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EP. REVIEW: Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia

I've only been playing the game a couple of weeks, but I feel at this point the game will be so much less interesting than this series has been i wonder if Ill bother at that stage. Maybe Ill just skip the cutscenes, I'm not sure. :/

But man the last episode was amazing.

I didn't even really understand how Archer Gil showed up. I'm assuming he's not just another Servant summoned after King Gil died, but rather the same Gil. Not that I care too much about it, anyway, as soon as Merlin and Bone Daddy showed up it was pretty clear anyone could show up just because.

He seemed to have King Gil's knowledge though, and (at least as far as I remember from Fate lore) Servant knowledge doesn't 'stay'. I've heard that's different in GO, but never how exactly, so that could be it applying here I suppose. I had entertained the thought that it was the Counter Force, but that's a can of worms that I never really got.

It's rather that other goddesses have too much personality, probably since they're all incarnated. They embody chaotic forces of nature and humanity "growing up" means stopping being at the mercy of them or asking those forces for support. Yes she's contradictory, because she can't be anything but a mother that clings to her children. And when the children want to go away, she decides to make new children, because as a god that's the only thing she can do.

Rather the whole concept of Beast doesn't make all that much sense. Nasu just wanted to brainlessly squeeze in that overused Christian concept of seven sins.

SilverTalon01 wrote:

Ep 19 Review wrote: This is, ostensibly, the final battle of FGO's final singularity, so if ever there were a point to through caution to the wind and indulge in excess, it's right here. It isn't the final singularity. This is the 7th singularity. There is one after Babylonia literally called the final singularity.

Which is why they said ostensibly. At this point in the story, the characters and the audience didn’t know there was another singularity after it.

Yes, I was wrong about them being the Christian sins, but they are still seven (as both Kama and Kiara embody two facets of the same concept) and embodying concepts of sinfulness. The Sephirot thing sounds like headcanon, I have not seen them associated with it in any work and such association doesn't even make sense as the Sephirot categories are emanations of God.
While advancement of humanity is a big deal, I don't see the narrative to be teleological, Nasu is just concerned about futures that lead to the death or stagnation of humanity. There's no Golden Path.

I don't want to engage in lorehumping much, since I'm mostly past that. Nasu has employed retconning and rpgizing enough that I've stopped believing he is interested in very coherent metaphysics, despite him recently venturing into much more abstract and thus boring "humanity, fudge yeah" stories (Extra and fgo being prime examples).

When I say not teleological, I mean there isn't any specific end goal that would ascribe meaning to human existence. There are just paths along scientific progress and death of magic that humanity can take. Some of them are dead ends. Wanting to avoid that is a typical story you can give a villain to try and make them sympathetic.

Kabbalah is just one of many majutsu schools and I have not seen anywhere that it claims primacy just because it shares birthplace with Solomon. Is Sephirot even mentioned in association with him? Historically Kabbalah only dates to middle ages. Obv if fgo materials or smth say that Kabbalah is based on Solomon's majutsu, fine.

You just said that there are 10 beasts corresponding to sephirot. Seven grand servants are simply summoned to oppose a single beast, so I don't see a reflection. Also if beasts are Evils in a Buddhist sense, why is there Sephirot involved at all? Buddhist and Jewish metaphysics are not compatible.