Review: Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works

Fate/Stay Night is one of my favorite anime of all time (as you can see in the side-bar). ^_^ So I knew I had to watch Unlimited Blade Works when it came out - which is exactly what I did just this Tuesday. I watched it at Musashino Theater over at Shinjuku. So how did it turn out? Well, in summary, it was great, but it did not overwhelmingly blow me away, unlike Evangelion 2.0. Here are my impressions:

Theater: I wished they were showing Unlimited Blade Works in Toho or Warner MyCal cinemas. At the very least, they would have been nearer. At best, their theaters were bigger and better - for the same price! I had a hard time finding Musashino. The theater is small and feels a little cramped. It could fit only around 150-200 persons. Honestly, the theater sort of turned me off.

Animation: Unlimited Blade Works features far superior animation quality than the Fate/Stay Night TV series, as expected from a theatrical release. Swords clashed, sparks flew, and blows reverberated. Characters were all well-rendered. Well, mostly. Mr. Holy Grail Shinji seemed oddly drawn; but who cares, I wish he just died or something anyway.

Plot and Storyline: In the visual novel (which I never played and only read in Wikipedia), Unlimited Blade Works is a alternate scenario that can be unlocked after finishing the primary scenario ("Fate"). True to this, you should have watched the original Fate/Stay Night TV series (or played the visual novel) to easily make sense of what was happening. Scenes were being fast-forwarded and skipped especially at the beginning. The movie seems to be true to the original Unlimited Blade Works storyline. Some minor details were probably changed, but overall, it's the same.

I didn't know the whole storyline prior to watching the movie, so everything was new and fresh at that time (although I did already know Archer was Emiya). Some scenes surprised me completely though: Rider just dying like that (with so little screen time!), Berserker being defeated easily by Gilgamesh, and best (worst?) of all, Ilya's heart being plucked out afterwards! o_O Now that was creepy.

Unlike the TV series, Saber takes a lesser role in Unlimited Blade Works, with the focus instead being on Archer, and the relationship between Emiya and Tohsaka. It should be noted that Archer and Emiya are vastly more skilled and powerful in Unlimited Blade Works - with Archer/Emiya being capable of duplicating and countering Gilgamesh's Gate of Babylon moves. All these sort of unbalanced me for a while since I was expecting more Saber screen time.

Best scene: Berserker going all-out against Saber. Wow. ^o^

Something I would like changed: Why was Saber wearing a backless wedding gown and bent over like that??? o_O That was weird. Caster was supposed to be "torturing" her... not seducing her. But hey, it was originally an adult visual novel, so I guess it's understandable.

Others: Honestly, I got lost in the plot twists because of my rudimentary Nihongo skill. I had to read Wikipedia afterwards to completely understand what happened in some parts. v(^_^

Final Grade: A