Monday, August 6, 2018

Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works Part 7 Episodes 20-22


Shiro and Archer’s battle reaches its climax while Gilgamesh and Saber meet again for the first time in ten years.  An old enemy is slain while another begins his own rise to power.  The Holy Grail War has left a definitive mark of death and destruction and Shiro and Rin know that it is only going to get worse before it ends.  The pair are down to their last options and their last opponents.  Is Shiro ready to accept his fate and challenge the greatest adversary he’s ever faced?  And having changed so much since the war began, what does Rin desire from this contest, the Grail or Shiro?

Shiro Emiya.  At times I envy his bond with Rin and Saber and how he was able to get both of them to fall for him in two separate timelines.  Most times im eagerly hoping that he considers a much needed change in his career goals.  All the time, I find him one of the most frustrating and often times infuriating leads in any Anime I have ever had to spend time with.  And never has this been more evident than having to spend episodes with TWO Shiro Emiya’s arguing back and forth in an endless circle debate that went everywhere and nowhere. 

And thanks to that, Unlimited Blade Works suffered a pretty big halt that killed a lot of the momentum that had been building towards this point.  Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works, for me, has always had an uphill battle ahead of it.  Not only did it have to follow up the incredibly well done Fate/Zero (which continues to overshadow this series in many ways) but I also had to look forward to dealing with Shiro again after barely tolerating him in the Studio Deen Series I reviewed a couple winters ago.  Now it feels like, as the finish line approaches, it’s rolling down that hill after taking a serious hit.  And in some cases, while it’s mostly Shiro’s fault, the blame for this isn’t squarely on his shoulders.

I know it’s hard to believe but Shiro hasn’t really changed since the series began, shocking I know.  By the end of this penultimate set of episodes, Rin and Saber had both changed their overall goals for entering the Grail War.  This is especially big for Saber, who spent most of this series and all of Fate/Zero with one goal in mind: undo the damage to Britain she held herself responsible for.  Rin, meanwhile, was all about just winning the Grail for her family but now she’s determined to save the world and destroy the Grail.  Shiro has been all about being the ultimate hero for justice.  Rin’s tried to talk him out of it.  Kirei’s mocked the heck out of him for it.  And now Shiro’s future self is telling him, that goal is going to be a very, very, VERY bad idea when it comes to his emotional and physical wellbeing.  But does any of that ever stop Shiro Emiya from saying “yeah you’re saying things but im just gonna ignore you and just do my thing cause im the hero this world deserves?”  Nope and that’s what made an epic duel feel not so epic and even tedious as Shiro and Archer clashed in Archer’s Unlimited Blade Works realm.  You cant escape the fact that Shiro is just endlessly arguing with himself and will never EVER change his mind.  I feel worse for Rin who’s planning to make sure Shiro doesn’t end up like Archer cause…well love is a funny thing and she’s got nothing better to do, the poor girl.

While Shiro’s self analysis was going on, more interesting things were happening that we spent little time on cause none of it involved Shiro Emiya.  Kirei and Shinji both got what’s been coming to them both for a long time.  For Shinji, it felt more satisfiying cause his sliminess was getting more psychotic by the second, especially when he was trying to feel up a captured Rin.  It was hilarious to see Lancer just prick him and Shinji ran away screaming but I also felt no pity when Gilgamesh shoved Illya’s heart into Shinji’s body to begin calling forth the Holy Grail…which started turning Shinji into whatever the hell Tetsuo mutates into at the end of Akira (seems legit).  Kirei, on the other hand, had a less than epic ending than I expected for a guy built up as one of the ultimate evils of this war over the course of two seasons.  Not that I have a problem with Lancer taking him out, I just hoped it was more…grand?  Between a simple stabbing and a bad ass duel with Kiritsugu in Fate/Zero, I think you can see how one would trounce the other.  Kirei deserved, well more, maybe death by Rin’s hand?

As with many times in the past, the few times Unlimited Blade Works decides to make solid ties back to Fate/Zero, it also fails to go the distance with those callbacks.  For the first time in 10 years, Saber and Gilgamesh met on the battlefield and we got the whole backstory for Gilgamesh still being around, along with his endgame (destroying the world…feels about right for him and his ego at this point).  And while theyre going on about how the last war ended and how an “unworthy mage” screwed everything up before Saber was forced to destroy the Grail, not once does Saber bring up that it was Shiro’s old man who was said mage and is the reason this war got accelerated so soon after the previous one.  Guess I should just accept what I can get from trying to connect the two shows together at this point, even though acknowledging more of Fate/Zero would have been a saving grace for the weakest moments of Unlimited Blade Works so far.

This was the most frustrating set of episodes to watch yet but they weren’t without their positives.  Like I said, Kirei dying (though im half and half on that) and Shinji getting his comupance was good.  Lancer got to go out like a true hero, saving Rin before he perished.  He really would have made a good partner for Rin in retrospect and ill miss his snark.  If nothing else, he got a far more noble death that Fate/Zero’s poor Lancer.  As always, Rin provided much of the saving grace for even the weakest of UBW’s moments.  Being defiant against Shinji at his most unhinged, daring to take on Gilgamesh to avenge Archer, how shy she got during her transferring her magic crest to Shiro, whenever Rin was on screen, it always made me smile.  Plus we got to see the moment when she first fell in love with Shiro.  I bet he’s still trying to do that pole jump on his off time in secret, knowing him.
 
Well with Tetsuo Shinji now poised to bring about the end of the world, that just leaves one more thing for Shiro, Rin and Saber to do.  But is Shiro really going to go toe to toe with the OP Gilgamesh?  And while Rin is the ultimate bad ass, can even she destroy the greatest magical relic in history?  It’s all built to this.  Let’s hope the finale can offer a lot of recovery for this uneven set.  Check back Wednesday as I wrap up the summer of Fate/Stay Night with the series finale of Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works.

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