There’s only 5 episodes left, they can’t kill off all the secondary characters… Right?
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Summary
As Saber catches up with Rider, Rider himself sees her as well and comes down, racing with her to see who “wins”. Avoiding his underhanded ways, Saber eventually catches up, only to notice that he isn’t the one who captured Irisviel. She still fights him, however, and shoots him an excalibur in the face, which makes him lose his precious chariot and he’s stuck walking back home while Saber leaves on her motorbike.
Meanwhile, Kirei is the one who actually captured Irisviel, saying something about her being the Grail’s vessel or something of the sort. After a talk with Kariya, whom he was using, Kirei meets Katou Zouken, a fucking psycho and that’s pretty much all we know for now.
When Kariya goes back to the church, he finds Tokiomi’s dead body, and that’s when the victim’s wife shows up, thinking that he killed him. This causes Kariya to go insane and to kill the girl he loved, because she thought the worse of him, and meanwhile Kirei sips his wine calmly, happy of the way things turned out.
Impression
Great episode once again!
I’m glad to see some awesome fights yet again, I was definitely happy to see Saber’s “EX-CALIBUUUUUR!!!!”, if only for the pretty explosions and sparkles. Rider got owned so bad, I think he definitely underestimated her. His funny speech after the fight still made him look super badass though, this guy is way too relaxed for his own good. 
Something which was greatly enforced even more in this episode was also the idea that Kotomine Kirei is a freakin’ psycho. Having him compared to Matou Zouken (who was also pretty crazy himself) was one thing, but when he caused Kariya to go nuts and to kill the person he loved, the idea that he enjoyed it so much was shown beautifully with the sipping wine, and that scene definitely proved to me how fucked up he was. It’s great 😀
Apart from that, I’ll give koodos to the animation quality once more, since I was glued to the pretty backgrounds and animations throughout the whole episode. God, I love blogging this, if only so I can take millions of screencaps. The race scene was particularly well done, as well as the fight between Saber and Rider.
” Meanwhile, Tokiomi is the one who actually captured Irisviel, saying something about her being the Grail’s vessel or something of the sort. After a talk with Kariya, whom he was using, Tokiomi meets Katou Zouken ”
I think you mean Kotomine instead of Tokiomi right?
HAHAHA Yup XD I kept mixing up the names this episode, I thought I’d fixed every mistake. Thanks a lot for this!
Zouken is expanded on in the only non-adapted game route of F/SN, Heaven’s Feel. I won’t say any more, but as you can see, he’s pretty sick and twisted too.
Being Kariya is suffering…I don’t really know what to think of him anymore, it’s a mix between pity and a “how could you” sort of thing.
I guess they didn’t expand on Kariya enough during the show, so despite me finding him really cool in the beginning, I find not having seen him for a good 10 episodes kinda destroyed the awesome first impression. So I’m kinda neutral right now, and I find him a bit hard to pity, just like you XD
That as well as how Tokiomi really is a git for being a crappy father, but would never have had to give Sakura away had Kariya become a magus in the first place. Kariya uses saving Sakura as the basis for his actions, except I don’t see how saving her now will do anything, given that she’s already been worm raped countless times.
Yeah, in the end it doesn’t really change much, and killing Tokiomi’s wife and his love in the end also didn’t change a single thing, especially since the misunderstanding possibly could have been cleared up with time. I kinda get Gilgamesh’s “Not quite there yet, but not bad for a first time” because there were a lot of things which could have avoided this tragedy.
Rider’s chariot wasn’t at full power (see last episode), it was flight only mode. He was also attacking Saber without the intention to kill her, unlike her. Novels also made obvious that Rider had a chance of victory but by risking Waver’s life. So he chose to jump and not take it, sacrifice his bulls to preserve Waver. AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.
I don’t think the anime did a good job with Kariya overall. He sounds too sane, he looks too pretty after a year of torture and experimentation. This is his description in what was episode 5 (the first battle):
It just didn’t make obvious Kariya’s mind and body are deteriorated since the war began. Berserker’s not the only one Berserker. It’s symbolic.
Lift the iron top of the entrance, move it aside – such simple affairs also required almost an hour. To the haggard Matō Kariya, it was tenuous work even if he put all of his strength into it.
At last, Kariya pried a crack as the lid slide aside and the refreshing air flowed into the disgusting sewers. During this short moment, Kariya felt reinvigorated. Utilizing all of his strength, he pushed the manhole cover aside and slowly crawled up like a caterpillar. There was not a single person on the streets. In the silence of the night, no one noticed Kariya’s shadow.
It was the same street that the Servants battled over. It was only three streets away from the four-lane road.
Kariya was different from the other magi. He was only a skimmer magus – lacking the formal training and learning of a real magus, he was like a student who just went to cram school. He was not like the others and does not share their arrogance or their carelessness. On the other hand, however, he does not have the confidence when confronting other magi. Add the fact that his Servant was Berserker…even if he wanted to command Berserker at his side…
Berserker will never listen to his commands.
Thus, it was probably better to allow Berserker to wildly lob bombs at his opponents. Let him rage. Kariya decided to first protect himself as he observed the events from a safe location.
Kariya detected the scent of Lancer as he chased the Heroic Spirit to that location. As the battle began, he decided to not expose himself. Sending out “sight worms” obtained from Zōken, he hid in the sewers and observed the battle from underground.
Trying for a long time to stabilize his breathing, Kariya collapsed on his back on the freezing asphalt.
Blood covered his body. Most of his capillaries have exploded. Blood slowly flowed non-stop from the cracked parts of his skin.
A long time ago, Kariya once saw the victim of a nuclear power plant explosion struggle against disease. Right now, his appearance and situation was no different than the victim prior to his death. His body of flesh has already been destroyed. But there are Crest Worms spread across Kariya’s body. Its magecraft extended his lifespan and allowed him to wiggle.
Kariya cannot believe that his body was reduced to this state. When he supplied prana to Berserker, he felt as if the worms had already devoured his entire body.
Merely one battle and he has turned into this.
The backlash and responsibility for controlling Berserker was far beyond what Kariya can handle. In addition, Berserker is completely ignorant of Kariya’s orders – he was like a bloodthirsty beast.
As soon as he lets go, Berserker will butcher everything it sees, and it will not stop until all of its prana is spent. If the battle had continued for much longer, all would have been lost. Kariya would be drained into a dry husk by the worms as he would have been forced to supply more prana – more than his body would ever be able to handle.
To Kariya, the battle among Servants was truly risky. If he couldn’t endure to his limits and stop Berserker, the only thing that’s waiting for him is his own destruction.
“…Aaaah….?”
And that was in episode FIVE. He didn’t choke the woman he ‘loved’. He couldn’t recognize her. He was “shutting up” some demonic woman who was spouting hatred. Novel wise, it’s clear. He realizes that’s Aoi later and immediately releases her, crawling his face and tearing his hair out like a wounded wild animal.
Oh my God, that makes SO much more sense :3 Agreeing with you completely on the idea that they didn’t expand enough on his character, as well as the idea that he didn’t seem as weak and as destroyed as he actually is in the novel. I remember episode 5, but what was expressed in the novel wasn’t expressed in the episode or barely, and I definitely hadn’t read that much into it when I watched it. The fact that the one who is able to order people the least due to his weakness ended up with the one who is hardest to control… Now it also adds much more power to Tokiomi giving him and infinite amount of Command Seals, and makes Kariya sound much more awesome.
Thanks a lot for this excerpt 🙂 It makes me want to read the novels, definitely!