It’s hard to forget your first experience in the universe of Type-Moon, with every installment capturing a different air of suspense, mystery, fantasy, drama, and gripping madness. From the twin behemoths of Fate/stay night and Tsukihime, widely regarded as two of the top visual novels of all time, to the Kara no Kyoukai novels that yielded some of ufotable’s most stunning visuals, and even to spinoffs and sequels like Fate/hollow ataraxia, Melty Blood, and Mahou Tsukai no Yoru that could have stood up as landmark works on their own, Type-Moon has quite a portfolio. For all the seriousness of their works, they always manage to work bits of comedy in, but to completely parody their works would be a serious and delicate undertaking. And so who would be more qualified to make fun of them than themselves? Carnival Phantasm gives us a pretty clear answer: no one.
Carnival Phantasm is proof that Type-Moon is acutely aware of every minute aspect of their larger-than-life franchise, their successes and their failures, and how the public has internalized and immortalized their works. They put the warriors who bitterly fought in Fate/stay night in a game show together, in a grand prix, or just around town living out their lives, and then sit back as they accidentally wreak the same havoc and widespread destruction as in the game, with twice the comedic effect. They take every character who got sidelined in the original works and give them a moment on screen, and the characters promptly complain about their lack of screentime, only for the camera to cut to a different bit and leave them behind. They take Lancer, a side character whose deaths became the butt of a never-ending series of fan jokes, and kill him off once per episode in the most ridiculous ways, and top it off with a whole episode of him trying to fix those deaths in the style of a Western thriller.
The episodes are short, about half of a normal 25 minute length, but each one packs a completely different punch, short and sweet. Interspersed in the central couple of stories for the episode, there are short recurring bits that pop up between episodes that tend to be much weaker than the main features, but are nice jabs at the characters nevertheless. By contrast the main portions themselves are always right on point, lampooning the stoic and serious figures across all Type-Moon’s universe while also poking fun at all types of genres, from magical girl fanservice to soap operas, and even to nature documentaries and detective shows. They also shift between genres seamlessly, with countless references to visual novels and dating sims, and even retaining the advice corner from Fate/stay night that appears when you die, having repurposed it as the end-of-episode preview. Animating these sequences and amping up the comedy brought them a long way; I dreaded the sequences in the game, but in the show I would sit through the end credits every time just to see a swordsman and a little girl shatter the fourth wall into tiny pieces.
Type-Moon got some experience with crossovers when they created the fighting game
Melty Blood, which incorporated new characters and some of the other Type-Moon stars into a Tsukihime setting and let them all duke it out, but Carnival Phantasm takes this to an entirely new level. While the works stay segregated for the most part, the fact that the Holy Grail War in Fate/stay night culminates in a Tsukihime character—who was already a parody in her own game—throwing the winner in a shoddy rocketship and crashing it into the beach where the rest of the Tsukihime cast plays volleyball, is evidence enough that they want everyone to mix around a little. Another stellar bit had the protagonists from each work, Shirou and Shiki, put their heads together to plan a day in the elusive harem route; each of them had to date every heroine from their respective games in one day, running back and forth and taking care of each one before they noticed something was wrong. It crashes and burns horribly, and the two meet in the amusement park back to back, being stared down by two games worth of angry violent girls, lamenting their misfortune together. The resulting destruction rivals the possible bad endings in the games themselves.
Every character is entirely recognizable as the original, skating the line between their usual more serious selves and absolute caricatures. Shirou has the same insufferable obsession with making others happy, but for once it backfires on him, and his whining falls on deaf ears. When imagining Fate/stay night’s Saber, a king and knight of honor with unstoppable strength and golden flowing hair, the immediate image is of a lion, the elegant and powerful king of the jungle. So Carnival Phantasm put Saber in a lion costume in the middle of the Serengeti, growling and gorging on food, but also reading manga and yawning adorably. Later in the grand prix episode, she rides a mechanical lion that runs on hundred yen coins like the toy rides in front of a department store. The grand imagery is there, but the effect is certainly less than majestic, albeit hilarious.
It is a real shame there isn’t more Carnival Phantasm in the world. Right around the last four episodes it hit its stride, with engaging side bits and an overall level of comedy that would have seemed impossible for the people who made the Type-Moon universe. It leaves an indelible impression on everyone, from die-hard fans to newcomers alike. Yes, it may be commonly accepted that it is only worth watching after the rest of the franchise, but I personally watched Carnival Phantasm before anything else, and it only made my foray into the universe that much more enjoyable, spoilers be damned. After returning a veteran of Type-Moon it has only gotten better. It’s hard to forget your first experience in the universe of Type-Moon, and in my case it was impossible.