December 6th, 2014 
AstroNerdBoy Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works – 09 review
フェイト/ステイナイト [Unlimited Blade Works] – 09
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Archer shows up after the fight is over, annoying Rin. Sneaking out, the group discusses finding the other Master hiding at the school. Archer teases Saber, but backs down at Rin’s say, where he apologizes to her. Saber backs down out of respect for Rin. At home, Saber insists she sleep with Shirou in order to protect him. He rejects this but does agree to her sleeping in the next room. Meanwhile, Shinji flees to the Church, where Kirei accepts his stepping out of the Holy Grail War. However, after listening to Shinji blather on and on about how Rider sucked as a Servant and how his grandfather will kill him. Hearing this, Kirei says that there is another Servant he could use, if he desired to stay in the war.
At Shirou’s home, Taiga speaks of the incident at school and her not accepting the official cause of everyone being knocked out there. She suggests Shirou pay Sakura a visit. The next day at school, Rin gets Shirou to check to see if Issei is a Master or not. Issei has no Command Seals, so he’s no Master. Shirou finds Rin hiding near Sakura’s home, where they observe a blonde guy hanging out. Rin asks Shirou his opinion if a girl were sent away to be adopted as a child. He says it depends on the family and whether the girl was happy there or not. Shirou goes home, where Taiga tells Saber about Shirou’s childhood, causing Shirou to ponder his dream of being a hero of justice.
Thoughts/Review:
You know, for an episode where there was no action and not a lot of plot advancement, the time went by quite quickly. I guess that’s the mark of a really good series.
Before I get started, let me start by making an observation and rare complaint against ufotable. Their animation for the battles is outstanding. However, in this episode, while Shirou, Saber, and Rin were chatting, my eyes started burning and I realized it was because Saber wasn’t blinking. Shirou blinked, only because he started talking at one point. To me, it doesn’t seem like it would take that much effort to have Saber (or other characters) blink.
Now that I got that out of the way, it is time to move onto the episode.
I like how honorable Rin is in this series. She was willing to lose her third Command Spell in order to make sure that Archer didn’t violate the truce between herself and Shirou. Saber also acknowledged that in her remarks after standing down.
I’m also enjoying seeing the cute, flirty, knowing Rin. ^_^
With both Rin and Taiga remarking on Shirou going to see Sakura, I actually thought we’d see this happen.
Speaking of Sakura and Rin…
…I love how Rin is keeping tabs on her little sister. She obviously feels bad for what happened to Sakura when they were kids. Shirou’s words made her feel better, but if Rin only knew what really happened to Sakura.
I had thought Shinji would be completely out, but I’ve no idea what Kirei is thinking here. Well, actually, I do.
It has to be Gilgamesh that Kirei is offering since he’s a rogue Servant from Fate/Zero. Gilgamesh is who was hanging out outside of the Matou home. However, Gilgamesh wasn’t summoned for this war, so Shinji shouldn’t have Command Spells to control him. As such, if Gilgamesh is to be used by Shinji, it has to be because Gilgamesh wants to be in the mix.
Finally, smug Archer is smug…and funny.
So, even though this episode didn’t appear to have a lot going on, it still flew by and was very enjoyable.
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I think they’re sacrificing some of the budget for the animation in favor of the battles.
By the way, I think you might notice the similarities between Archer and Ikusa Ayasaki more in this route of FSN if you watch out for them.
I’ll have to pay attention to that.
It’s at times like this that I realize I kinda fail at noticing details. LOL I didn’t even notice the no-blink thing. And still… OH, ISSEI. POOR. POOR ISSEI! xD The way Shirou comes all of a sudden and is like “Don’t ask, just strip” and the poor guy was like “WTF!?” made me laugh. A lot!
It just stood out to me for some reason.
Alright, there is nothing much going on in this episode, so the wall of text this time should be small!
Ah… Archer coming late… I miss Archer’s side blows at Shirou’s stupidity and Saber commenting on Rin and Archer’s relationship, but the most important part of course was kept: Archer’s natural talent to piss people off.
First conversation with Rin? Archer pisses her off.
First fight with Lancer? Archer pisses him off.
First eye contact with Shirou? They piss each other off.
First interaction with Caster? Archer pisses her off.
First conversation with Saber? Archer pisses her off.
ufotable is following the novel very faithfully, but sometimes I’m wondering why they leave out one scene and keep another scene instead. Shirou’s conversation with Saber later is funny and all that and him being unable to sleep also is kinda funny, but the more powerful and important part of that scene when he went to sleep is what he thinks about Rin and how he already figured out her character.
I don’t know if ufotable intentionally cut the monologue (http://i.imgur.com/6XrRuIk.png) to keep it open to interpretation, but Shirou’s shows deep understanding for Rin and it’s quite adorable how he thinks how silly it is of him to want to help someone he deems to be perfect. I just wished they had cut a bit of the comedy to show this monologue, as I’m sure more viewers would appreciate Shirou and Rin and their relationship (the negative backlash both receive kind of upsets me).
As usual, the dream scenes are kept short or completely left out. Well, they again help characterize the Servant the dream is about, but since it’s basically a very long monologue, I understand why this dream scene wasn’t there.
Oh hey, the made Shinji sound less like an asshole. Why? Because this was missing.
I have nothing to say about this line. Only that Nasu apparently did everything to make Shinji as despicable and disgusting as possible.
[spoiler]
You know, in theory, Kirei can give people Command Spells, since he actually possesses more than three thanks to him inheriting his father’s spells as the supervisor of the Grail War. He did this with Kariya in FZ, when he gave Kariya the Command Spells to kidnap Irisviel. Gil being summoned in the last war doesn’t really matter. Kirei still counted as a Master, even before he offed Lancer’s Master, Bazett, and stole her Servant and her Spells. [/spoiler]
I think I showed you some of the countdown artwork, before the anime aired, but I intentionally kept this one (http://i.imgur.com/b9AclUD.jpg) away, because it clearly was a reference to the strip scene. And that Issei strip scene music was spot on, lol. I should mention, Issei is the only male character in FSN, who has a blushing sprite. 😀
Issei seems to be more pissed in the anime than in the novel. He actually quickly accepted Shirou’s apology after he was stripped and then talked a bit more with Shirou about strange things happening. There is an interesting scene that happens if Shirou asks about the “unfamiliar woman” at the temple, that recently showed up. Check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnDadV2H1bE
That btw is partially a merge of two choices in the novel. Well, there are three available actually.
[spoiler]1. Shirou looks for Rin. Her classmates tell him that she already went home, so Shirou, kinda annoyed, goes back home too and calls her to tell her it’s not Issei. Rin at first thinks it’s Archer pranking her and is shocked when she hears that it really is Shirou’s voice. The first part with Shirou looking for Rin in school is in the anime, the phone call is obviously not.
2. Shirou decides to buy food for Saber and while doing that meets Ilya’s maid, Leysritt. He helps her buying meat and the rest is like option 1. This choice gives Saber relationship points.
3. Worried about Sakura because of what he heard from Issei and Taiga, Shirou intends to see how Sakura is doing and then meets Rin and Gil. That choice gives Rin relationship points.[/spoiler]
Do you know why I’m pissed at Aniplex? Because that is a bad translation again, goddammit.
[spoiler]Yes, Rin is obviously talking about Sakura, but Japanese is a context heavy language. Shirou, although he shows empathy here, cannot see the point of that question. He doesn’s really understand who Rin is actually talking about, because Rin doesn’t mention a “she”.
Shirou is not thinking about Sakura, he is thinking about himself, since he, someone whose old life was thrown away, regardless of his own will, was also adopted by someone. I saw so many Fate/Zero viewers calling him dense again, when this is a translation issue. I mean yeah, if Shirou was very clever, he would be able to connect the dots, but it’s not that obvious. Too bad they didn’t show the part with Rin prattling away and revealing she knows more about Sakura and Shirou and their relationship, when she intended to tease Shirou.[/spoiler]
Additional notes:
1. Issei calling Shirou a “son of a warrior” is an incredibly lame pun, because 衛宮 士郎, Emiya Shirou, literally means Defense-palace warrior-son
2. A full-shot of Issei:
http://i3.minus.com/i4zlyKmd7Lv7H.jpg
3. This is probably how Rin imagined the strip scene:
http://i.imgur.com/SOH9cDr.jpg
Her reaction is as always gif worthy:
http://i.imgur.com/GNzY8RQ.gif
4. Saber seemed to look confused when Taiga and Shirou were talking about Kiritsugu. Well, I don’t blame her. Kiritsugu seemed to be a really kind, helpful and relaxed person, the way they described him, haha. The talk about superheroes/champion of justices and Shirou’s reason to become one as always was an interesting scene.
5. What the blonde foreigner was thinking this episode:
http://i.imgur.com/9n0TKxf.png
I’ve wondered this about other good adaptations. The only thing I can think of is that they know they have only a certain amount of time, so they axe things they think they can get away with. I don’t know if these moments would be in the DVD/BD release though. (They should, in my opinion.)
Which is a read shame that they keep doing this. *_*
*lol* Very true. ^_^
Thanks for the info!