For 30 minutes of two people just having a conversation to be this interesting, if it isn’t Garden of Sinners, I don’t know what story can pull this off. Maybe Frieren.
After watching the first two or so movies, I was pretty confused about what was going on. When I watched the first movie a few years ago before I even got into Fate in the first place, I didn’t get ANYTHING. I was utterly clueless, scratching my head going WTF did I even watch? Was it me who was too stupid to not understand it or was it the movie? However, now having completed almost all of the Fate adaptations, I picked up on bits and pieces here and there like the mystic eyes and magus’ but the general direction of the story nor what it was all about was lost to me. This made me sceptical about how it would progress.
This confusion didn’t deter me from this tho. If I’m being honest, it made me want to know more. Though the overall story was confusing, there were so many elements of the initial movies that kept me hooked. The amazing fight scenes, the interesting characters and lo and behold Shiki herself. Looking back at all of the movies, now it all makes sense. When I started the first movie, I wasn’t expecting it to be the starting piece of a whole storyline, I was expecting it to cover most of the loose ends because of the fact that it was a movie.
As much as I enjoy Fate, I never liked its storytelling. With the exception of Fate/Zero, I didn’t really get invested in the well-being of its characters to the point I connected with them. It’s an entirely different story from the Garden of Sinners. With its more character-driven, dark and nuanced approach to morality, it struck a chord that made Fate/Stay Night’s storytelling feel surface-level.
As someone who’s distinctly aversed to philosophical stories like Lain, I’m surprised I found myself thinking about the story on a much deeper level than, good fight, good show. I feel that this is because it didn’t try to force it down our throats. Most of the heavy topics were simply things I picked up from what I was drip-fed, making it not feel forced and boring to boot. Hell, I literally watched two people have a 30-minute conversation about what it means to be a human without ever feeling distracted or bored. That’s saying something.
One of the biggest highlights of the whole series of movies is how experimental they are. For one, how the chronological order doesn’t match up with the release order. As much as I hated it in the beginning when things really did start making sense, it was satisfying to see why the story was shaped the way it was. The movies are ordered thematically. It’s not just random. We’re following the life of Shiki as we’re putting the puzzle together piece by piece.
In the end, despite wishing the conclusion had a little bit more nuance, the journey leading up to the end is top-notch. The series did a good job of interweaving philosophical elements without pretentiousness and making it boring and that is what makes it so great.