June 20th, 2015 
AstroNerdBoy Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works – 24 review
フェイト/ステイナイト [Unlimited Blade Works] – 24
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Shirou comes to an understanding of things as Gilgamesh is about to finish him. Saber comes in and saves him, but to Gilgamesh’s amusement, Shirou sends her off to help Rin. The two say their farewells, Saber acknowledging that Shirou is her Master. Shirou uses Rho Aias to defend himself as he creates the Reality Marble, Unlimited Blade Works. Gilgamesh is not impressed, but is stunned when Shirou destroys Gilgamesh’s summoned blades before they can launch. However, as the battle continues and Gilgamesh is not able to land a blow as all of his fired weapons are destroyed, he begins to get angry.
Outside, a weakened Rin cannot escape the Grail flesh mass. She prevents Saber from saving her with a Command Spell despite the fact that the Grail surrounds Rin and Shinji. Rin uses her second spell to order Saber to destroy the Grail, though Saber strongly objects to this. Archer returns to free Rin and clear a path for her to get herself and Shinji out. Once clear, she uses her final Command Spell to send maximum mana to Saber to destroy the Grail. Saber does this, and having completed her task, says farewell to Saber before vanishing.
Back in Unlimited Blade Works, Shirou tells Gilgamesh that against warrior Servants, he’d have no chance. However, since Gilgamesh was a king, he never mastered any of the swords in his collection, thus Shirou can counter them all. Gilgamesh gets very angry at having to go all out and is forced to summon Ea again. However, before he can use it, Shirou slices off his sword arm, then proceeds to slash him across the chest. Outside of UBW, Shirou is out of mana. Gilgamesh is going to slay him, but a remnant of the Grail attempts to swallow him. Gilgamesh attempts to take Shirou with him, but Archer nails him with a head shot, killing him. Rin rushes to where Archer is waiting and says her goodbye before he fades. Shirou arrives to take Rin home.
Thoughts/Review:
Heh! I should have figured Archer would make one final return. Now that I look back at the episode he supposedly died in, there wasn’t nearly enough dispersal stuff there to indicate he’d completely vanished. However, it is still kind of a stretch that he lasted this long, but that’s what deus ex machina is all about.
I never could see how Shirou was supposed to defeat Gilgamesh. Being within Unlimited Blade Works was something I suspected would happen. It made a weird sort of sense to me that the only reason Shirou could so easily counter all of Gilgamesh’s weapons with his own copies was because Gilgamesh never mastered his weapons. In essence, Gilgamesh was a Jack of all trades when it came to weapons, but he was a master of none. However, his being a Jack of all trades was better than him being a master of one since it allowed him to stomp all of the other Servants and their lone, mastered weapon.
With Shirou, he too was a Jack of all trades when it came to copying Gilgamesh’s weapons. Since he was a master of none, Gilgamesh had no weapon that would outright defeat Shirou save for Ea, which Gilgamesh was loath to use for arrogant reasons.
At the end there, I’m not really sure what transpired. Saber had destroyed the Grail, but then there was some sort of Grail remnant or something (the term “hole” was used in the subtitles) where Gigamesh’s arm had been cut off and it tried to suck him in. That seemed out of left field to me.
As to Archer’s deus ex machina moment (or rather his dei ex machina moments since he bailed both Rin and Shirou out of trouble), there was something satisfying in him putting a blade in Giglamesh’s brain pan. And it allowed for an emotional farewell with Rin. I’m glad that they made Archer look like an older Shirou with silver hair rather than a completely different person, as he’d looked for the entire series.
As for Saber, I was sorry to see her go even though I knew she would. I just really like Saber, so when she mentioned to Shirou how they’d talk again, I knew they wouldn’t even though I hoped to be surprised and Saber would survive somehow. Oh well.
Finally, there’s Rin and Shirou. I’m glad we are getting an epilogue which will hopefully be a good aftermath episode showing what happens to them and the others (Sakura, Taiga, and even Shinji). I had thought episode 24 was going to be double length and was disappointed when I saw it wasn’t, but in the end, an extra episode makes it all good.
In the end, I enjoyed the episode. I’m looking forward to the aftermath.
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So, we’ve finally heard Shirou’s UBW chant. Just like with Archer, there are two versions of it. Here’s the English/Engrish one:
I am the bone of my sword
Steel is my body and fire is my blood
I have created over a thousand blades
Unaware of loss, nor aware of gain
Withstood pain to create weapons, waiting for one’s arrival
I have no regrets. This is the only path
My whole life was unlimited blade works
Thanks for that. 🙂
I’m just glad they got this fight right. I’m thoroughly satisfied with the way ufotable handled it, and I’m sure they’ll do even better from now on.
Yeah, there work was mostly amazing. I’d like to see them do additional stuff after the Heaven’s Feel movie (or movies).
Eh, the swords and weapons that they threw at each other were all pretty much the same thing over and over again. I would have liked to seen more of Gil’s weaponry, since he has every Noble Phantasm stored in his treasury. We could have gotten a few Easter Eggs with Caladbolg, Gae Bolg, Durandal, Vajra, and Gram.
Yeah, it would have been nice to see known weapons from the franchise being used. Oh well.
Apparently the spear that K.O’ed Berserker before his one final revival that terrified Gil was Gae Bolg…
Well wait for Fate Kalied… more Gilgamesh action there.
I was not aware of that (or I missed it).
Your first picture gives me a weird impression. Saber smiling in front of a ruined temple? I can almost imagine her saying “There, the temple is done. What’s next, master/Shirou?” 😀
So…she’s Carpenter now?
Of destruction. 😉
It is just the way the image appears and Saber’s look as she stands in front of a pile of rubble.
😆 I hadn’t thought about that until you mentioned it. Now that picture makes me snicker every time I look at it. Reminds me of Lind from Ah! My Goddess, who would try to repair damaged buildings after a battle, but often made them worse than before. 😀
Oh man, this fight was everything I expected it to be. Only problem I had with it was ufotable’s copious overuse of the darkness filter over some of the more flashy bits. I know why they do it, but it just makes certain action scenes look worse… The gifs from this episode will be glorious though.
Also, this episode was basically a love letter to VN fans who know the soundtrack. Mixes of This Illusion (over Shirou’s inner resolve scene prior to activating his version of UBW), Sword of Promised Victory (over Saber’s Excaliblast scene), New Dawn (over Archer’s goodbye to Rin and the next episode preview), and of course, EMIYA over the Shirou Gil fight. There were probably more tracks this episode I’m missing.
Anyway, Independent Action too OP!
Also, True End confirmed, looking forward to that next week.
So there was another positive ending to this route?
Yes, in the novel the ending depends on whom Shirou courted. If he has “a flower in one hand” (ergo, only really cared about Rin) we have the True End. However, if he courted both Rin and Saber – as you die if your relationshi value is not high enough at somepoint – Saber decides to stay in this world, and the three lives together, with the mention that Rin will need a lot of mana to allow Saber to stay in the world, without the Holy Grail. And that is the “Good End”
Oh, so Saber does have an option to stay in the world. Interesting.
You know…gotta keep that love triangle going.
Yeah, very true, only this time, it is polygamous time. 😉
Yup, in the Good End. You just need to balance the relationship points in the route.
Basically, Rin gets a harem, since she needs mana support to keep Saber in the world without the Grail helping to maintain her. Rin has a ton of mana to do so, but also needs Shirou to help recharge her from time to time via “mana transfers”.
Yeah, well you have to have a “reason” to justify that kind of stuff. 😉
yes, but the true ending makes more sense rather than a forced threesome.
Saber’s struggled to come to terms with her own past and Fate Zero only left her with bitter memories and in UBW and Fate route… the aim was to basically teach Saber that her life and action was not wrong and rather than seek to change it… she should move on and accept what has happened.
Which is what happened – Saber accepted and went on happily.
There was also a fragment of “Into the Night” as Shirou casts Unlimited Blade Works, “Last Strength” as the fight inside Reality Marble begins, and “Sorow” when Saber disappears.
Yeah, I mentioned that I missed identifying a whole bunch of tracks this episode…
Now I have to go on an archive binge of seorin’s LP of the VN at the LP Archive so that I can get the tindeck links to listen to those tracks again…
Also, sad that there was no Church on the Hill or Whirlpool of Death mixes this series. Those would’ve been amazing.
I’m guessing that we will get Church on the Hill when Heavens Feel movies (I’m an optimist) come along. Hopefully with a remix or two. Also, it’s Whirlpool of FATE.
Also, it’s Whirlpool of FATE.
Whoops, guess I shoulda double checked the archive of seorin’s LP to make sure I had the name of the track right before I posted…
I think there is other cause for Archer be present at the end: remember he is a Guardian, so he need protect mankind against any event that causes extinction. Well, use the Grail for kill everyone in Earth fulfill that condition.
I personally like that theory, as it would explain why Archer looked different compared to when he faded.
If he WAS a Guardian, he wouldn’t bother saving Rin and Shirou- he’d be too busy killing everyone and anyone around who could have possibly come into contact with the Grail. Besides, it was way too early for the Counter Force to directly intervene- as we’ve seen demonstrated, humans were still perfectly capable of preventing the catastrophe.
The Counter-Force can work in subtler ways than that, like it does in Kara no Kyoukai. Why expand energy manifesting a fresh Counter-Guardian when a suitable tool already exists and simply empowering them a bit suffices for the job?
Yes, if the EMIYA in the final scenes were a summoned Counter-Guardian, he would kill everyone capable of bringing about the disaster, regardless of whether they were working to end humanity or save it. But I also do not think Archer could have survived that last barrage from Gil on his own power. It’s never stated that the Counter-Force was involved in his survival in any way, but it only makes sense for its influence to become known with the looming threat of an extinction event, and the parallels with KnK (giving the right push to an already existing power that is suitable for the job) are convincing enough for me to follow the theory that he managed to remain in the world for a time with Alaya’s support.
Interesting. I wonder if that’s the reason. Not sure what happened to Farray, who knows EVERYTHING about F/SN. Usually, he’d be giving us the goods on this. Last time I talked with him, he was away from home. I’m not sure when he’ll be back.
I’ve been on holiday for 2 weeks and all google related sites were blocked so my replies were late.
I was expecting Farray to submit an essay explaining it…
Either way… I don’t think Archer’s survival was really explained… One thing we know is that the Archer class has Independent Action which allows them to exist without a master for a certain duration of time. However they are more defiant then any other servant as seen in Robin Hood, Emiya and Gilgamesh opposing their masters and requiring command spells to specially control certain aspects of their action.
Personally I think the Counter Force has a role to play… But on a side note… Whilst Gilgamesh isn’t part of the Counter Force, he is however fulfilling the will of world and exterminating Humanity who the world claims as a pest that threatens the planet itself.
Farray already explained there is a counter force for Humanity and one for the planet itself.
Meh this is just too complex… eitherway lets just enjoy the epilogue.
I don’t know what happened to him. Last time I talked to him a few weeks ago, he said he was away from home, but he’d write when he got back. At the time, I thought he would just be delayed a day or so. Then it became a couple of weeks and I reached out to him, but nothing from him. 🙁
*lol* I hear ya.