ANI-MOVIES, *Fate/Grand Order: Final Singularity, Grand Temple Of Time: Solomon

With one of the longest anime movie titles ever, the first major story arc of the Fate/Grand Order video game is adapted for the big screen, although if you want to get the English dub for it, you'll have to shell out a lot of mola for the Blu-ray as it isn't available on streaming. If you're looking to save some cash, get it directly through the Crunchyroll store for about half the cost. Taking place after the Babylonia TV series, Final Singularity, Grand Temple Of Time: Solomon has the last singularity the heroes at Chaldea have to deal with after the other seven. If you're including the prelude feature from First Order there are a total of nine singularities, which including this movie, only four of them got an anime production. With director Toshifumi Akai picking up production from the Babylonia anime, the film was written by Type-Moon founder Kinoko Nasu, and animated by CloverWorks studio which was also behind Babylonia. This was the "Avengers Assemble" for the majority of the Fate/Grand Order main characters, but only ones that were featured in the prior singularities, so some of them make their animation premiere in this movie even if only for a fleeting moment.

With the seven collected Holy Grails, Chaldea plans for their last battle to fight the Mage King Solomon who is responsible for the whole scheme of setting up time disruptions throughout human history to wipe out humanity. They manage to convert the Chaldean HQ into a mobile fortress to enter the last singularity. Ritsuka is given a new suit that allows him to summon up several Heroic Spirts at once making him the ultimate Pokemon player, while Mash is confronted with her limited mortality as she only has enough lifespan for this final battle. Lev Lainur shows up for the first time in a while to stop them and reveals that he's one of 72 demons that power Solomon's history eraser button. Ritsuka brings together the majority of all the Heroic Spirits he's encountered over his travels, and they dismantle Lev while Ritsuka and Mash go to confront Solomon who it turns out is not really Solomon. The big boss is Goetia, the first of the demons that was borrowing Solomon's body to restart the whole of creation so demons would replace humans as the dominate race. A huge reveal behind one of the secondary characters sets to the path to Ritsuka's giant clash with Goetia, so I won't spoil the whole ending for you. Suffice to say, it's a mostly happy ending.

As probably being the last anime to be made for the Fate/Grand Order franchise, this movie was made with the intention getting profits from fans of the game. There are so many throwaway characters that make quick cameos and references to events you don't even know about unless you played the game that anyone outside the fandom would just be totally lost. If you just want to watch this to get some closure or are simply a Fate completionist, then it's a decent idea to check this out, but if you're a hardcore Fate fanatic than you'll want to get Blu-ray box set with all the bells and whistles including an art gallery and more. The huge downfall with this being the conclusion to this particular branch of the Fate family tree is it clocks in dozens of the heroic characters that only manage to get a swift few seconds of airtime with no dialogue at all, and most of the actual story is bogged down with the philosophy of why human existence is pointless in contrived monologues. It's better to go ahead and watch one of the original Fate/Stay Night adaptations, or even Fate/Apocrypha if you want a better parallel universe story.