Fate/EXTRA Last Encore (Limited Edition Blu-ray) Unboxing

Fate/EXTRA Last Encore is a 2018 television anime series loosely based on Type-Moon & Imageepoch’s video game Fate/Extra. The anime was directed by Yukihiro Miyamoto and Akiyuki Shinbo, written by Kinoko Nasu and Hikaru Sakurai, animated by Shaft and published by Aniplex. The series first broadcast in Japan on January 2018 as part of the Winter season.

Background:

“It was the forgotten EXTRA.
This is a story of EXTRA that will unfold on a forgotten moon. The Mooncell Automaton, a spiritron computer that exists on the moon, grants any and all wishes. A virtual spiritron world created within the Mooncell is SE.RA.PH. With the “Holy Grail” on the line, Mages and Servants must now wage a brand new Holy Grail War of the Moon.”
Plot Synopsis via Aniplex of America, October 2019

Fate is all over the place. An eroge visual novel spawned a massive franchise with many anime instalments, multiple books and even a gacha game. They did however, produce a few video games and one of those was back in 2010 called Fate/Extra (the other was a Capcom fighting game called Fate/unlimited codes for the PlayStation 2 & PSP).

Fate/Extra, another spin-off not set in the same timeline as Fate/Stay Night, follows a different Saber called Nero, also known for her Umu catchphrase and also the Padoru meme. The game is a dungeon crawling RPG which fits the PlayStation Portable catalogue pretty well. It was also released in English for the west by Aksys Games in North America and Ghostlight in Europe. The sequel unfortunately was Japan only. That said, another sequel which changed genres to be more like the Dynasty Warriors games called Fate/EXTELLA was localised.

After Ufotable adapted Unlimited Blade Works, Aniplex & Type-Moon pretty much decided to delve into the spin-off properties so Fate/Extra got an adaptation from none other than Shaft of Monogatari fame. And it’s probably the “second to most controversial anime adaptation” for the franchise after the 2006 Deen series, because it’s not only a loose adaptation but also pretty divisive with comments like a confusing plot and development. Has Nero at least. The anime, known as Fate/Extra Last Encore, was adapted as two story arcs; Oblitus Copernican Theory for 10 episodes, and Illustrias Geocentric Theory for 3 episodes.

Aniplex of America picked up the English-speaking rights for the series and it was one of the few titles published by Aniplex that was streamed exclusively through Netflix and was able to get licensed. Aniplex of America generally ignores these titles but somehow they had managed to license Fate/Extra Last Encore beforehand.

The series was given an English dub during its Netflix stream and eventually the distributor was able to release it on Blu-ray in a limited edition package, which pretty much follows their usual model. Also in an unusual move, Fate/Extra Last Encore has yet to be released in the UK, Ireland, Australia & New Zealand. MVM has had issues with Aniplex, but you would have expected at least Madman to distribute the series.

Limited Edition Contents:

Aniplex of America may be known for their expensive prices, but in return they also offer some interesting packaging for their titles. Fate/EXTRA Last Encore takes a bit of step back to the formula but still keeps some consistency with the previous Aniplex Fate releases.

The package offers a rigid box that houses the series in a single Amaray case. Alongside the case is a booklet which includes character artwork and interviews with the staff. Yep that’s right, there is no soundtrack included in this set and it’s just a single case than multiple so there’s some storage space saved.

The artwork is free of any information and the small o-card that wraps around the boxes covers the information and specification. Aniplex titles are known for their limited quantity and sometimes re-releases with less packaging content, but currently there’s no plan for another release. The unit count for Aniplex releases are not known but it’s probably a few thousand and likely reprinted given its Fate. The SRP for the limited edition box set was $174.98.

Physical Contents:

Rigid Box with Amaray packaging and clean artwork
Info o-card for specification
44-page Booklet

On-Disc Contents:

Distributor: Aniplex of America
Released: 22nd October 2019

The Aniplex Blu-ray releases for Fate/EXTRA Last Encore contains episodes 1-13 across three Blu-ray discs, which were authored/encoded by Aniplex. The first two discs cover Oblitus Copernican Theory while the third disc covers Illustrias Geocentric Theory. The audio options available for the Aniplex of America release include Japanese with English subtitles and a Bang Zoom! Entertainment English dub.

The white subtitles are unlockable during playback, and the regions are playable to Blu-ray players set to A, B and C (basically region free, Aniplex generally don’t region lock their releases).

Blu-ray Specs:

Languages	English, Japanese
Audio	English Linear PCM 2.0 Japanese Linear PCM 2.0
Video	1080p High Definition Native format 16:9 aspect ratio
Region	A B C
Subtitles	English
Locked Subtitles	No
Discs	3 BD-50s