The Case Files of Lord El-Melloi II

Well, Kayneth is a very talented and well-trained mage, him being an asshole isn't a point against considering he lived in a society of assholes.

In theory Magi who aren't assholes fail as magi. Keineth was perfect in that regard.

Waver's opinion was "I thought he was a gigantic asshole but I did genuinely learn a lot from him" which is pretty fair.

I remember his wife more than the man himself but I can see why he might've been respected.

Kayneth was an ass, yes, but from what we've seen of him in /Zero he's actually pretty low on the mage assholeness scale and suffured a huge lot more than he caused suffering.

A bit late watching it - but I really enjoyed Case Files.

Waver and Gray are great. And seeing so many cameos was pretty fun.

I'm not a huge fan of Reines, but I did like her a bit better in the shopping episode.

I also already knew Mage society sucks. But it bears repeating.

Karabo was also nice to see. If someone has only watched Fate stuff the Church comes off pretty poorly.

Edited by 32ndfreeze on Feb 7th 2020 at 9:11:56 PM

Well the face people have for the church in fate stuff is Kirie who is...Kirie

Kirie dies in the very first Kara no Kyoukai movie and never even mentions the Church, so I'm pretty sure she's not the main source of the impression.

Once more, I don't know how to spell

So, went through this a few weeks ago. Kinda too short for my liking but I did enjoy the greater emphasis on all the different kinds of magecraft that we got. Gray is also my new Fate waifu xD

Pretty much all of my complaints about the show boil down to rushed pacing/excess compression one way or another. It's the kind of show that would've benefited from a longer episode count, and while I get that they needed time to dripfeed information for viewers not already familiar with the novels, it did mean Rail Zeppelin getting one or two less episodes than it needed.

On the other hand I also really enjoyed the anime-original stories for what they were, possibly even more than RZ, so I'm conflicted. Hopefully now that they've got the introductions over and done with, they'd be able to slow things down for future seasons. Alternately they just dedicate an entire season to anime-original low-stakes vignettes that flesh out the world and magecraft in more detail. The anime screenwriter already does short stories for TYPE-MOON on FGO and the like so I imagine it shouldn't be too hard.

Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 9th 2020 at 8:05:06 AM

I liked anime original episodes more than RZ. I didn't like this arc in the series, but now that the novel that tells the first half of that arc is translated, I see that it was because of pacing.

But as far as I'm concerned, the biggest problem is the fact that they started adapting from the middle of the story. I understand that they likely wanted it to be more connected to Fate, but I think starting at least from Iselma to give some idea of how mage's society works, would have been better...

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2020-10-05/aniplex-usa-to-release-lord-el-melloi-ii-case-files-anime-on-blu-ray-disc/.164866

Incoming Blu-Ray release.

Bumping for the New Years special preview

So, de-aged Waver? Seems interesting.

Is that Olga Marie I spot there?

Yep, she appears in the anime but way younger than she is in Grand Order.

Edited by theLibrarian on Dec 20th 2021 at 2:07:18 PM

The OVA is up on Crunchyroll, should be up on Funimation soon, possibly tomorrow at the latest.

Man, that OVA was really melancholic. It just left me sad.

Liked this special's story, though I have some problems with how it was told. It's not quite a pacing problem since I think the story flowed well enough, but more that the characters felt like living props. Reines was probably the biggest offender: she didn't feel like herself at all and was just there to act as Waver's sound board.

The theme song was nice. I was afraid I wouldn't like it because I'm so used to the instrumental version, but it ended up being pretty good!

It's funny how this story has Waver help someone clinging unhealthy to their halcyon days, and the memory of someone they greatly admired to move on, when that precisely describes Waver himself.

Like, this is message of not clinging to your idealized past, as delivered by a man clinging to his past.

The irony is just amazing.

Yeah, those were my thoughts as well. Like, the climax is basically Waver being the biggest hypocrite and yet narrative tries to sell us that he is not.

It's similar to the fairy story from the series, but at least there Kairi points that his fixation on the past is nothing but trouble.

Edited by Kara on Jan 1st 2022 at 11:28:24 PM

Reines was only around to enjoy Waver's embarrassment, which is a very Reines thing to do.

I don't think Waver was really being hypocritical here? Olga is present, so it clearly takes place after Rail Zeppelin, which ended with Waver voluntarily giving up his chance to resummon Iskandar and try to move on. He's still in love with Iskander and probably will be for the rest of his life but he's not going to try to force it to go back to those old days and instead focus on self-actualizing the way he Iskander might've wanted him to. He basically tells Camus just as much, particularly since she created a literal Lotus-Eater Machine to rot away in. If anything it seems like it's meant to solidify his Character Development.

Now if you're talking about the part where he tells her to cut ties with him while refusing to do the same with Iskandar, I think the point was less that you should not have those feelings and more that that it's an Anti-Escapism Aesop.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jan 2nd 2022 at 5:13:55 AM