FSN: Unlimited Blade Works anime thread - ZeroRider was so much better

[Prime32]

Cool, thanks. And as someone who hasn't read the VN, does the pacing pick up in the second half? First cour felt, I dunno, liked it dragged along sometimes.

Well... UBW was written with the assumption you'd read Fate (in the VN, doing otherwise is impossible), and it used this meta-knowledge to build anticipation of things to come. Not that Nasu's writing style is known for being concise anyway, but jumping in at the midpoint of the story probably doesn't help.

It should pick up in the second cour, yes.

[JCarter426]

Just caught up, woo. Four weeks to spare.

[-D-]

Wait 04/04? Isn't that like a very bad number in Japanese? You might as well be saying your series start on Death the Deathiest?

[Alent]

Wait 04/04? Isn't that like a very bad number in Japanese? You might as well be saying your series start on Death the Deathiest?

Can you think of anything more appropriate for a Fate story?

[Pronounceable]

This isn't HF.

[Sith_Happens]

While I have no idea when I'll get around to starting any of the actual Fate shows, I did watch the Fate/Prototype "trailer" last night and am now trying and failing to not be extremely hyped for something I know will never exist.

[Pronounceable]

Rise from your (relatively fresh) grave!

Is it me, or do sidemouths get more and more in your face? I don't feel that's a good way to start the second half.

This is an exciting start though! Who knows what'll happen next?

Also, screw that opening. Lancer is not a mecha, wtf you doing ufo?

[Eldariel]

Hm. I was expecting Archer to act more like he'd had it planned out already previously but here he's clearly making it up as he goes with all the talk he had with Rin. And Rin seems to have quite a few jewels in this edition. I must say, this is looking quite good though, IMHO. I especially like the slide from the intro chapter to the opening sequence; a perfect mirror.

[Spacewolf]

I don't really understand why Berserkers abilities seem to work differently in this version I.e. Regeneration once every 3 days rather than 12 times total (or is it 12 times every 3 days?) and that archer seems to be able to do jack all to him. Is there an actual story reason for this or is it just because?

I am enjoying this more than Night at the moment though, still not as much as Zero admittedly.

[Prime32]

I don't really understand why Berserkers abilities seem to work differently in this version I.e. Regeneration once every 3 days rather than 12 times total (or is it 12 times every 3 days?) and that archer seems to be able to do jack all to him. Is there an actual story reason for this or is it just because?

Berserker's powers don't change in the VN. They're left unexplained in the UBW route since the reader knows about them already. Saber didn't kill Berserker in the VN, nor should it be possible for her Invisible Air to pierce his skin (though she was holding him off much better than in the Fate route). Archer's exploding arrow, meanwhile, is implied to have killed him - Rin says it did nothing, but she didn't know about Berserker's regen powers and he was obscured by smoke long enough for them to kick in. The arrow was described as looking exactly like Archer's other attacks so far, but at the last minute Berserker "sensed great danger" and tried to destroy it before it could hit him. Hence why Illya chooses that point to retreat, saying she's not interested in Saber any more but has become interested in Archer.

It was also established in the VN that Illya has enough mana to slowly replenish Berserker's stock of lives, so presumably that's what the "once per 3 days" line was referring to.

[Spacewolf]

I did wonder if he'd been taken out but considering after that Illya then says he is no threat and to focus on Saber I figured that it just hand't worked. I suppose the Lives thing would be about a day per life then since I think he would have been killed three times during that fight.

[DoctorFaust]

Well, today's episode was a hell of a cliffhanger. Not sure that the rest of the episode was that good, though.

[Prime32]

A lot of original content in that ep

Spoiler

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I don't think Caster's first Master was ever detailed beyond "jealous at being upstaged in his own field of expertise; eventually she killed him", even in supplemental materials, so that flashback was interesting to see. At this rate it seems like there's a high chance we'll see

Spoiler: VN spoilers

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Bazett.

Not sure if that was Illya's laughter that Rin heard, or the viewers'.

Gilgamesh Express: The best way to travel. Also I am 90% sure the maids only lost their headwear so that people could recognise them from Prisma Illya.

[-D-]

That Gil, he's one jokester, alright. Face dropping Shinji was priceless.

For a moment, when Leysa said "Sella, he is incredibly..." I just subconsciously added "sexy". Say what you want, but Gilgamesh knows how to make an entrance.

[Eldariel]

I have to say, I find this episode excellent. It expanded on things at just the right places. While Medea's little flashback was a bit overloaded on clichés, I'll allow it in favor of the information we're being provided.

[Pronounceable]

Move over, fat guy from Apoc, we have a new dumbest master...

Seriously, that guy was duuuumb. Blowing a command seal just to punch your servant is a darwin award (it wasn't even a good command, nothing was stopping Caster from blowing him apart right then), then he goes and invites Lancer to his hideout because, I'm guessing, he was tired of living. He also lacked a moustache to twirl. I'm gonna say whoever wrote these scenes definitely didn't know what restraint means, it was just idiot flags upon idiot flags. Bad. Overdone. Disappoint.

Goldie Express was golden though, never knew Gate of Babylon could be used for transporting live people as well. But then they went overboard with silly comedy too, I understand the desire to mock Shinji but that wasn't the time. At least Goldie was cool. Maybe even too cool, he's been cleaned up and seems little less of a douchenozzle. Which is good, as he was rather caricaturized in VN, and also bad because his relentless petty dickwaddery was his selling point. We'll call it even.

Overall, "new content" is subpar, despite the good things it does. Might be I'm too harsh on them but this stuff is barely better than other official fanfictions. At least they're proceeding along the plot so we're getting closer to cool scenes.

[-D-]

Move over, fat guy from Apoc, we have a new dumbest master...

Seriously, that guy was duuuumb

Well what did you expect? He admitted to buying his way into magehood. I thought Caster made her original master fall in love and convinced him, she'll follow him regardless of command seals.

[Alent]

Well what did you expect? He admitted to buying his way into magehood. I thought Caster made her original master fall in love and convince she'll follow him regardless of command seals.

For some reason I always had the idea that one of the temple masters had summoned her and her first action was instagibbing him. Was that a DEENism? This new master seems to exist just to set a lower bar than Shinji. How much do you want to bet Bazett met her end while Lancer was off trying to help team Caster darwinize itself?

Gil was awesome this episode. The only downside, IMO, was that he didn't let Shinji break his face on the pavement. (Shinji doesn't get nearly enough karmic retribution.)

[Pronounceable]

Well what did you expect?

At least somebody who didn't melt a bunch of kids while doing his best to twirl his nonexistent moustache to establish his baddie cred. I don't care it doesn't fit the two whole lines about Caster's summoner from VN, it's cool to change insignificant bits from VN, but this was done poorly. I wouldn't get surprised if this guy tried to tie Caster to a railroad at the end. Leaving him completely blank and offscreen was better, we could imagine something better than this (like both ideas posted above).

And! We've seen twice that Caster stabbing servants immediately warns masters and burns off remaining command seals, why didn't this guy notice what's up?
...
Also, where did the flower petals come from? Does Goldie keep bags of petals inside GOB in case he needs to make a dramatic entrance? I could buy him doing that.No they're not from the garden, they blew in from above.
...
Also also, Mecha Lancer is kinda growing on me. It's still absolutely stupid but there's a certain entertainment value in it.

[-D-]

At least somebody who didn't melt a bunch of kids while doing his best to twirl his nonexistent moustache to establish his baddie cred.

Isn't burning bunch of kids pretty much what mages mostly do? Their only two way of generating mana fast enough are :
A) Sex
B) Murder

I don't care it doesn't fit the two whole lines about Caster's summoner from VN, it's cool to change insignificant bits from VN, but this was done poorly. I wouldn't get surprised if this guy tried to tie Caster to a railroad at the end. Leaving him completely blank and offscreen was better, we could imagine something better than this (like both ideas posted above).

It's passable. Very meh, but passable. I was expecting more flashbacks of her life with Jason, this episode tbh.

And! We've seen twice that Caster stabbing servants immediately warns masters and burns off remaining command seals, why didn't this guy notice what's up?

Nice catch. Although to be fair, we don't know full capabilities of the Rule Breaker. As far we know, it might change any contract to Caster's whim.

Also, where did the flower petals come from? Does Goldie keep bags of petals inside GOB in case he needs to make a dramatic entrance? I could buy him doing that.No they're not from the garden, they blew in from above.

Goldie holds all the prettiest things Mongrel. Including the dramatic wind that can instantly remove articles of clothing from target + petals. He probably got it as a courting gift from a God(ess).

Also also, Mecha Lancer is kinda growing on me. It's still absolutely stupid but there's a certain entertainment value in it.

Also, that's a misconception, Lancer isn't a Mecha. He only has a special Ride skill that applies to roads

[Eldariel]

And! We've seen twice that Caster stabbing servants immediately warns masters and burns off remaining command seals, why didn't this guy notice what's up?

I figure it's probably since she severed the contract instead of stealing it. Command seals never disappear when the Rulebreaker is used. They're only moved onto the new owner; it's the contract itself that's being severed, but even when their servants are stolen/defeated and when Assassin dies in FZ, all the masters keep their command seals. Either way, that didn't seem that strange to me. To whom would've they moved? Could Caster have wielded her own command seals? Well, apparently not.

But yeah, Caster's master did seem kinda cartoonishly evil on the surface. Yet, when I think about it that's apparently precisely how most "proper" magi, particularly aristocrats, are; with zero regard for the lives of any non-magi, only truly interested in their art and advancing their position in the hierarchy to enable further advancing their art. Indeed, those without magecraft don't seem to really even register as entities to magi. I'm thinking about other Nasuverse works too and most of the magi simply use mundanes as prana reserves, test puppets or ignore their existence. Magi who actually consider their lives to have a purpose or a meaning are quite few and are almost invariably "failed" magi (Rin, Waver, Zelretch off the top of my head; Zelretch is a proper magus, but quite eccentric and certainly on the side of humanity - even Touko doesn't seem to in any way condemn Araya's experiments in KoK).

Also, where did the flower petals come from? Does Goldie keep bags of petals inside GOB in case he needs to make a dramatic entrance? I could buy him doing that.

I'm almost certain he'd have something like that in GoB. All treasures in the world, after all. And he's quite possibly the vainest creature in the whole of Nasuverse. So why not have his own personal magic item that produces an endless rain of sakura petals?

[Pronounceable]

UBW Ep 15: What's pacing, precious?
What a jumbled mess of unrelated scenes. Each scene was working by itself, yet the total package is something to flush. The whole thing needs to get axemurdered and resewn, didn't anyone at studio even watch it before shipping out? All that built up excitement for epic battle just disintegrated into disjointed flashbacks, random Shinji making an ass out of himself randomly was random (also hitting far too hard on the lolShinji key), Shirou got rinhandled at the most inappropriate moment (it was hilarious). At least we got some good individual Ilya background scenes (except wtf is that pool of evaporating clones) and Goldie vs Berserker scenes would've made a nice sequence if they'd been allowed to flow. I think there was some emotional weight at the end too but it didn't register.
...
Anime is failing even harder than before to stand on its own but it's pretty clear by now they had no intention of making a good adaptation for newcomers anyway, so they're at least not missing their own mark. The attempts to tie into FZ aren't all bad ("Irisviel" dropping by was cool). Animation is still great. It's just not impressive once you get used to awesome animation. Far as actual "adaptation of a work to another medium" goes, their finaly tally will probably be slightly above Deen's*.

It's a shame really, there's obviously a ****load of working going into everything, yet nobody outside the animators are very successful.

*Yes, that's how hard they're dropping the ball on everything outside animation quality.

[Prime32]

Spoiler: Episode 15 comments

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I'm surprised that despite all this episode's efforts to make the audience feel for Illya, it left out the scene of

Spoiler: VN spoilers

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Gilgamesh killing Illya by ripping her heart out.

Also they apparently removed some of her character flaws that were in the original:
There's no mention of how Illya took away Berserker's sanity out of spite for hurting her, and never gave it back even after she became attached to him.
The Iri thing was interesting, but it comes across as absolving Illya of blame for her actions because "The (Zoroastrian) Devil made her do it.". And any ambiguity the scene could have had (i.e. "Is the Grail actually talking to Illya or is this just a hallucination?") was ruined by Iri having knowledge of things that Illya didn't. It also makes her grudge look like a fairly recent thing rather than something she spent ages brooding over.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I thought it was a pretty killer episode, having no source material knowledge.

[-D-]

I agree that Shirou getting Rin handled was inappropriately hilarious [link] and I do miss the literal heart wrenching moment, but the episode was Ok. It's nothing atrocious or needs a flushing.

Although to be fair the fight was nice and optional, but it was heavily hinted that if Berserker lost so heavily because he did his best to protect Ilya. It was one sided curbstomp battle in Deen's version as well.

[DoctorFaust]

I do think that they dragged the flashbacks on for too long, but it did provide some nice backstory for Ilya, even if it was at the cost of breaking up a fight I really wanted to see. And I actually really liked the emotional moment at the end of the episode, but the fact that I've been watching Kaleid Liner over the past few weeks might have something to do with that.

[Mathemagics]

I enjoyed the episode overall, and thought that the emotional aspects at the end were handled well. (And then the alternate ending theme starting playing and I really got hit with the feels.)

Also getting to see Gilgamesh with a legitimately fearful WTF expression (even if it only lasted a moment) was absolutely priceless.

[Alent]

My only gripe this episode was the specific grouping of the flashbacks. I felt like the constant cuts messed with the tension of the fight. Other than that it was pretty good, I think the change as far as Ilya not causing Baasaakaa's sanity loss was forced with how they defined mad enhancement as part of the summoning chant in Fate/Zero.

Also getting to see Gilgamesh with a legitimately fearful WTF expression (even if it only lasted a moment) was absolutely priceless.

That was awesome.

To my eye, it also seems as if Gil has mellowed out since Fate/Zero and Fate/Deen.

[Prime32]

I think the change as far as Ilya not causing Baasaakaa's sanity loss was forced with how they defined mad enhancement as part of the summoning chant in Fate/Zero.

In the novels at least, Zero Berserker turned on Mad Enhancement the instant he was summoned and refused to turn it off, because the insanity was an escape for him.

To my eye, it also seems as if Gil has mellowed out since Fate/Zero and Fate/Deen.

In the source material I'd say Gil comes across as only slightly more mellow in UBW than in Fate, and that's mostly because he manages to put up with Shinji for more than five seconds. His Zero counterpart is way moreso (which you could argue is because he hasn't been dunked in Grail-mud yet). I figure ufotable are trying to go with his Zero characterisation.
Apparently his incarnation in Fate/Extra CCC is even more mellow though (as in you can actually give him orders).

[Nerd-o-rama]

What surprised me about Gil was in the previous episode, where he seemed to respect the homuncumeidos more than he typically respects humans, at least enough to have something resembling a conversation and to kill one of them hand-to-hand. Possibly because he admires "purity", and as tools they've got a purity of purpose that mongrels don't.

Also I'm an episode behind partly because I'm cheap and partly because this scene wrecked me even in Let's Play form in the VN. I wouldn't be able to discuss the King of Douches rationally if I'd watched the more recent one.