Fate/Apocrypha
Entry updated 12 October 2026. Tagged: TV.
Japanese animated tv series (2017). A-1 Pictures; Aniplex; Notes. Directed by Yoshiyuki Asai. Written by Yūichirō Higashide. Character design by Yūkei Yamada. Music by Masaru Yokoyama. Voice cast includes Natsuki Hanae, Ryōtarō Okiayu, Rumi Ōkubo, Maaya Sakamoto, Miyuki Sawashiro, Junichi Suwabe and Kōki Uchiyama. 25 24-minute episodes. Colour.
A spin-off from the Fate franchise beginning with the Visual Novel Fate/stay night (2004), set in one of that Multiverse's Parallel Worlds. The Jonbar Point occurs when the Greater Grail – a magical device capable of granting wishes; a literal McGuffin – is stolen from Fuyuki, Japan, during World War Two and eventually transported to Romania. Decades later, the Yggdmillennia clan of magi announces possession of the Grail and declares independence from the governing Mage's Association, triggering an enlarged "Great Holy Grail War", a form of ritualized combat (see Games and Sports). In it, the Black faction, composed of seven Yggdmillennia mages, confronts the Red Faction of seven Association-aligned mages.
Each mage summons a Servant, and as elsewhere in the franchise, the Servants are recreations of figures from history, literature and Mythology. They include, for the Black Faction: Astolfo (Ōkubo), Avicebron, Chiron, the Frankenstein Monster, Jack the Ripper, Siegfried (Suwabe) and Vlad III (Okiayu); and for the Red Faction: Achilles, Atalanta, Karna, Mordred (Sawashiro), Semiramis, Spartacus and William Shakespeare. A neutral Ruler Servant also supervises the contest: Joan of Arc (Sakamoto), incarnated in the body of a French schoolgirl. The resulting bricolage freely collapses distinctions between historical persons, literary characters and legendary heroes. The Servants' associated stories, characteristic of the Fate franchise's systematic rationalization of Magic and mythology, determine their Superpowers. Shakespeare's mind-control powers (see Hypnosis) can force opponents into theatrical re-enactments of their traumas; Jack the Ripper embodies the collective, vengeful yet innocent, spirit of London's exploited children; Semiramis can summon her legendary Hanging Gardens, which become a flying fortress; Avicebron creates Golems, including a gigantic artificial Adam that turns its surroundings into Eden (see Adam and Eve); while Vlad's association with Dracula means he can become a Vampire.
To make the cast more diverse and appealing (see Fan Service), three traditionally male figures are Gender-swapped and depicted as female: Mordred, the Frankenstein Monster and Jack the Ripper. The latter's scantily dressed, childlike incarnation exemplifies the controversial Lolicon-inflected fan service found in some Anime. More successful was the characterization of Mordred, whose rebellious personality and developing surrogate father-daughter relationship with her Master, Kairi Shishigō, provide a sympathetic counterpoint to her resentment of King Arthur – herself gender-swapped in the original Fate/stay night – whose rejection of Mordred as an heir has left her struggling with her inherited Identity. Perhaps the series's most distinctive character, however, is Astolfo, who retains the male identity of the legendary paladin but is presented as an androgynous, cross-dressing otokonoko (a Japanese term for a feminine-looking boy). His cheerful, sympathetic characterization and subsequent popularity in internet memes and fan culture have made him one of anime's most recognizable gender-nonconforming characters, arguably transcending the fame of the series itself.
The ostensible factional war is thrown into disarray by the escape of Sieg (Hanae), one of Yggdmillennia's mass-produced homunculi, short-lived artificial humans manufactured principally as sources of magical energy (see Androids, Power Sources). Saved by Siegfried, who sacrifices himself and gives the dying homunculus his heart, Sieg gains an independent existence and the ability temporarily to assume Siegfried's form (see Shapeshifters). His rapid development from manufactured slave-servant to self-determining person makes identity and the ethics of artificial life increasingly important to the series, displacing its initially dominant tournament structure. The homunculi recall the traditional Golem, an association reinforced by Avicebron, the legendary – and here literal – creator of Golems, and by the parallel, more melancholic arc of the Frankenstein Monster. Nicknamed Fran, mostly mute and rejected by her creator as defective, she likewise seeks recognition as a person; her eventual self-sacrifice contrasts with Sieg's continuing acquisition of autonomy and individuality.
The Red faction is covertly controlled (see Secret Masters) by a second Ruler, Shirō Kotomine, a Japanese Christian martyr. He intends to use the Grail to free humanity from bodily mortality, ushering in a magical Singularity in which all humans attain Immortality as deathless spirits. This millennarian project (see Religion) raises the stakes even higher, transforming the struggle into a conflict over an imposed Utopia: although Amakusa seeks universal salvation, he would achieve it without humanity's consent, giving his promised and unasked-for Transcendence distinctly Dystopian implications, reminiscent of Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End (1953). The resulting questions of free will and the desirability of enforced perfection complement the series' treatment of the ethics of manufactured life.
Amakusa is eventually defeated by Sieg; in a deus ex machina resolution, the latter transforms into the dragon Fafnir and carries the Grail to another plane of existence, preventing humanity's transformation. Astolfo, the only surviving Servant, emerges as a fellow victor and remains in the human world, while Sieg's developing romance with Joan, who increasingly regards him as an individual rather than an artificial being, culminates in their eventual reunion beyond the mortal world. A disposable artificial person thus becomes successively an autonomous individual, a Hero and finally a creature of legend.
The work belongs squarely to the Science Fantasy, Science and Sorcery and urban fantasy modes characteristic of the broader Fate franchise. Magecraft is treated as a rigorous, quasi-scientific discipline (see Imaginary Science).
Reception was mixed to positive. At the 2017 Newtype Anime Awards, the series won Best TV Anime, and Higashide won the screenplay award. Reviewers praised the animation and the colourful ensemble of Servants, particularly Astolfo, Mordred and Joan of Arc, but criticized the crowded narrative, which left many characters underdeveloped, and plotting that often relied on convenient coincidences. Sieg proved divisive: his reserved personality and gradual acquisition of agency can be read as appropriate for a protagonist literally learning how to be human, but many found him bland or underdeveloped and therefore regarded his centrality to the plot as a weakness.
Fate/Apocrypha originated as concepts for an abandoned Fate Videogame, which Higashide later reworked into the five-volume Light Novel sequence Fate/Apocrypha (2012-2014), which the Anime is based on. The story was supplemented by the setting book Fate/Apocrypha material (2015) and by the light novel Fate:Lost Einherjar – Aslaug of the Aurora (2022) by Hikaru Sakurai illustrated by Shirow Miwa, set in this world's Oslo roughly a decade later. Akira Ishida adapted the novels as the Manga Fate/Apocrypha (2016-2024) in sixteen volumes, adding material concerning several characters given relatively little attention in the original novels. A web radio show, Fate/Apocrypha Radio Trifas!, ran from 2017 to 2018 and in 2021. Many characters later appeared elsewhere in the franchise, particularly the mobile videogame Fate/Grand Order (2015-current), which incorporated most of the principal Servants and returned directly to the story in the Apocrypha/Inheritance of Glory (2018) crossover event.
Like Fate/Extra Last Encore (2018) and other proliferating Fate narratives, Apocrypha demonstrates the franchise's use of Parallel Worlds: contradictory versions of heroes, histories, and Holy Grail Wars can coexist without requiring a single definitive continuity. More fundamentally, its army of reconstructed legendary personalities foregrounds one of Fate's central conceits: cultural memory itself becomes a technology of resurrection, allowing humanity's accumulated mythology to acquire bodies, personalities and agency in the present. In Apocrypha, this conceit is mirrored by Sieg, a being created without history who spends the narrative acquiring precisely those attributes – name, memory, choice and finally legend – by which the franchise constructs its heroes.
Its newcomer-hostile reliance on prior knowledge of Fate is lighter than that of Fate/Extra Last Encore, but Fate/Zero (2011-2012) remains the best entry point. [PKo]
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