Carnival Phantasm Review

Fate Meets Tsukihime

Carnival Phantasm (カーニバル・ファンタズム) is a series that combines Type-Moon’s various works into one. The biggest of these works is obviously the Fate series. And, the second biggest is Tsukihime. So, if you ever wanted to see these two series smashed together, Carnival Phantasm might be for you.

Of course, Fate and Tsukihime aren’t the only two Type-Moon series. But, as far as I know, they were the only two with much content in Carnival Phantasm. I could be wrong about that since Fate is the only Type-Moon series I’m familiar with. I might have thought characters from another series were from Tsukihime.

But, I didn’t notice anyone like Shiki Ryougi from The Garden of Sinners. And, that’s despite her being listed as a supporting character for this series on MAL. So, I guess a lot of other Type-Moon series characters were in the background.

Now, as someone who hasn’t watched (played?) Tsukihime, those characters were interesting to me. They’re new and therefore fun. Arcueid is the least interesting, much like Artoria in Fate. But, the other girls are pretty cute — specifically, Akiha, Kohaku, and Hisui. There’s also Ren, but she didn’t have much screen time. She might have shown up once.

So, this is leading into one of my main issues with this series. Each character doesn’t get that much screen time because there are so many characters. The one with the most screen time might have actually been Cú Chulainn (Lancer).

Overall, though, it felt like the Fate characters were in the spotlight a lot more. And, that could be because there are so many more of them. But, for me, I already know all the Fate characters pretty well thanks to Fate/Grand Order. I’d rather see the “new to me” characters more.

Not What I Was Expecting

It’s time for the second major complaint I have about Carnival Phantasm. It doesn’t actually mix the characters from different Type-Moon series very much. For example, we never get to see Artoria and Arcueid interacting with each other. The main crossover interaction is Shirou and Shiki.

In many cases, episodes are dedicated to characters from one series or the other. There are Fate episodes and there are Tsukihime episodes. There are episodes with both. But, even those episodes tend to be split up into different segments built around one of the two main series.

That’s not at all what I was expecting from Carnival Phantasm. I thought it was going to feature all the characters mixed together. I thought I was going to see some wacky hijinks with characters who have never interacted before. But, that’s not what I got and it’s disappointing.

With that said, it’s not as if there isn’t wacky hijinks in the series. There absolutely is — that’s still what the anime is about. We got to see the Fate characters participate in a gameshow and a race. And, we got to see the Tsukihime girls play beach volleyball.

If you’ve seen Carnival Phantasm, what are your thoughts on this? Did you go into the series expecting there to be more crossover content? Were you fine with the lack of crossover content? And, which Type-Moon series were you familiar with before going into the series?

It’s possible that my opinion of the series could have been very different if I was more familiar with Type-Moon works beyond Fate. So, keep that in mind if you’re considering watching this series. It could be like Fate/Apocrypha, which I think is a lot more fun if you’re already really into Fate/Grand Order.

Focusing on the Good Parts

Alright, so far, I’ve said a lot of things I didn’t necessarily like about Carnival Phantasm. But, I don’t want you to think it’s bad. It’s not. I enjoyed it and I think it’s good. So, what’s good about it?

The first thing I liked is that the episodes are only half-length. They’re 14-minutes long including the OP, ED, and next episode preview. That’s bad when it comes to giving characters screen time. But, it’s good when it comes to keeping a series like this from getting stale. The episodes don’t overstay their welcome.

Something else I liked is that the series is funny. It would have been easy for it to try to play too much to the Type-Moon fandom. It definitely plays to that. But, not to the point that it stops being funny, which I’ve seen some other comedy series do.

The episode in which Heracles goes shopping for batteries was a good one. That might be my favorite of the series. It plays on inside jokes from Fate. But, the core comedy of the episode is something that anyone can enjoy. It’s absurdism and physical comedy.

My favorite skits from the whole series, however, are the Grail-kun skits. I think there were three of them in total. In these skits, a character comes to Grail-kun with an issue they need help resolving. And, in every case, Grail-kun’s solution is to give them a knife and tell them that violence is the answer.

Of course, I can’t leave out some of the more obvious things I liked about Carnival Phantasm. The OP is good — and fun. And, because this series is all about Type-Moon properties, it has a lot of cute female characters. That’s never a bad thing.

Final Thoughts

I gave Carnival Phantasm a 7/10. As I said, it’s a good anime. It certainly has things that could be improved. But, overall, I liked it and would recommend it to Type-Moon fans. Even if the only Type-Moon series you’re familiar with is Fate, you’ll still probably like it.

Watching this series also made me want to watch the newer Fate/Grand Carnival. From my understanding, it’s the same thing but focused on characters from FGO. So, I assume I’ll like that one even more. Who knows when I’ll actually get around to watching it, though.

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