May 23rd, 2015 
AstroNerdBoy Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works – 20 review
フェイト/ステイナイト [Unlimited Blade Works] – 20
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Over the objections of Shinji, Kirei tells Rin that he’s going to remove her heart. He gives her a chance for last words, but then Lancer rises and stabs Kirei. Lancer collapses again, so Shinji decides to resume having his way with the still bound Rin. When Rin tells him to run while he has a chance, Shinji gets angry and knocks her down, still bound to the chair. Before he can do a lot more, he is grabbed Lancer and thrown across the room. Shinji calls for Gilgamesh, but the Servant never shows up. Lancer pricks him with Gáe Bolg, sending Shinji running. Lancer frees Rin, and the two have a brief chat about Archer. With his last energy, Lancer traces a fire rune to set the basement ablaze. Rin and Lancer say farewell before Rin leaves.
Meanwhile, Archer and Shirou continue to battle under the worried, watchful gaze of Saber. Archer realizes that every time their blades meet, Shirou gains more knowledge on how to properly make his own sword projections. Although Archer’s time is nearly up, he is still vastly superior to Shirou and ends up evoking Unlimited Blade Works again. Inside, Shirou continues to lose as Archer lectures him. Archer stabs Shirou in the leg, and it is then that Shirou experiences some of the things that would turn him into Archer. He also remembers something Archer had forgotten — Kiritsugu had implanted Avalon inside Shirou, which is Saber’s scabbard for Excalibur, explaining how Shirou was able to summon Saber and how he was able to survive. Having regenerated from Avalon, Shirou challenges Archer anew
Thoughts/Review:
While I certainly enjoyed this episode, it came off as a bit slow due to having to expound a great deal of exposition. The exposition was needed, but doing it during a fight where the combatants are determined to slay the other stretches things a bit.
All during Shirou’s fight with Archer, I kept thinking, “If Archer wanted Shirou dead, Shirou would be dead.” The only thing I could come up with for Archer not killing Shirou at any point in their fight was a quote from Gul Dukat in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. “A true victory is to make your enemy see they were wrong to oppose you in the first place. To force them to acknowledge your greatness. ” So as I see it, Archer wanted Shirou to acknowledge that Archer was right, and that Shirou was wrong for not accepting that in the first place.
The result of this is that Shirou simply learned how to make better swords, and thanks to Avalon, Shirou simply regenerates. Shirou does understand the road his other self took to become Archer, but just because that self met a horrible end, Shirou is still going to continue on the path he feels is right.
I wonder how the revelation of Avalon came across to those who haven’t seen Fate/Zero or who didn’t watch the original Fate/stay night adaptation (or by extension, read the visual novel). I’d been waiting for Avalon to get a mention, but until now, there hasn’t been a hint of it, at least not that I noticed.
Shifting over to Rin, I’m not a fan of using the “He’s not quite dead yet” plot device to save the hero or heroine. I had figured that maybe Saber would come to Rin’s aide since Rin could have summoned her. Having Lancer not be quite dead yet does allow him to get revenge on Kirei and have one more comedic moment with Shinji. It also allows him to have a moment with Rin, which was nice. Unfortunately, it just feels cheap to me.
Still, Kirei is dead and Shinji runs off, so does this mean that Rin ends up resolving this fight between Archer and Shirou?
I was amused that Gilgamesh wasn’t there for Shinji. Now that Kirei is dead, Gilgamesh is pretty much free and clear to do whatever he wants.
In the end, although I may have been more critical of this episode, I still enjoyed it a lot.
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About Lancer’s survival: you can’t see it in the anime, but Lancer has the skill “Battle Continuation: A”, which allows the Servant with it to keep on fighting, despite fatal wounds.
In the Visual Novel, you can actually see this, so it’s not something that comes out of left-field.
Actually, now that you mention it, I think I remember someone (probably Farray) mentioning this.
Yep each class has a generic skill, like Lancers had Battle Continuation that allows them to survive fatal wounds for a brief period of time so that they can return to base to heal.
Or Archer’s having Independent Action that allows them to survive without an external source (masters) for a certain amount time.
Lancers in general don’t have Battle Continuation. Cu Chulainn has it because of his past. FZ-Lancer for instance didn’t have it.
The only specific class ability that the Lancer class gets is Magic Resistance.
That’s true… There was also a personal skill that unique to the hero.
Ah right I know why I thought battle continuation was unique for the class… It due to its addition in the fate extra and fate extra ccc games
So basically Shirou vs Archer, part 1.
But before I talk about that, first, the scene with Lancer. The chapter in the VN was called End of a hero. In fact, what we saw last week was also part of it, but ufotable split it up.
First of all, it seems like the effect around Lancer’s heart that I saw last episode really was Gae Bolg’s curse (and not Lancer’s spiritual core) with the thousands of thorns destroying the body from the inside. It appeared on Kirei’s body too, after Lancer stabbed his heart (but why not on Shirou in epiosde 1?). Guess this means it’s a bit different in the anime and the effect doesn’t come instantly, but no matter. Not really important.
Perhaps it feels cheap to you, but to me, it makes perfect sense for Cu Chulainn to do this. Even after breaking all his geasa, being severly weakened as a result and eventually mortally wounded, Cu took down lots of enemies before he finally went down in his legend. Tying himself to a rock or a tree, he died standing at the end.
This part of his legend was translated as a personal skill for Lancer. As you can see in his skills I’ve posted four episodes ago (http://i.imgur.com/jYUEO77.jpg), Lancer has Battle Continuation Rank A, just like Heracles/Berserker. Battle Continuation not only allows the Servant to keep fighting, even after sustaining mortal wounds, it also reduces the mortality rate from injury and one needs a definite killing blow to take the Servant out. The difference here is, Cu’s Battle Continuation represents the aspect of “being a bad loser” or “never gives up no matter what”, while Heracles’ Battle Continuation represents the ability to survive.
That btw also makes Cu Chulainn ten times better than Diarmuid in FZ in my eyes. Cu died like a boss and took down the guy that killed him, instead of only whining and cursing everyone and everything how unfairly he was treated. Him saying, that a Heroic Spirit doesn’t just go down like that was like a major FU to Diarmuid. Well, his line that even in his state he could still kill a thousand Shinjis was also awesome.
Lancer also makes use of his rune magecraft again, using the Ansuz rune to set the castle on fire in the VN and in the movie (http://i.imgur.com/2aJMajq.jpg). In this episode, he actually used Kenaz (http://i.imgur.com/fEhRUVZ.jpg) if I’m not mistaken, which I guess makes more sense, since Kenaz means “torch” as far as I know. Ansuz or Sowilo was the fire rune and Kenaz the farsight rune in the Nasuverse though, but whatever. I doubt anyone who didn’t look carefully noticed that.
Wouldn’t have minded if they had added a shot of Bazett when Lancer died, though.
Huh, the part that I mentioned was missing in Rin’s monologue two(?) weeks ago was put in here in the final conversation between Lancer and Rin. But you already get the answer to your question in that dialogue. Rin thinks she is not the one to save Archer, even if she hates saying that. So no, Rin resolving the fight would be out of character for her.
The rest of that chapter in the anime pretty much plays out like in the novel. Well, except for that disgusting Shinji choking Rin, instead of licking her cheek, which DEEN adapted in their movie.
Now about Shirou vs Archer.
What we see in this episode is the first half of Answer. Long before the anime aired, many fans called it the chapter that would “make or break” this adaptation. It is in my opinion the most important chapter in UBW. And hey, the next episode will be called answer, and it’s in English even. As Nasu announced in an interview, ufotable would split up the fight into two episodes with vast changes regarding the portrayal, compared to the VN, though with the same conclusion.
It’s not just projection, it’s all of Archer’s memories. That includes techniques and fighting skill and now you know what the headaches mean. Shirou absorbs Archer’s memories, when he is close to Archer. That’s how he quickly improved his skills against Saber in episode 8 or his projections in general, compared to what happened in the Fate route. Even though the animation is a bit wonky, ufotable shows Shirou mimicking Archer’s moves 1:1, which I find good.
This though is the one thing I have major issues with in this episode. I am not denying that it fits them fighting inside UBW with Archer trying to break Shirou in that place Archer ended up with (although it’s debatable, whether fighting inside the castle wouldn’t have been just as fine), but it makes absolutely no sense and I don’t truly see the point of Archer using it. I already didn’t like it when DEEN made them fight inside UBW and I don’t like it now, either.
They already established the first time, that the Reality Marble costs too much of Archer’s mana (and he only kept it up for a minute or two). Now we see Archer using it again for the majority of the episode, and he doesn’t even sword rain Shirou. Worse, Saber notes that Archer is running low on mana. And although I’ve already said it, the ground of the CG UBW again looks too ugly for me. ufotable already showed they can make UBW look beautiful when I look at some of the promo material again (http://i.imgur.com/ZKdJ2up.jpg).
No, that is the point of Answer. It was never about a physical fight at all. Slow is good. As I said before, Shirou knows Archer is his ideal, a Shirou who perfected his skills and became a Heroic Spirit. I mean, you even said it yourself:
Archer can kill Shirou in seconds if he really tried to. It’s not a physical fight, it’s a mental fight. Archer tries to hurt Shirou with his memories and his words, which are so true, Shirou is about to mentally break down and lose the fight if he gives in. Answer is an incredibly powerful chapter, but also very difficult to adapt, because most of that scene plays out inside Shirou’s head, together with Archer’s memories that he sees.
ufotable tries to accomplish this by keeping a lot of the monologue. The delivery is still very different, but it doesn’t feel stretched to me at all. The anime simply cannot just show the fighting, and let Shirou get beaten up by Archer a bit while Archer talks him down a bit in an intense fight, which is what the movie did. The anime would never be able to convey the intensity in the text like in the VN, so they take a different approach and I’d say it works.
The anime definitely does a good job in my eyes with how they worked with the memories. While in the VN Shirou narrates what he sees and he hears Archer’s story of his life (by hearing the UBW chant, since it’s basically a poem about Archer’s life, among other things). They also show something similar to this (http://i.imgur.com/P6lIOLd.jpg), with the swords piercing Archer, symbolically representing Archer, being betrayed by his ideals.
And Archer attacks the foundation of Shirou’s wish to become a superhero, that his wish means everything to Shirou and it isn’t even genuinely born from himself, but is merely borrowed from Kiritsugu. In the VN Archer makes it explicitly clear, that it’s not survivor’s guilt. It was just admiration for his parent and the happiness Kiritsugu felt when he saved Shirou. Shirou also suspects in the VN that Kiritsugu was responsible for the fire ten years ago in that scene. I always liked that part in the VN, together with Suwabe’s (Archer) voice acting and a piano version of This illusion playing in the background. Their back-to-back was not how I imagined it, but it was nevertheless refreshingly different.
What the mirror-moon translation does different at this point is making Archer talk about himself and not Shirou anymore. Archer admired Kiritsugu’s desire to save people because it’s beautiful, but that none of these feelings are his own. Archer kept running forward and was driven by his obsessive drive to help others and Archer didn’t know in the first place who he actually wanted to save. I’m not saying that Aniplex is wrong, but I think mirror-moon is more right here, because the narrator (Shirou) tells the reader that all these words, all of Archer’s hatred, is directed at himself, he curses himself with every attack. (But yaddayadda, Archer is Shirou etc., I know. :p)
And hey, they finally said that Shirou should drown in his dream and his ideals. Didn’t think Aniplex would translate it that way. Now the wording is a bit inconsistent.
Uh… that’s not what Archer forgot. Archer knew about Avalon, he just didn’t know it would still work without the contract between Saber and Shirou.
Shirou tells not-Archer what he forgot: Trying to become a superhero started with admiration, but it is built on the wish to undo the hell they have seen and were walking into. The effort itself is worth it, even if their dream is an everdistant utopia. Archer forgot the beauty of their ideal.
The scene with Shirou’s inner struggle with a younger version of his and his “older” form (representing Archer) and when he finally went to the hill (Shirou’s own internal hill of swords) and picked up the sword is anime original. This is a more graphical representation of what was going on inside Shirou’s head though, and I think it works.
The insert song that was playing in that scene is Last Stardust, again by Aimer, who sings the OP (speaking of OP, no usual OP this time). It was a serious contender for the second OP, but they decided to use Brave Shine, because of the tempo. It was the director’s, Miura’s, idea to add that song in in this episode and Nasu really liked that.
There were visual hints though in episode 1, right when Saber is summoned. Avalon connecting to Excalibur is actually straight from episode 1. Rin mentioned her own theory with Shirou siphoning Saber’s healing abilities, but besides that, that would probably be all the hints the viewer got. The line with Archer mentioning, that Avalon still protects Shirou (the heal was far slower though) was in the VN, too, but since the reader already knew the Fate route, that was basically a non-issue.
Speaking of Saber, they show more shocked faces of her. Trying to resolve her story better, unlike in the VN, since the Fate route is missing, I see.
Right before Shirou starts to regain his resolve, there was one last thing he thought:
A headache. An instant of a few miliseconds. I see him, probably for the last time.
I could not understand him. But I guess I can use his pain as a lesson.
…A hero who used a poem about himself as his spell. Even if I don’t understand the meaning behind it… I will accept those words in your place.
“…I am…”
I start the spell so that I can be proud of myself.
Emiya’s words hurt Emiya. He accepted that fact and chose to kill me. That’s the only thing he could wish for in the end.
And that’s when Shirou finally says the beginning of the UBW chant that he learned from Archer. I don’t know when you watched the episode, but Aniplex initially translated Shirou’s line as “Steel is my body.”, which, strictly speaking, isn’t exactly a wrong translation, but it’s still misplaced. Shirou says the first line of the Japanese UBW chant: “My body is made of swords.”, but it refers to the line “I am the bone of my sword.” Aniplex later “fixed” this.
Ah, and that line:
I won’t lose to you. I don’t mind losing against someone. But I can’t lose against myself…!
Is a very important line, as this is actually exactly what Archer told Shirou in Fate, as some final advice before Archer engages Berserker and dies. Shirou’s greatest enemy is himself. Shirou is not made for fighting. His fight is a mental fight, a fight against himself.
Overall, besides the nonlogical UBW and a bit of wonky animation, CG and derp faces (which are mostly only noticeable, if one looks frame for frame), I’d say this is a great episode. Answer is split up though, so I think this episode (like the rest of the series, actually) will be much better, if it’s marathoned and watched together with episode 21. Since I knew that Answer was two episode long, I didn’t mind the length of exposition at all. Quite the opposite actually, I appreciate it, because I consider this chapter to be UBW’s defining chapter and it definitely deserves the time.
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Additional notes:
1. Episode script cover:
http://i.imgur.com/UcF9ajt.jpg
2. http://i.imgur.com/g372L2B.png
I swear, Aniplex’s translators are really messing things up, sometimes. I really hope this won’t turn out like the “People die when they are killed.” meme.
Well, someone tried to phrase it differently, something like:
“You’re right, but that’s all you have right.”
3. Shirou running to the hill of swords and pulling the sword out is remarkably reminiscent of the UBW OP from the VN of 2004 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbhFMRlrUGQ&t=1m)
4. How Cu Chulainn reacted to Diarmuid’s death:
http://i.imgur.com/RNh1Z2i.jpg
5. Speaking of Cu, this is the final opportunity to talk about him. I think there is a pretty good reason why Lancer really likes Rin: She is just his type of woman. In his legend, Cu was trained by Scathach and had a sexual relationship with her daughter, Uathach. He also defeated and slept with Scathach’s enemy, Aife, who was also Scathach’s twin sister. And he eventually obtained Scathach’s “friendship of the thighs”.
In Fate/hollow ataraxia, Scathach is only shortly mentioned, but she is supposedly a more powerful and scarier version of Rin. 😀
6. Btw, a new Servant for Fate/Grand Order was revealed last week. Guess who it is:
http://i.imgur.com/r2BzSPe.png
[spoiler title="Fate/Grand Order"]It’s Scathach. As a Lancer. With Gae Bolg. How ironic that she is Lancer and Cu Chulainn is Caster in Fate/Grand Order.
Oh, and she was designed by Koyama Hirokazu, who was the lead artist for Type-Moon’s latest VN, Mahou Tsukai no Yoru. That means he also drew the main character, Aozaki Aoko.
For your information, Aoko is the tsundere archetype for Type-Moon. Tohno Akiha (Tsukihime), Kokutou Azaka (Kara no Kyoukai), Reiroukan Misaya (Fate/Prototype), Rin, they are all based on Aoko. So Scathach is supposed to be like a scarier Rin, and she looks exactly like Rin’s archetype. Hm… 😉 [/spoiler]
7. No gifs for now. I’m sleepy and I still want to find the time to write the text about how magic works in the Nasuverse…
8. Oh yeah, one more thing. I genuinely like that they made an Emiya track, but I think they use it in the wrong scenes. Emiya used to be played whenever Shirou found a resolution/went past his limits to overcome himself, or for the final fight.
It played when Shirou started chanting UBW in the VN, and perhaps they are willing to use it again next episode, but if they do, it would be the third time in three episodes and I kinda think they might overuse it.
I always say I’m going to try to pay attention to the music, but for some reason, I almost never hear it. 🙁 There was a time when I was very attuned to the musical choices played, but in recent years, not so much (unless it REALLY stands out to me).
You shouldn’t worry about that, you’re not the only one. It has more to do with the catastrophic sound mixing of the tv broadcast. The music on the BD is louder and you can hear everything far better.
If I were listening with headphones, that would probably make a difference as well.
The Emiya remix got me really hype, especially since this series has used so little BGM from the VN, if at all. No Church on the Hill, no Whirlpool of Death, no Clashing Souls, so the use of Emiya during the fight transition at that point was pretty good. May have been at the wrong moment thematically, but it hit a high note (pun intended) with me.
I can’t believe I’m actually getting to your comments moments after you made them. *lol* (Sleeping a few extra hours today really helped my productivity.)
Until Fate/stay night, I’d never heard of him. Even now, I know nothing of him. As such, not knowing the legends behind the character, I don’t have a point of reference to relate to that aspect of Lancer. 🙁
I thought I remembered you speaking of this.
I will admit that this part made me smile as Kirei couldn’t imagine getting taken out like that.
This is the part that finally allowed me to understand why Lancer could have been summoned as Caster.
Yeah, that would have been a nice touch.
You are right. :-/ When my mind is racing away, sometimes I forget little things. *_*
I don’t think I mentioned it in my piece, but I thought about that too. How could Archer, who’s close to disappearing, have enough mana to evoke UBW unless he’s just faking. The episode made it seem like Archer pulled in some reserves. I don’t suppose Archer still has Avalon in him, does he?
Here’s what I was trying to say (and poorly) — Archer has been out to kill Shirou all along. Earlier, there were believable reasons for him not being successful. So when this fight started, my initial thought while watching the episode was, “OK, I thought you wanted to kill Shirou, not blab constantly, even if it is for exposition that is needed.” It was after I’d paced about for a while and pondered things that I came to the conclusion you cite about Archer wanting Shirou to acknowledge things.
In hindsight, I agree with you that ufotable did things properly. But without knowledge of what was to come, my initial viewing caused me to feel as I did.
Boy, I sure saw that wrong. ^_^;;;
Heh! I already saw that comparison on Twitter tonight.
😆 That’s funny.
Not a very long lance. 😉
Anyway, as always, thanks for the great information. ^_^
I thought Huke from Supercell was doing most of the designs for Grand Order?
My favourite bit was when Lancer poked Shinji in the chest and he runs off lol XD…
Hmm I didn’t mind how the Emiya track was placed in… it felt nostalgic though if I had to be picky… I can see why you don’t like where it was placed.
I always thought of Shirou vs Archer as a very symbolic fight… like yes Archer wants to kill Shirou and puts him out of his misery but at the same time he can’t do that whilst a past version of himself is still clinging onto the concept of becoming a hero hence why he pushing himself to utmost limits to break Shirou’s will, by showing him quite literally this is all that awaits you if you stubbornly cling onto your ideals.
And what better way to do that than inside the Unlimited Blade Works the wasteland where Shirou will end up if he continues his dream of becoming a Hero of Justice.
Indeed it is a bit BS that he able to pull it out when he barely materialize it the previous time… but mind you… he did take a hell of a beating from Lancer and I bet he used a fair amount to recover himself and conserving what little mana left, he is now squeezing every last drop of it to put Shirou down.
Though correct me if I’m wrong… UBW is similar to Ionioi Hetairoi… If a large portion of the army is destroyed the Reality Marble will be undone… so despite UBW allowing Archer to reproduce weapons with a reduce cost on mana… if you destroy a large portion of the weapons inside the Reality Marble should disappear right?
I can’t find the comment saying Shirou pulling out the sword was original but I feel this is a very much needed scene because in the movie he just ‘awakens’ and pulls that out against you know who later on…
As archer mentioned, Shirou is standing on the threshold and having accepted that Archer was right but at the same time weak for forgetting his original ambitions to become a hero and still strives after his potential future.
He was gifted with his own Unlimited Blade Works and accepts that the path he will walk towards is Hell.
Hence (to me) this is why his world is vast empty wasteland with a single blade at the beginning of Dawn. For Shirou it is his beginning and one day it will be a Wasteland filled with swords like gravemarkers with the sun setting at Dusk at the end of his journey.
Him pulling out the sword mirrors, Alturia giving up her future for the sake of others and pulling out Caliburn. By pulling out that sword he accepts his destiny as the Hero of Justice and to live for the sake of others.
As for translation… yeah when Shirou said the phrase in Japanese, it literally translate as ‘My Body is made of Swords.’ and Archers acknowledges that Shirou has arrived at the starting line and that he has fully awakened.
But it was nice to see the ‘Steel is my Body’ line ^^;;
UBW isn’t similar to Ionian Hetairoi at all. UBW is a true Reality Marble, while IH is kind of… irregular. It’s closer to an actual Noble Phantasm and the rules are different. Rider has IH, because it’s a crystallization of his bond between his men. It’s something he did not have in his life and that is a standard definition of a Noble Phantasm.
You are right, IH does disappear when a large portion of the army is defeated, but the reason for that is that the army shares the burden of maintaining the RM together with Rider. Usually, only the caster of the RM has to carry the mana burden, so it’s only Archer in UBW’s case. The weapons inside UBW have nothing to do with sharing the mana needed to keep UBW up, so you can destroy them all you like, it won’t matter.
UBW actually works differently than you described. As I and Geburah (I think) once explained in Astro’s episode 17 review, UBW summons a world with all the weapons the user has seen. All those swords are already materialized, so the cost for making them is zero.
However, if Shirou or Archer want to produce more copies of a particular sword, like more than one pair of their twin swords, Kanshou and Bakuya, they will have to pay a good amount of mana to do that. No reduced costs. They only get inside UBW one “free” copy of each weapon they have seen.
Huh, I always thought that Archer (and by extension, Shirou) could trace weapons at drastically reduced costs, practically all but free, while within UBW. Must’ve misunderstood something in that case…
Yeah that’s what I thought… Lol my memories are a bit vague lol
Yeah I knew the UBW was a true RM and IH was a joint RM manifested by Rider and his army.
But I don’t know where I got it from but I was under the assumption that destroying the objects in UBW can have an affect on the stability of the Reality Marble.
Yeah I remember something from the description in Fate Extra. Or some other source… its like to project an object, Archer/Shirou has to take an image of that object, load it and fire it into the world like one does with bullets in a gun.
Whilst UBW takes all objects within that world and materializes it and cuts the process of creating them in the first place. Additional projections will come at a cost tho, this was what I remember…
Though yeah I rewatched a bit of it… for some reason I found Archers “The difference between us is like night and day.” rather literally…
Like Shirou standing at the threshold at the start of his journey to become a hero with a empty Dawn version of UBW is ‘Day’.
Whilst Archer at the end of the journey of becoming a hero with a wasteland filled with swords like grave markers to be the Dusk version of UBW as ‘Night’.
Thank you as always for the extra context, and in this case a correction to a misunderstanding as well.
I wish I had been able to make this connection during the episode, because I did notice the effects but didn’t realize their cause. If you hadn’t made note of this, I would still be trying to figure out why Rin didn’t form a contract with Lancer despite what seemed like him broadly hinting that he would welcome it.
Ditto. I half-wonder if it was a case of “We’ve got what we think is a cool animation that took 1/4 of our budget, so we’re going to use it any time we have an excuse… even if it’s a blatant contradiction of the rules of the story universe.”
~~~~~
One more thought… is it just me, or did it feel a little odd that Lancer let Shinji (at least nominally the key to getting rid of Gilgamesh, and a wannabe rapist of someone Lancer likes) run away? I’m sure there’s some good reason in terms of storycrafting, but he doesn’t seem like the type to suffer dangerous fools lightly.
Is it possible for a normal master to have two contracts? I don’t consider Kirei and Caster as normal masters btw.
It is.
[spoiler title="Fate, Day 12"]Rin: “I’m saying that one can make a contract with as many Servants as they like as long as they have a Command Spell. If there is a ‘stray Servant’ that doesn’t have a Master, and if a Master has enough magical energy capacity to take in that ‘stray Servant’, he can make a contract with as many Servants as he wants.”
Shirou: “W-What’s with that? Then a superior Master can form contracts with as many Servants as he wants?”
Rin: “Not however many he wants. Seven is the maximum number of Servants that the Holy Grail can call on, so seven would be the maximum. …But then, even an excellent magus wouldn’t have enough magical energy to materialize more than one Servant. Even if they could, that would mean splitting a power of ten into two fives. So the abilities of the Servants would decrease, and the point of forming a contract with multiple Servants is defeated.”
(Shirou) …I see.
So if I formed a contract with Saber and Berserker, Saber and Berserker would both exist sharing my magical energy, so their abilities would considerably decrease. So that means it’s more efficient to choose one Servant to give magical energy to.
[/spoiler]