Submission required; Rider uses stick shift only, none of this automatic nonsense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpSF2y7hi-w

 

Loved this episode. The fight scenes were gorgeous, every important character present had some good action, I loved the nods towards Fate Zero such as Saber's reaction to Ilya's introduction and Ilya using those bird familiars like her mother. Archer's arching looked brilliant and it was pretty much 19 minutes of pure fun and awesome, with one minute of Shirou being annoying thrown in.

No annoying fanservice, no blundering around, nods towards past source material, good character-interaction.

Now, if only they would stop translating oni-chan as mister...

 

Yeah, this ep was great. I just wish they'd kept being 40+ minutes D:

 

Beautiful, epic episode.

Was the fight between Ilya and Rin original material? I don't remember it at all from the VN, but it has been a while.

 

I don't remember reading anything like that. I don't think she did that gravity field thing on Berserker in the VN either, but they were good changes.

 

Most of this episode was added content. If I recall correctly, this fight in the visual novel was really short, just a few traded blows between saber and berserker and then the arrow of missing the target hit berserker like the end of the episode. I hope all the fights get expanded like this one did.

 

Lot of add-ons this episode but it was PURE WIN! Added a lot of flavor to the fight scenes. Ufotable really went all out this episode.

Rin/Illya fight was extra spice as well as some of Archer's/Rin antiques. They're really building up on the big Shirou explosion/development later on the series. To be fair, he's a very interesting character as well. I can't wait for next episode and the upcoming tsundere Rin moments with him.


MICHAEL BAY! I'M SO GLAD YOU DIRECTED THIS ANIME!!!

 

I like the Rin vs Illya addition, but not so much the changes to the fight. It's like they changed stuff with the intent merely of "make Saber look cool" without considering any of the context, both within the scene and for the later story.

Saber cuts up Berserker rather than not being able to do anything to him. She then kills him and he sits there for half a minute regenerating even though death isn't supposed to stop Berserker at all. Then Archer fires Caladbolg and Berserker just lets it hit him directly rather than reacting to its danger and destroying it before it can. However it still does nothing for some reason. I guess because they decided only Saber is allowed to look good in their version of this scene.

In and of themselves these changes wouldn't be a problem. Except they didn't change any of the dialogue. So whereas in the VN Illya being like "Yeah I don't give a fuck about Saber, Archer's pretty cool though" made sense because Archer actually would have killed Berserker if he hadn't been able to defend himself with spidey sense, while Saber just avoided his attacks using the terrain and didn't manage to do anything to him. Now he didn't do any damage even with a direct hit, and Saber is the one who killed him instead. So Illya says something that makes no fucking sense and makes her look retarded.

In terms of the larger story as a whole: Berserker not stopping even if he's killed is kind of important for a major scene later on. So either they'll massively change that scene and it will lose all of its impact, or it will just make no sense itself in relation to this scene now that they've established killing Berserker causes him to sit there like a melon and regenerate really slowly.

Like I said this isn't really a big deal in itself, but it does in my opinion show a complete lack of effort put into making the scenes and story as a whole actually make sense. Because they're making changes in an adaption without any actual thought of the context of the rest of the story they're adapting, even within the same scene. It's the kind of attitude that led to "inexplicable Bondage Sakura out of nowhere" in the DEEN adaption. So I've lost a lot of optimism in how they'll handle the rest of this.

 

I liked the changes Ufotable made to this fight.

As we've discussed before, one thing FSN always lacked was the epicness of every Servant and Master that was present in Fate Zero. It was all about Shirou, the characters that were the focus of the route and everyone else was relegated as unimportant.

The Rin and Ilya fight, as well as Rin's joint attack on Berserker made Masters once again seem competent and useful, instead of just letting their Servants doing all the work while standing around in awe (with the exception of Archer). The extra Saber bits were good too, given that she really doesn't get many significant fights in UBW.

And the best bit is how that contrasts with Shirou, who is completely out of his depth and useless. It's actually making him a lot less annoying as a character, and more interested in seeing his development.


That being said, I do agree with meev in that I am a bit uncomfortable about Berserker coming back to life and Saber half revealing her sword. Does seem like fairly important points were revealed way too early. Ilya's comment about not caring about Saber also seemed a bit awkward given her role in the fight.


Also, looks like UTW have finally finished wasting their time on that goddamn Idolmaster movie and have released episode 01, so maybe they'll get up to date soon. Though it seems like going back to a speedsub timeframe is not on the cards for them...

 

I do agree that the inconsistencies will pile up later on the series but.. I don't care! I've read the LNs plenty of times already that new shit is more than welcome! Not to mention explosions every time some Servant farts.

 

Somehow I have doubts about that.

 

This is really going to be the Ubw true mega harem route where Shirou bags not just Saber/Rin, but Illya too. I believe. Taiga and Ayako will be involved too somehow.

Rip Sakura fans.

 

At least there aren't too many of 'em, so no big losses there.

 

Senpai...

 

I do prefer Rider. But oh well. After seeing so much praise for this I decided to watch Fate/Zero. What a fantastic anime. I'm hooked.

 

Well, the director is an Illya fan.

 

True Rin Fate route.

 

Episode 4 just came out.

I thought it was a nice enough episode. It was nice to see that Ufotable aren't rushing things just to get into the action parts. I think the scenes with Ayako were anime original which was cool.

 

More fanservice. Joy.

The episode was fine. Seemed a bit slow, but we can't have every episode filled with flashy fight scenes.

 

Nasuverse canon will change due to this episode. Trolololol.