MMM - Malnourished Magus Marvels, 'Miring Maroon Magician, Meanwhile Mysterious Meowing Mascot Manages Mailing of Meals (Mahoutsukai no Yoru Collab 1)

Normally I’d throw my dumb comments and witticisms in this section of a character’s analysis, but this time I need to explain that the format for Aoko’s article will need to be a little different, primarily because Lasengle are insane and made her kit so complicated that you won’t really get what’s going on by just proceeding down her profile in order.

So first, before even her NP gain or base stats (for reasons you’ll see very shortly), let’s look at Aoko’s First NP…

Regular ‘ol Aoko is in a pretty mundane position so far as base stats go. With the 5th worst Attack of any SSR Foreigner and the tied 5th best HP, she’s more or less in the middle of the pack, given some solid bulk in exchange for very mediocre offences.

By comparison, Super Aoko is a total monster. Having the tied highest Attack stat of any Foreigner next to Kukulkan, and the tied worst HP stat alongside Hokusai, she’s an offensive powerhouse that very much deserves to be placed next to Kukulkan in both gameplay and lore. As you might’ve realised, the fact Aoko swaps out her normal form’s stats for this one’s almost immediately after a battle starts means she’s getting almost the best of both worlds, getting the bonus HP from her base form to soak hits on the first turn (if at all), then immediately swapping to a form with more Attack to use aggressively.

That contrast doesn’t end with base stats, either. Aoko has a plethora of passives, starting with three we’re familiar with - Entity of the Outer Realm, Territory Creation, and Item Creation, all at E rank. The boosts from these skills are incredibly minor (and funnily, her Item Creation just outright states she doesn’t make anything, but steals from Touko), but the 2 stars per turn from Entity is pretty nice, and small bonuses add up.

The real perk of Aoko’s passives is Magician. As you might expect, being a wielder of True Magic is kind of a big deal, granting Aoko a significant 20% Debuff, Death, and Buff Removal Resistance passively. It doesn’t end there either, as all Invincible buffs that Aoko receives get converted into Anti-Enforcement Defence, pushing the Kukulkan parallels even further. While all these perks are incredible, I will note the Invincible-converting effect is something of a double-edged sword, as it means Aoko can’t benefit from Invincible buffs at the same time as Castoria’s NP effects the same way other Servants can, limiting how much defence she can have at once. But that’s frankly nitpicking for a drawback.

That’s where the passives end for Aoko…regular Aoko, at least. In Super Aoko form, she gains two additional passives - Magic Bullet Expansion and Magic Circuit (Rotation). The first provides her with 2 stacks of Magic Bullet each turn passively, while the other provides every single ally 10% NP gauge each turn, and 3 stars per turn (adding up to 5 with her Entity of the Outer Realm).

The gauge charging effect is frankly insane to have on any Servant, making Aoko a walking Waver team buff gauge charge each turn for free, but you’re probably wondering what Magic Bullets are for.

Simply put, they’re a resource Aoko utilises passively. When she attacks with a normal card they’ll be consumed, providing a 50% Attack Up buff for that attack in the case of Buster, Arts, or Quick cards, or consuming all of them when performing her Extra attack, gaining a 50% Attack buff for each Magic Bullet consumed for that attack.

As you might expect, this bolsters Aoko’s damage output significantly, and it only gets better from here on out.

Normal

Super

With a BBAAQ card set and 0.55% base NP gain, Aoko’s NP gain is pretty average all things considered, with a base Arts gain of 1.68 with her Territory Creation factored in, dead on the average. Her other cards follow the same trend, with her 4-hit Quick being good for stargen but not contributing much in terms of NP gauge, and her Extra just being pretty mediocre with 5 hits to its name.

If I sound pretty unenthused about breaking this down, it’s because even with how mediocre Aoko’s NP gain is in her base form, Super Aoko’s NP gain is even worse.

Yeah, that’s right. Her stronger form has worse NP gain. No matter how I look at it, that’s kind of silly.

Super Aoko has the same card hitcounts, but a BAAAQ card set and a base NP gain of 0.33%. This makes her Arts card gain pretty damn abysmal as you might guess, but it’s ultimately in service of balancing out the NP refund of her Super form’s NP while not nerfing the base form’s NP gain too much, which I guess I can appreciate? All I can say is if Super Aoko had her regular form’s base NP gain, her NP would be absolutely insanely broken, so I suppose we should be grateful.

But in terms of stargen, both forms are pretty dreadful at it, though Super Aoko can produce a pretty good amount of stars off of her AOE Extra card if there are 3 enemies to hit with it. AOE regular cards are broken like that, which is precisely why they limited that effect to the cards that are worst at NP gain and stargen.

So how is Aoko overall? Do I really have to run down the pros and cons at this point? She’s literally one of the elite forms of monstrous Magi in the Nasuverse who take reality over their knee and make it their bitch, and we’re lucky to even have her present in FGO considering someone like Zelretch wouldn’t get off his ass to do the same (visiting his grandchildren and a watermelon or something, I’m sure):

But uh, I guess she does have some flaws. And no, I don’t mean personality flaws, though she certainly has those too:

Aoko Aozaki’s introduction to FGO basically blew all my expectations away. She’s unique, she fits intensely well into the lore of her Magic and her fighting style, it feels intensely fun to use her, and most importantly of all, she’s absurdly strong, without actually feeling overpowered.

To set the scene, when Koyanskaya + Oberon hit the field and I realised Melusine had essentially become the single most absurd offensive Servant in the game overnight, it was the only time I revisited an MMM, because Melusine’s presence meant she could almost do anything you needed in terms of farming or Challenge Quest damage output. And I’m not exaggerating. I have, multiple times at this point, run myself to the ground trying to figure out a difficult piece of content or a 90++ farming node, only to throw Melusine at it and clear it with no issues. While it was satisfying to push past a roadblock, it made a point that kind of unnerved me - Melusine was so good she almost entirely invalidated alternatives when you could throw her at anything and clear it. Even with class disadvantage.

Now that wasn’t entirely true as things panned out, simply because Melusine at her peak needs an action-intensive setup that isn’t ideal for farming, but it did make me scared that there could be another Servant in the future, even slightly better than Melusine, that would just become the Omni-Servant of FGO that beats everything.

…leave it to me to rant about Melusine in another Servant’s conclusion.

The point I’m making is that Aoko…isn’t that Omni-Servant. She’s absolutely absurd, with new mechanics and heights for gameplay performance that boggle my mind to even use, but with all that power, she doesn’t do everything. She requires more actions to utilise at full power than just throwing a typical universal Arts farmer at something, she takes a fair bit of careful thinking to optimally use her skills, and she won’t surpass a Servant in their element in terms of damage output, even if her damage is incredibly high.

Don’t get me wrong, Aoko is spectacular, and easily the number one Servant you should consider picking up for performance in difficult content - all the tools she has at her disposal simply outclass most alternatives, but the fact she will never really be an ideal farmer is…nice. She actually feels well balanced in spite of all that.

Though with everything Aoko has on the table, it leaves me worried Alice, her competing SSR, will look…very plain by comparison. Let’s see if in the future I’ll eat those words. Rath™Seal of Approval, with a recommendation.

Ah, Sono-G. You’re a beautiful oasis in a desert, a distant ship when stranded on an island, a veritable bastion of normality I can count on when the insanity of FGO has dragged me beyond the brink.

With your gardening skills, capabilities at delivering Chinese takeaway, and disturbing eagerness at getting a collar put on you and essentially becoming the possession of two beautiful witches (damn you, by the way), surely your capabilities as a Servant will be so mundane I can practically sleep the remainder of the MMM away?

Eh? Shizuki…why are you looking at me with pity? I only allow sadistic girls to do that!

With the 9th worst Attack of any SR Berserker and 6th worst HP, it’s unsurprising as the modern Servant among modern Servants that Soujuurou doesn’t exactly have the strongest baseline stats. At the very least he focuses on his Attack enough to have a respectable offensive profile, sitting at very much the middle of the road for a Berserker. With the class’s positive Attack modifier and “these hands are E for Everyone” class advantage, it’s better to have a higher Attack to put that to good use, and Soujuurou embodies that motto to a T.

In terms of class skills he’s very…abnormal for a Berserker, packing Presence Concealment to provide a notable boost to his passive stargen, and two more oddities. Knowledge of the Sowa, a skill better knowing for being on Hozoin and Sasaki Kojiro, is a passive for him, providing increased Critical Resistance, while his last passive is something unsurprising, the hypnosis charm that Aoko provided to him at one point to ignore his fear of heights, but going a little further beyond. Good Luck Chant provides him with immunity to Terror, Confusion, and Skill Seal. The former two aren’t particularly common but are annoying to deal with, while the latter is pretty common in difficult content, and being able to dodge getting locked under Skill Seal is very useful for the player.

With a base NP gain of 0.5%, Soujuurou’s BBAAQ card deck has some close parallels to base Aoko, with exactly identical hitcounts across the board, resulting in a base Arts gain of 1.5. That’s…below average, to be certain, but not the worst in the world. The low NP gain carries on across all his cards more or less, resulting in mediocrity all around, huzzah!

Likewise, Soujuurou’s stargen capabilities aren’t much to note, even with the boost from his Presence Concealment - Berserkers inherently have very poor stargen, so even with that boost he only more or less generates like an average Servant with his card deck, which isn’t spectacular in the slightest. Overall, just not a great showing in this part of his kit.

So how is Sono-G when put into action? Well on the one hand, he’s got a dedicated work ethic, loveable personality, and I have no clue how he manages to cycle with a cat suit on, but it’s impressive:

However, Soujuurou…you’re just a normal guy, you know? Well, a weirdo to be sure, but you get the point. Forget getting close enough to punch it, those world-ending entities are gonna erase your whole existence, buddy:

It’s funny. Despite having a bunch of pretty unique effects tied to his kit, Soujuurou ultimately ends up being as awkwardly straightforward as his personality - he charges his gauge, sets up a big NP turn, then dies.

That specialty, if you can call it that, does have its own place, but it’s a little grating that Soujuurou isn’t much more than that due to a number of limiting factors. In difficult content it’s hard to even really justify putting him to use when you could just, well, use the primary damage dealer from the start and save a team slot, so his utility is ultimately relegated to niche farming. And that’s good, let me be clear, having any niche is better viability than other welfares who come out with just very middling supportive kits or no capability for farming and go nowhere as a result.
I just want more for my boy, you know? He deserves better than the occasional roleplay as an Azelf lead in Gen 4 OU. So, uh, keep him in mind if you find a need for that niche, but otherwise he’s not going to be a mainstay damage dealer for your Chaldea no matter how hard you try.