Written by Kinoko Nasu.
Serva★Fes, the Luluhawa Summer Festival Singularity where Servants get together to enjoy summer and produce doujinshi, has returned. The last time this innocuous event happened, it came with a sinister ulterior motive, and there is only one Servant who has the skillset for something this ridiculous — looks like BB is at it again! ...Except not. While BB did recreate the Luluhawa Singularity, she (shockingly) kept it benign this time, just to give all the Servants something to do for the week instead of twiddling their thumbs until the next part of the Ordeal Call. Everyone practically rushes to the Singularity... except for the Protagonist, whom Goredolf holds back because they haven't submitted a report in six months. Thankfully they've got Chloe von Einzbern to help them out.
Cut to four days later as the Protagonist is about to enjoy the rest of their vacation, when BB covertly contacts them with troubling news: something or someone has hijacked the Singularity and locked BB out of her own event! Sidelined by the Ordeal Call (and not wanting this black mark on her villain cred to go public), BB has no choice but to secretly beg the Protagonist for help in catching the culprit and resolving the Singularity. Assembling a Summer-themed crack team of Altria Caster (now going by "Alcas" as a shorthand), Chloe, Suzuka Gozen, Gawain, Tristan, and Lancelot (Saber), the Protagonist Rayshifts their group into the Singularity... and is immediately met with the titanic visage of a flaming Cernunnos, followed by Luluhawa's — now "Hawaltria" — reset-enforcing mechanic: a light reminiscent of an Excaliblast engulfing the city.
When the reset resolves, Suzuka and the three knights have been scattered somewhere in the Singularity. Now several heads short, the Protagonist, Alcas, and Chloe are the only ones able to enforce the rules of the Singularity:
- Doujin circles are forbidden to fight each other (non-artists can still fight each other all they want).
- Strict adherence to the Committee's decided genre.
- Evil BB Money from the previous Serva★Fes is not allowed.
- No one is allowed to work past the night curfew.
- No one is allowed to stay in Hawaltria unless they're participating in the Serva★Fes, be it as an artist, customer, or staff.
- Large gatherings such as barbeques, outdoor concerts, or game tournaments require a permit.
If one of these rules is broken, or Serva★Fes is otherwise interrupted, the Singularity resets. And all the while, the trio has to find their missing teammates, fight off three "Calamities" a la Faerie Britain aiming to derail the event, navigate the massive amount of changes the Singularity has undergone, and take down the culprit behind the whole fiasco meddling with Chaldea's Summer.
...This is going to be a hot mess.
Tropes featured in this episode:
- Aborted Arc: It was previously hinted in Imaginary Scramble that the second Servant Fes would have featured Yang Guifei vs BB due to their natural incompatibility and patron Outer Gods' mutual hostility towards each other. But due to the Ordeal Call cracking down on existing Extra Class Servants, BB has been Demoted to Extra, Yang Guifei is nowhere to be seen, and the focus is primarily on Servants from Faerie Britain and those associated with them.
- Amateur Sleuth: The story is framed as a crime scene investigation, with Alcas as the detective.
- Big Bad: No one! It turns out everyone, including the Singularity's hijacker, were acting without intent to cause lasting harm. All parties were either trying to solve the Singularity or just trying to have their own Summer fun with it while it lasted. Even the underlying source of the trouble, Wandjina, hadn't meant to cause problems and was merely trying to reach out and communicate.
- Call-Back: Morgan once again pays the protagonist 100 million QP as a boon for their accomplishment at her resort, just as she did in Faerie Britain after the Calamity of Norwich's defeat.
- Clear My Name: BB, knowing perfectly well she's the one everyone will (logically) blame for this vacation going south, begs the Protagonist to catch the real culprit.
- Debut Queue: The first banner introduced Summer Altria Caster (Berserker), Summer Chloe (Avenger), and Summer Suzuka (Rider). The second banner added Summer Barghest (Archer), Summer Baobhan Sith (Pretender), and Summer Mélusine (Ruler). Clearing the event's story awards the player with Cnoc na Riabh Yaraan-doo (Foreigner) as the Welfare.
- Degraded Boss: Cernunnos' overwhelming boss abilities (and hit points) have been split evenly among the three versions of him encountered during the event. Moenunnos has his Damage Over Time stacks (albeit with Burn instead of Curse), Uminunnos has his Stone Wall charge swap manipulation gimmick (again, with Storm Layers instead of Curses), and Yamenunnos has Baobhan's borrowed Skill and NP Seal capabilities but with the NP drain tied to his own NP instead of a Skill. However, each one has a nasty additional trick on top of these. Moenunnos can cast Spreading Fire, and does bonus damage against enemies afflicted with Burn. Servants that attack Umununnos to remove his Storm Layers have their health drained and their defense decreased. Yamenunnos has a high chance of automatically stunning a Servant when they activate their skills, his seals combo with how he has increased defense against debuffed enemies, and he cleanses the three latest buffs of his opponents every two turns.
- For Want Of A Nail: All of the information regarding the Singularity could be learned from the Serva★Fes Normalization Committee... but their headquarters only open to the public on the first day, and the Protagonist always wakes up on the second day. After the Wham Shot of Yaraan-doo being the cause of the resets and the Normalization Committee being the force making her do it, the Protagonist finally wakes up on the first day and immediately storms the headquarters for answers.
- Foreshadowing:
- Bakin and Omichi have separated into their own seperate bodies independent of each other when they arrive at Hawaltria. They're greatly confused at how this happened but speculate that the Singularity must have allowed for Servants with different existences within their Spirit Origin to manifest as separate people. This sets up the reveal that Altria Caster and Altria Avalon have been existing separate from each other the whole time.
- Another case with Lady Avalon, who has her first real interaction with a Living Lie Detector. Alcas' True Sight immediately identifies Lady Avalon's looming secret and "convoluted" connection to Merlin, to which she kindly asks Alcas not to dispel the illusion of her Spirit Origin — and Alcas confirms she's not lying on the basis of secretly being a villain or something, she really will disappear if her identity is compromised. With The Unreveal strictly necessary to keep her alive, Alcas agrees to keep quiet.
- Implausible Deniability: The new currency that replaced BB's currency is called "AA dollars", with "Altria Avalon" in English and Altria Avalon's own face on the bill. Alcas frantically claims they, as the detective, know nothing and asks that the Protagonist not jump to conclusions.
- Lighter and Softer: To Avalon le Fae as majority of the main cast come from that storyline and are involved in moments wackier and sillier than their debut story. Which, given how Avalon le Fae is one of, if not the darkest stories in Cosmos in the Lostbelt, is saying something.
- Mythology Gag:
- To get Chloe back to normal after she's turned giant and gone on a rampage, Illya and Miyu draw a doujinshi for her. Said doujinshi takes the form of the very first Fate doujinshi Hiroshi Hiroyamanote ever published.
- The same scene has Oberon talk about the makings of a doujinshi in a similar vein to Mafia Kajita's tour of publishing company Ryokuyou-sha for their work on Chica Umino's Oberon-themed doujinshi
Kingdom of Twilight.
- Not Me This Time: If it weren't for BB firmly establishing her innocence in the opening scene, all signs would point to her as the primary villain of the event.
- Portmanteau: The Singularity is eventually revealed to be a different take on Hawaii being fused, now being named Hawaltria, naturally a portmanteau with Altria. With the reveal of the merged landmass being of Hawaii and Australia, it's stated it was originally going to be "Hawastralia", but Altria Avalon changed it because it was too indicative of the local deity (and too simple).
- Redemption Demotion: Played with. Each rematch against a former Calamity from the Sixth Lostbelt is much less difficult than the climactic boss battles from there, but all of them (even Oberon Vortigern to an extent) are much happier than they've ever been, even if they're not as strong.
- Running Gag: The nameless old men who allege to just be passing-by Heroic Spirits who show up to comment on events with an inexplicably deep knowledge of what's been going on in Hawaltria.
- Sequel Episode: To Serva★Fes 2018 - Servant Summer Festival!.
- Speak of the Devil: Turns out that the reason Cernunnos is in the hijacked Luluhawa Singularity in the first place were due to "The Spirit King of Darkness" mentioning him by name, summoning the Beast God in the process by accident.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Both of the managers of the Singularity royally screwed up.
- BB wasn't content with just recreating the same Luluhawa, so she borrowed a bit of Australia to shake things up. She, once again, didn't account for how the local deity might gum up the works.
- Altria Avalon usurped the Singularity in an attempt to fix the problem by launching an overcomplicated scheme to appease the disturbed deity, hiding the deity's identity and forcing a mandate to make everyone create doujinshi with the same theme to prove they can cooperate. The authors' anger at the mandate and competitiveness with each other just made the deity's wrath worse, and A.A.'s obfuscation of the truth meant it took way too long to figure out why.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: The hijacked Luluhawa Singularity isn't observing timeloops this time, but instead running on time dilation: 7 days inside the Singularity is only 1 day outside.
