March 7th, 2018 
AstroNerdBoy Fate/EXTRA Last Encore 05
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Dan recalls his life as a Master when Archer-Robin Hood ambushed a Master. At that time, Dan was chivalrous and allowed Sakura to heal the Servant. Afterward, the Master and an apparent Saber Servant fought him and Archer-Robin Hood, where Dan and Archer were defeated. However, the system brought both back to life on Tier 2, causing Dan to abandon chivalry and start assassinating Masters in a desperate attempt to ascend to Tier 3.
At Rani’s home, she has breakfast with Saber-Nero and Hakuno. Saber tells her Master not to fret over the fact that 999 years have past. The trio then come up with a plan to deal with Dan and Archer-Robin Hood. Saber leads the way as Rani follows in a futuristic motorcycle with Hakuno in the sidecar. Saber engages Archer while Rani and Hakuno press on. The church bells ring, signalling a sniper attack from Dan. However, before they can react, Rani has been hit and is critically injured.
Hakuno hears the voices of previous Masters telling him to ignore Rani and move on. He refuses and uses his Dead Face ability to get Rani out of harm’s way. Hakuno realizes that a professional sniper wouldn’t purposefully give away his attack by ringing bells, indicating Dan is using them to ricochet to their targets. Meanwhile, Archer uses his Yew Bow NP on Saber, but fails to kill her. She does land a fatal blow on Archer, who’s life terminates next to a grave (of Dan?)
Dan realizes Archer is in trouble, but as he ponders, he realizes too late that he’s about to get hit. Hakuno uses Dead Face to fire a projectile at Dan, causing Dan’s shot to fail. As Dan dies, he wonders what his wish was going to be for the Holy Grail. He thinks about his dead wife before dying. With that, Tier 2 begins to collapse. Hakuno doesn’t want to abandon Rani, but Saber forces him to remember that Rani has no intention of leaving the graves of the former Masters. With that, they take the Moon Mile Ladder to Tier 3, where Rin is waiting for them inside.
Thoughts/Review:
More “meh” material was to be found in Fate/EXTRA Last Encore 05. Despite an attempt to allow us to get to know Dan, everything is too “by the numbers” to really get that invested in the characters.
Rani
The writers attempted to try to make Rani more than just the exposition “red shirt” character that she ended up being. Unfortunately, all they had to work with was the fact that Rani has apparently spent the last 50 years lighting candles at the graves of fallen Masters every night. Beyond that, Rani doesn’t have a strong personality and thus after this episode, I doubt I think of her again.
I will say that I didn’t expect her to be a red shirt character though. I figured she was there to spout all of the exposition about Tier 2, then join Hakuno and Saber on the journey to Tier 3. (Rin too.) So I was surprised to see Saber and Hakuno abandon her, even though Rani had stated that she didn’t want to leave the former Masters in the graveyard outside her home.
Dan
Here too, the writers attempt to make Dan more than just the boss to fight on Tier 2. I will admit that he got a messed up deal, after he and Archer lost their fight 999 years earlier. Why the system brought him and Archer back to life, I’m not really sure. But it did make Dan somewhat insane. So once he abandoned his chivalrous nature and turned into a murderous sniper, he lost all sympathy points with me.
On the flip side, I understand how Hakuno figured out that Dan was using the clock tower bells to ricochet bullets to their targets (which is a massive stretch). What I don’t understand is how Hakuno was able to kill Dan. That’s because this bloody Dead Face ability of Hakuno’s hasn’t been explained. We’ve had tons of time to mindlessly bloviate about things, but no time to explain what the heck he’s doing. 🙄
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
OK, time to wrap up my review of Fate/EXTRA Last Encore 05.
- I liked seeing Sakura in a cameo.
- Rin returns at the end of the episode. Based on comments from folks familiar with the game, I suppose Rin was just put on the shelf to allow Rani to push the exposition and to give a game character some screen time.
- I noticed Rin still has a Command Spell. If she lost her Servant, how is this possible?
In the end, Fate/EXTRA Last Encore 05 isn’t a terrible episode, but it isn’t anything special either. Basically, it is a retread of the third episode, only with a new Servant and Master. Oh well. Nothing to do but press forward.
Posted in 
Tags: 
That skill is sadly becoming Hakuno’s NP at this rate
Dead Face : The Plot Armor is with me. Rank Extreme nonsense bullshit
Allows to complete asspulls defieing all rules of logic by letting Hakuno do the fuck he wants against magical and physical atacks as long as it serves to keep the plot running.
As if the Nero wank wasnt enough, Hakuno plot armor is starting to make Sieg’s look as thin as a toilet paper in comparison :/
Nero surviving Yew Bow is also complete bullshit. NPs are sure win card. You can only defend against them by countering them with your own (a defensive one or just using an offensive one to counter it) or just being ridiculously though with stats/skills and only the case of the atacking NP being relatively weak
Nero has not defensive Np neither good endurance stats…
Haha. Loved your explanation of Dead Face.
Thanks for the other info as well.
To add what i mentioned, Nero has canon wise, a puny D rank on Endurance while Yew Bow is a D rank anti Unit NP that deals huge increased damage if target is already poisoned. Meanwhile Mordred got heavy injured by Fran’s Blasted Tree (Anti army NP, whose rank varies from worst as D to best as C) despite her armor, her A rank Endurance and her B rank Battle Continuation (and when you have Battle continuation it means you are sturdy as hell)
Thanks for the additional info.
@Geburah
The decision to go with Hakuno over Hakunon at this point is evidently a gamble to see if people will like Hakuno since Hakunon is the more popular version of Hakuno’s character.
What bothers me is how out of Character he is from the game, they should be more Master like rather than I got a stupid ability that makes no sense…
Like Kiritsugu, Shirou and Sieg had legit abilities that makes sense… Kiritsugu being a mage, Shirou being a younger version of Archer and Sieg being a homunculous and has been absorbing traits like a sponge…
But Hakuno… like I know they want to make him more popular but it is not the way to go…
As for Nero vs Robin Hood, you actually beat him in the game without the use of Noble Phantasm but the problem is… how do you go about showcasing that… like had it been Ufotable or A1-Pictures they would have choreograph that fight into a spectacular animation.
But it makes sense… Yew Bow is a After Effect type Noble Phantasm that takes the poison within the target and amplifies it. Nero draining her blood does makes sense but unless you know how the ability works… you’ll end up confused… The Game goes into detail of doing a research your opponent period which the Anime lacks so its like…
Here you go, here is the opposing Servant… oh they are dead… good job! Now move on.
Also Nero mentioned her ability, Thrice, Setting Sun which is based on her Legend, at the end of her life, Nero committed suicide, a soldier came by and discovered her and Nero awoke. So the ability is essentially a better version of Battle Continuation as it allows Nero to revive up to 3 times like Hercules God Hand so she had a back up ability.
Robin Hood was inferior to Nero in terms of Servant Quality… His Noble Phantasm whilst good, was basically ineffective… Even had the blood draining to get rid of the Poison had failed to work, Nero can just revive with Thrice, Setting Sun up to 3 times… Robin Hood would have to get her 2 more times before she goes down for good and she still has used her own Noble Phantasm.
Interesting analysis. Thanks for the info!
This is a shout out to the original Game where Archer went against Dan’s wishes and took independent action, targeting and poisoning their opponents.
But like you said… what they’ve done to him in Last Encore just completely destroys the character and makes him uninteresting… the idea of the series is to make people who never played Extra to go Oh, this is cool I want to play the game and find out more and for us who played the game to go oh I remember this…
but the effect just isn’t there… its very out of character and it just doesn’t make you want to invest your attention towards him. He was a honourable and chivalrous man but he comes a cold blooded Murderer… it just a complete 360 of who he was… like yes he forced Archer to do things his way but now he is trying to do things Archer’s way… its just… too cliche
Rani… now I was hoping for more but considering we have Rin…
[spoiler]It makes sense to get rid of Rani because in the game… Rin and Rani are pit against each other in the line up of the Holy Grail Tournament and you as Hakuno/Hakunon make the decision to use a command spell to force your way into the fight and take on Rani’s Berserker, Lu Bu where you have the option to use a second command spell to ensure that Saber/Archer/Caster can survive the fight long enough for the auto termination via Moon Cell.
Depending on who you save, Rin or Rani would lose their servant.
But since there is no promo for Berserker… a.k.a Lu Bu or Vald III (Extra version, the old man version not the one from Apocrypha, thank god because his Master was just… a creepy man eating clown woman…) instead Assassin Li Shuwen is Berserker instead (he does come back as a Berserker in the game when his master cheated death and grafted the arm of a Berserker Servant Master onto himself which turned Assassin into a Berserker…) but then that leaves the question… who is going to be Assassin and most certain Rin and Lancer will be a future opponent, most likely the 6th Floor is all goes according to the line up in the game.[/spoiler]
Again, thanks for all the great info!