天下制覇

And just think, two hours of anime today is just a warmup for tomorrow.

Impressions:

Let’s start with the bad. I like starting there. It’s comforting. *ahem*

If you aren’t already familiar with the story, this is probably going to leave you scratching your head and extremely confused. It’s more like an adaptation of the Cliffsnotes or annotations of the story than the story itself. Little to no attempt is made to fill in the details between all the major events of this particularly storyline and it simply leaps like a kamikaze frog from one scene to the next. This means that whatever investment you have with the characters is going to have to come from the outside because you’re getting really no development here in the slightest. Hell, Ilya’s heart has more screentime than Ilya herself. You don’t even once hear the full UBW chant either. That just seems… confusing. And yes, the fish from Realta Nua are hanging around. Remember kids, sex is a beautiful thing where a woman puts her fish into a man’s shoulder and they give birth to swords. No wonder Japan is so sexually confused.

Saber and Shirou probably suffered from that the most. I’m not even sure why they bothered to keep Saber around except to fulfill the mantra of "that’s the source." I don’t think she had more than three lines in the first 45 minutes and after that, she fought Assassin while Shirou and Rin were off dealing with real antagonists before fading away. Shirou had similar issues. I think 90% of his lines were yelled at Archer or Gil and the remaining 10% were along the lines of "What?". He doesn’t have much of a personality to begin with, but the central theme of him growing up and any romance people might be looking for with Rin got swept under the rug and just lost. Gil’s death by blackhole from severed arm was also somewhat… baffling.

On the upside, the action is visually stunning. It could have definitely used some more creative and dynamic direction. There were entirely too many lame still distance shots where it was clear the director wasn’t trying and had left things to the choreographer and animators to make interesting, but admittedly, it was leaving things in good hands. It’s easy to compare it to Rakkyo though, and while I think that UBW is overall more technically proficient, because of the lack of buildup and relatively average direction, they don’t carry the same weight. They were still all a joy to watch and the movie is packed with action from start to end. Deen did nail the Emiya scene excellently too. It was far better than the climax battle against Gil, if for no other reason than it wasn’t a bunch of glowing lightsticks flying around for half of it.

Overall, Deen did a mostly good job with a rather large story and focused on aiming it towards fans of the game. Since it clocks in at about 5 episodes worth of time, I think that I would have preferred a nice relaxing 13 or so episode series so they could actually fill in the gaps between the scenes and include… say… character development, but eh, no use crying over spilt milk. Those that aren’t familiar with the story can probably enjoy all the pretty action, but will find it much more confusing and a little soulless, which admittedly, it is. Still very pretty to watch though.