Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works Part 8 Episodes 23-25


As blood rains from Ryudo Temple, the final battle begins.  Shiro and Saber challenge Gilgamesh and Assassin, unleashing the full might of their powers with Rin risks it all to save a life and keep the Holy Grail from destroying everything.  Shiro, Rin and Saber have sacrificed much since the War began and now its time to make sure those sacrifices were not in vain.  The past, present and future collide as the Holy Grail War reaches its ultimate conclusion.  What awaits the survivors?  And for Shiro, knowing what his future holds, is there still a path for him to walk with Rin by his side? 

What a journey it has been.  Things started on an instant high note with Fate/Zero, then dipped a bit but still remained sort of good at the beginning of UBW and by the end…well let’s just go with I have mixed feelings on the series finale of Unlimited Blade Works.  There were one or two moments that I really, really liked but overall, the ending should have been way better.

Im running out of ways to berate and judge Shiro on all levels.  In the end, he’s staying the same stubborn fool he’s been from day one.  Only here, he’s unlocked the cheat code that turns him into a God capable of going toe to toe with the greatest bastard in all of Anime.  Now don’t get me wrong, it was about freaking time Gilgamesh finally got to be the “mongrel” he was so fond of claiming other people were compared to him and the fight was an animation spectacle to behold.  Still, I feel like this should have been Saber’s battle.  Yeah she got a good fight in via one last brawl with Assassin (who by the way, was he standing guard at that temple the whole time?), but Saber and Gilgamesh had way more history than Shiro ever had with the golden haired jerk.  I guess that’s one way that the Studio Deen series actually succeeds more than this one.  However, it was worth all the illogicalness of it all just to see Archer slam an arrow right into Gilgamesh’s forehead and send him back to Hell…that will always be a true “F*** YEAH” moment for me in any Anime.  Though where the hell Archer was hiding when I thought he was supposed to be dead is anyones guess.  I don’t know, one last ex machina to save Shiro and for Rin to say goodbye to him I suppose.  Actually Shiro never even got a proper goodbye with Saber, she just vanished and wished her friends well before she did.  Is that really the kind of bow out you’d expect from the character who’s widely considered to be be the poster girl of the Fate/Stay Night franchise?

With the Grail War wrapped up we ended things with a two year time jump epilogue.  Thankfully, things weren’t dragged out for 45minutes again.  However, was this kind of an epilogue really necessary?  A change of scenery, a couple of new and familiar faces (WAVER!!!) and Rin in a sexy MMA outfit didn’t help to convince me that the series could have done without the last episode all together and just merged Rin and Shiro’s cute classroom discussion into the previous episode and just extended that a little bit.  At this point, everything spoken is pretty much the same thing we’ve heard Shiro droll on about for a large amount of the series and at that point, id about had it with him.  The only saving grace there is to Shiros character is that he has Rin to keep his life interesting and give him a shot at not turning out like his future Archer self.  Oh man, I cant believe I wasn’t going to talk about how bad ass Rin was during the final battle.  She braved a sea of curses and Fate/Stay’s equivalent of the Tetsuo Blob from Akira to rescue the second biggest douchebag of the series cause it was the right thing to do…maybe Shiro rubbed off on her a little? (God I hope not).  Still, Rin had guts to take on the Holy Grail monstrosity herself.  And man did the animators go out of their way to make her look more radiant in the aftermath.  Take note gentlemen, if you can ever win the heart of a girl who will deal with your head bashing flaws and still want to make your life better cause she believes in and loves you…you’ll know what it’s like to have Rin Tohsaka as the ultimate girlfriend.

So that was the end.  The war ends and Shiro and Rin go about their new lives together from the end of high school and beyond.  Shinji will live and Sakura will watch over him.  So Shinji gets off nigh scot free after all the crap he pulled and Sakura…well Sakura never had anything of note to contribute after all that tragic history detailed about her in Fate/Zero.  Though I suppose that’s all to be told in a future route for her.  And Saber and Archer both find their own endings and partings with their former Masters, both on good notes.  In theory, this seems happy enough but I cant help but feel like there was still an underwhelming feel to it all.  Maybe they dragged out wrapping up everyones stories too long, maybe not all stories were completed in a satisfactory manner.  Maybe I’m still irked that Shiro’s hero fetish was the one and only thing that he ever talked about right up until the last moments of the series, hell even Waver kind of chided him for it.  Maybe I should just take a screenshot of Rin smiling while sitting on a desk because that’s the last image I should see in any Fate/Stay Night entry…because Rin Tohsaka, not Shiro Emiya, is the true hero of justice this show ever produced.

Well, with all said and about done, what are my final thoughts on Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works?  Compared to the previous two Fate entries ive checked out, it’s definitely a little better than Fate/Stay Night but nowhere near as legendary as Fate/Zero.  And actually, coming into this following Fate/Zero definitely hurt things a bit.  Sure Ufotable’s animation is second to none when it comes to TV Anime and the action got better and better as the show progressed, plus the ever amazing awesomeness that is Rin Tohsaka always kept me engaged.  But the show lacked a fully compelling cast, had one of the most irritable to highly infuriating leads ive ever had to watch screw up and the series never took advantage of all the story Fate/Zero laid before it.  Characters like Kirei, Sakura and even Saber either took a back seat to Shiro or were just totally forgotten by the story.  Granted Sakura and Kirei both have more substantial roles in other Fate/Stay entries but after seeing their stories unfold in Fate/Zero, their time here was criminally unacceptable, especially when it came to Kirei’s final demise.  Also, stellar animation and action couldn’t really help a very shaky last quarter of the series which boiled down to Shiro spouting his BS way of life philosophy in stereo because we were hearing it from TWO of him.  The preachiness bogged things down after a decent first three quarters of a show.  In the end, it’s hard to grade cause UBW can be really pretty to look at but really hard to listen to cause it’ll either make you mad or just put you to sleep. 

My final score for Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works is…a 7/10.  Fate/Zero it is not but for an entry into the Fate/Stay Night franchise, it’s a better gateway title than the Studio Deen Fate/Stay Night series and that’s mostly thanks to the animation and action.  Just be prepared for the headache inducing nuisance that is Shiro Emiya, or just be ready on that mute button.  Thanks for sticking with me through this one.  I’ll see ya in a couple of weeks for the start of a new series.  Sayonara fair readers.

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