encounter with the fourth Master and Servant pair from the game is knocked out of the adaptation completely with no mention of who the pair fought off, meaning there is no clue if the group fought Monji and his Berserker or Lil' Ronnie and her Lancer.
    • The book of the original script Nasu wrote, Last Encore Your Score, has the fourth floor Servant as Tamano, which lines up with his blog write-up of the main Extra series timeline where Tamano was the Servant fought on the fourth floor with Atrum Galliasta being her Master after being abandoned by Twice.
  • After the End: The result of Hakuno losing to Twice punts this timeline into centuries of decline and a ruined Earth, which Nasu has dubbed in Last Encore Your Score as the "Age of Ash". Humanity is at an end where it absolutely needs the godlike power of the Moon Cell to provide some kind of solution.
  • All There in the Manual: Nasu's released script, Last Encore Your Score and the Amari Drama CD reveals some details that weren't revealed in the anime.
    • The Nameless Archer in the first episode was indeed the real Nameless, who had been forced to clean up the looping preliminary round until it began to erode his very self.
    • Drake deciding to help Shinji run his stagnant city went so fundamentally against her core ideals (live fast and die hard) that it caused her extraordinary luck to fail her when she needed it most. This is why her guns jammed in episode 3.
    • Tamamo was the Servant on the fourth floor. Nasu specifically requested the fourth floor to be left out of the TV production, so it's possible that we will see the fourth floor in an OVA or other material.
    • The depletion of the Earth in all Extra timelines is a Quantum Time Lock.
    • Amari summoned Vanagandr (better known as Fenrir) as a Rider.
    • She decided to help Shinji run his city after she was forced out of the third floor by Alice.
    • The pretty-girl police squad was Amari's invention.
    • Shinji perceives and recognizes Hakuno as the student he killed in the preliminary round.
    • Shinji never left the roof (unwilling to face Hakuno); the Shinji hologram in the mayor's office was Amari in disguise.
    • Amari and Vanagandr engage Rin personally after Rin destroys the Berserkers in episode 3. Rin kills them both shortly before the city floods.
  • Alternate Universe: To Fate/EXTRA much like CCC. This timeline happens if you lose to Saver.
  • Anti-Hero: Hakuno makes it clear to Rin several times that he doesn't give a damn about the Holy Grail War or the fate of the world. All that matters to him is avenging the massacred students by destroying the Moon Cell. Character Development changes this in the end...
  • Art Shift: When Saber explains her life to female Hakuno, it is done is a style of a stylized puppet show.
  • Bad Future: While the 2030s in the original game were pretty dystopic, Last Encore is somehow worse. In episode 4 we learn that unlike the game, the anime takes place in the year 3020, almost a millennium later, and there are only 100,000 humans left on Earth. Mankind is well on its way to extinction. All this is happening is because Kishinami Hakuno lost to Saver.
  • Big Bad: Twice Pieceman, the winner of the previous Holy Grail War who now controls the Moon Cell or actually his Dead Face, as Twice himself died after making his wish to the "holy grail", with only his regrets remaining. Like most digital zombies, Twice's Dead Face is hell bent on destroying everything, using the Moon Cell to destroy Earth's environment and reduce the human population down to a mere 100,000. By the time of the show, he plans to destroy the Moon Cell as well, so humanity will have nowhere to escape to.
  • Big Damn Heroes:
    • Rin comes to Hakuno and Saber's rescues in episode 3.
    • Just as Archer is about to finish Hakuno and Saber, Rani shoots down his arrows in episode 4.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Hakuno is erased resetting the Moon Cell, and Earth is still in ruins due to Harways involvement in the Overcount Mana Loss incident that doomed the earth before the original Grail War, but now the few remaining bits of humanity that do not wish to die can find sanctuary in the Moon Cell, with a new cyberspace world and its infinite resources waiting for them when they come. The show ends with Rin, the Sole Survivor, setting off into the restored Moon Cell to build a new future.
  • Bodyguard Babes: Shinji's police force in the first level is composed entirely of girls.
  • Bowdlerise: A very odd, contextual case of this happens in the Latin American Spanish dub: All the mentions of the English honorifics Lord or Lady, used as translations of the Japanese honorific "-sama" are replaced with the Spanish honorifics señor (male) or señora/señorita (female) (both meaning "Mr." and "Mrs/Miss" respectively) instead. This is because, since the dub was done in Mexico, those English honorifics are used exclusively, as for the 2010s due to a language drift, as derogatory terms to refer to a person who is incredibly corrupt, arrogant and who only uses his or her influence to do what he or she wants. Since the dub was, as almost all anime dubs in Latin America, done from the English dub by proxy, this is a quite notable change.
  • Came Back Wrong: Dan Blackmore is a master from the previous Holy Grail War and was revived when everything went wrong because he was the strongest Master on the Floor. He lost his honorable persona and now just fights to kill. Rani believes that because the Moon Cell doesn't understand emotions, Dan was brought back as only a soldier.
  • The Cameo:
    • In a sense, Nameless shows up as a stone statue sent by the Moon Cell to clean up the masters that weren't accepted. He chases the half-dead Hakuno before Hakuno is able to summon Saber who is able to finish Nameless off.
    • Tamamo-no-Mae shows up in silhouette during the flashback to the original Twice's victory, as she was his Servant at the time.
    • Saber from CCC Foxtail appears in the beginning of episode 4 as a Servant to the Master who defeated Dan in the past.
    • There are also cameos of Servants that appeared in Fate/Grand Order:
      • Darius III, Fergus mac Roich, and Leonidas appear in episode 2 as Servants who were sold off to Shinji by their Masters, who now act as his own slaves.
      • Fuuma Kotaro appears in episode 5 as a Servant for one of Masters Dan had killed previously.
  • Censor Steam: During the bath scene, Saber's nipples are censored by steam. Just her nipples.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The bookmark Hakuno takes with him in episode 7 returns in episode 12 as a way for him and Nero to return to 7th floor after being knocked down, as it functions as one-time use version of The Queen's Glass Game.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • When Hakuno is having visions of how he has been killed, one shot has him been impaled and crucified into a rock by spears which resemble those used by the first Lancer. Meanwhile, another shot shows him lying dead in the same room where the Decoy Protagonist died and where Hakuno almost was killed off before summoning their Servant.
    • Shinji mentions in the video game that he once saw a Master with a Servant named Armstrong. In episode 3, a flashback shows him defeating a Master with an astronaut Servant, who is presumably meant to be Neil Armstrong. Also, the flashback takes place in the arena where the boss battle against Shinji and Rider happened in the game.
  • The Corrupter: Shinji takes control of the first floor and buys competing Servants off enemy Masters by convincing them to give up on reaching the Holy Grail and join his shining city, filled with NPCs. He then reduces the Servants to Berserkers, using them as cannon fodder without endangering his own.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Saber's battle against Saver can generously be called this as she doesn't even reach Saver before he obliterates her.
  • Cyberspace: The entire story takes place in this.
  • Darker and Edgier: The game was certainly grim in several places, but the story was mostly light hearted and rarely did it get extremely heavy. The anime adaption is far more gruesome and dark, with the Moon Cell being more threatening of a presence than in the game. This is best shown when the Moon Cell decides to purge the school of all NPCs and Students who did not make it into the Grail War, and the programs that do so are very violent.
  • Death by Cameo: Several Servants from Fate/Grand Order appear to act as colorful enemies for the heroes and villains to fight through.
  • Death of Personality: Rani states that using The Power of Hate all Dead Faces have will cause the death of Hakuno's personality, and Julius similarly states hatred will eventually consume Hakuno as it did him. Ultimately averted, due to Hakuno being a collection of regrets that managed to form the approximation of an ego, rather than an ego slowly being consumed by one overpowering regret. By the end, it's only the strain on his body that prevents Hakuno from using his Dead Face abilities constantly.
  • Due to the Dead: Rani makes graves for the defeated masters of the second floor if only because they lived desperately and deserved to be mourned by someone.
  • Dull Surprise: Hakuno doesn't freak out when a naked Saber joins him together for a hot spring bath, instead casually commenting that she's naked.
  • Evolving Credits: The end credits have one image that changes from episode to episode, depicting a relevant pair of characters. Episode 2 depicts Hakuno and his Saber, Episode 3 depicts Shinji and his Rider, Episodes 4 & 5 depicts Dan and his Archer, Episode 6 depicts Alice and her Caster, episode 8 depicts Julius and Berserker, episode 9 depicts Julius and female Hakuno, episode 10 depicts Rin and Rani, episodes 11 and 12 depicts Leo and Gawain, and episode 13 is a splash of every major Master and Servant pair in the War, plus extras.
  • Forever War: Episode 10 reveals that the sixth floor is stuck in one. Rin and Rani's servants mutually killed each other off just as the Moon Cell broke. The Moon Cell, unable to process what to do, then took their consciousness and made them part of the floor. Since then the originals have slept as they continuously created clones with their servant's powers to fight in the hopes one side would kill the other, thus freeing one of them. Eventually however, neither side could defeat the other, meaning both Rani and Rin were stuck. The sixth floor is covered in the shattered corpses of Rin and Rani's copies. After many years of this happening, Rin and Rani decided to end the conflict, and sent some copies to the lower floors, with the plan being they would get a master up to the sixth floor to end their suffering.
  • Furo Scene: In the second episode, Hakuno takes a bath to heal from the damage that Nameless caused last episode. Saber then joins him for no other reason than she wants to. This then goes into a prolonged discussion about the Holy Grail War with the only article of clothing between the two of them being Saber's hair ribbon, with what little modesty given being provided by camera angles, steam, and the positioning of Saber's arms as she makes dramatic gestures.
  • Go Out with a Smile: Combined with a Freeze-Frame Bonus. Nameless' expression turns into a smile after Saber slashes him in half.
  • Heroic BSoD: In Episode 8 when Hakuno realizes he is just a grudge given form, he nearly gives up on the war, seeing no point in continuing if he just wants to cause death and destruction.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: The height difference between Saber (150 cm) and Hakuno (170 cm) is a curious thing on its own.
  • I Am Who?: Hakuno throughout the anime has been wondering why he hates everything and why he feels driven to rise to the top despite not having a wish. Episode 8 reveals that he's the Anthropomorphic Personification of the hatred from the masters Twice killed, based around the original female Hakuno.
  • In Love with Your Carnage: Even before Hakuno met Saber, he respected her valour and determination to fight until the bitter end as evidenced by the ruins of colosseum Noble Phantasm. This is chiefly why he admires her so much when they become comrades. Although she'd like it very much if he could bring himself to appreciate her beauty and would-be artistic talents too.
  • Ironic Nursery Tune: Episode seven has a rendition of Ring a Ring o' Roses; you will forever fear the words "We all jump up".
  • "Everybody Dies" Ending: By the end of the show, every character we've met is dead, other than Rin Tohsaka. Further, most of the 256 masters on the Moon Cell were dead before the show even began, Twice has reduced Earth's population to around 100,000 over his 1,000 year reign, and Tohsaka is nothing but a digitized soul, with her physical body on Earth having died centuries ago.
  • Lost in Translation: Unlike manga and drama CD adaptations where Hakuno Kishinami's name is 岸波白野 in Kanji, Hakuno Kishinami's name in the anime is 岸浪ハクノ with a completely different first name. This is Foreshadowing the fact that the audience has been following a copy of the original Hakuno and the real Hakuno has already died as seen in the first episode but due to there being no way to convey that and the lack of other adaptations receiving an official translation, this element was quietly dropped for the English release.
  • Mind Screw: The backgrounds frequently contain Bizarrchitecture, the music is mostly wonky and sinister, Deranged Animation abound, and there's an underlying sense that not all the characters are seeing the world properly, let alone the same thing.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • The artwork of playable Caster used in the sticker on Rin's drink cooler is same as seen in her Max Bond Craft Essence in F/GO. The drink itself is from the original Fate/Extra as an item that recovers 30 MP.
    • Dan's grave is located beneath a yew tree, similarly to how he wanted his body to be buried as explained in the Knight's Pride Craft Essence in F/GO.
    • When Rin creates raincoats for the group, Saber naturally gets the yellow one, just as original-Saber did in the Fate/stay night visual novel.
    • A very dark one: the male Hakuno we've been following is actually an Anthropomorphic Personification of the hatred of all the masters Twice killed, just like how in Apocrypha Assassin of Black was the combination of the hatred of the 80000 born and unborn children who died during Jack the Ripper's murders in London.
    • Before Hakuno leaves the projector room to return to Nero, he tries to ask the original Hakuno a question, but only yakisoba bread remains. Yakisoba bread is another recovery item from the Extra games, which has since been depicted as Hakuno's Trademark Favorite Food because of how often players used it.
    • The phenomenon generating infinite Rins and Ranis is called "Unlimited Raise Dead", the name of the "Groundhog Day" Loop caused by Avenger in Fate/hollow ataraxia - and, since it spawns a shade of Avenger for every loop, culminates in an infinite army of Avengers revealing itself during the climax. Since Rin and Rani keep creating avatars of themselves in a bid to end their endless battle, the name is very fitting.
  • Not Distracted by the Sexy: Hakuno doesn't find Saber's beauty all that titillating and barely reacts to seeing her naked due to his mind being so filled with anger and confusion.
  • Not His Sled: This anime was promoted as a straight adaptation of the game, but quickly reveals itself to be a completely new story.
  • No Ending: The anime adaptation ends after the events on the 6th floor, with no resolution to the story. This is where the July special episode begins, following up the battle against Leo's Saber, and the Final Boss Saver.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: In episode 8, Saber and Hakuno casually mention beating the fourth floor was easy as they ascend to the fifth floor.
  • Ominous Floating Castle: Saver's Noble Phantasm, Chakravartin, controls all of SE.RA.PH and can be seen in the sky of every floor.
  • Once More, with Clarity: Though such recollections aren't to be trusted, events from the past are replayed at points to show that they might not have played out exactly (or at all) like the characters remember them.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: Episode 6 and 7 make a point of saying there are two different kind of ghosts in the Moon Cell. Cyber Ghosts and Dead Face. Cyber Ghosts are bugs, stuck in one place and filled with regrets. While Dead Faces are someone's grudges given form. Cyber Ghosts are considered mostly harmless while Dead Face attack the living.
  • Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: In episode 5, Saber lets herself bleed out all of her blood in order to get Archer's poison out of her system, using her Invictus Spiritus skill (better known from Aksys' translation of Fate/Extra as Thrice-Setting Sun) to prevent her from dying of blood loss.
  • The Power of Hate: What powers Hakuno to keep moving after being stabbed multiple times by Shinji. He keeps moving with his injuries as he refuses to die and promises to the others that are being killed that he'll get revenge for them as he hates everything on the moon. Becomes literal as he unlocks the power of the Dead Face during a confrontation with Shinji.
  • Production Throwback: Alice's floor resembles the Witch rooms of Shaft's other notable franchise, Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
  • Running Gag: A rather dark example. Hakuno is frequently impaled/stabbed throughout the series only to survive out of sheer hatred and determination.
  • Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Due to Hakuno's Adaptational Jerkass in this anime, he's much quieter while Saber is as energetic as ever.
  • The Shadow Knows: Alice's monster form still casts a shadow of her human self, most noticeable when she gets impaled by Gae Bolg.
  • Shameless Fanservice Girl: Saber joins Hakuno's bath because she wants to and doesn't mind being naked in front of him at all.
  • Shout-Out: The floor that Caster resides in is visually similar to those of the Witch's domains in Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
  • Slept Through the Apocalypse: Due to Hakuno's summoning of Saber past the deadline for the Holy Grail War, by the time the duo arrive in the first stage, the majority of the masters have given up on both the war and their servants. These masters have made a government as they live on the first floor in peace.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Saber has a very similar appearance and costume with Fate/stay night's Saber, Artoria Pendragon, whose knight Gawain is one of the final enemies the protagonists must face, and uses a version of Artoria's Excalibur Noble Phantasm.
  • Something about a Rose: Roses are the central motif of the anime in promotion as it is the flower associated with Saber.
  • The Stoic: This Hakuno doesn't emote at all.
  • Underwater Kiss: When Saber falls into the sea, Hakuno swims down and kisses her to give her air and mana.
  • Undying Loyalty: Archer to his master, Dan Blackmore. Archer has been fighting and killing others for 999 years despite knowing that Dan cannot advance through the war, because he can't bear to tell his master that all his efforts are pointless and to die.
  • Unreliable Narrator: The flashback with Alice shows Hakuno with a different Command Seal on the opposite hand when he talks to her. It's entirely possible that his flashbacks come from the hundreds of dead masters that Hakuno is comprised of.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Hakuno is the only one who is shocked when a man collapses after losing a chess game. Even Rin Tohsaka is mostly nonchalant about it.
  • We All Die Someday: When Twice used Chakravartin to close the Angelica Cage, people who died in the Grail War couldn't get recycled and became Dead Faces and Cyber Ghosts, which the Moon Cell couldn't delete since they had already died. After a thousand years of this, with SE.RA.PH broken, unable to observe things normally and being rewritten to wipe everything out, the Moon Cell began to, in Gawain's words, "acknowledge death".
  • Wham Episode:
    • Episode 8, period. It reveals that the Hakuno we've been following is actually an Anthropomorphic Personification of the hatred of all the masters killed by Twice, based on the last master to die: the original female Hakuno Kishinami. In addition to that, Julius is also a Dead Face.
    • Episode 10 tops this. How can Rani be on the 5th floor, when she was supposed to have died at the 2nd floor? How could Rin pop seemingly out of nowhere out of the blue after EXPLICITLY not making it to the elevator? You must have been thinking she had some magic way upstairs, when it had been said the ONLY way EVER was the Ladder? Well, it turns out the 6th floor has a literal factory of Rins and Ranis and they have been using body doubles to go down freely and regroup with Hakuno.
  • Wham Shot:
    • After being stabbed by Shinji's police force, Hakuno's face becomes deranged.
    • Rin transforming and using Gae Bolg in episode 7.
  • What If?: The entire premise is basically what would happen if you lose to Saver in Fate/EXTRA.
  • Worf Had the Flu: Rider was taken down in episode 3 easily, due to not having fought for a while and because her guns and artillery's ammo comes from the amount of treasures she has in stock, which Shinji fully directed towards building the city, leaving her weapons and Noble Phantasm without said resources. The second reason is that living in a stagnant city that went so fundamentally against her core ideals (live fast and die hard) caused her extraordinary luck to fail her when she needed it most.

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