Oh wow, um, where do I start? This was a really action packed episode but I don’t feel like it was just entirely about the fighting either. The stand out part of the episode though, has to be the pure character dynamics between Shirou and Archer. While it’s broken up with the fights with Caster and Assassin, those two have a lot going on. This is made even better if you know a certain spoiler, but i’ll leave that for when we actually get there in the series.
Caster is right when she says one thing, they are very much alike. No matter how much the two of them deny it. They both have essencially, the same views. The problem however, is Archers are much more radical.
Archers views, are much closer to something we’ve seen before. Something any fan of Fate/Zero was sitting through this entire episode thinking about. His views are much more akin to Kiritsugu’s and to watch Shirou, who was raised by Kiritsugu deny them with all his might is almost heart breaking.
“and most of all, I can’t let myself lose to that bastard who said he would sacrifice the lives of the few to save those of the many” – Shirou.
Sound familiar? Well anyway, that aside. In this episode we fight with both Caster and Assassin and learn a little bit about each of their fighting styles. After using the technique that he used before on Berseker, knocking Caster prone to the ground Archer decides to let her go. His plan, is to use her to take out the citizins of the city and gain the power to fight Berserker and then they could come in and take her out.
This may sound cruel to you but It ties in to the “the few to save the many” idea. The people of the city being the few, compared to the world full of people that would perish if Caster got her hands on the grail.
As Shirou goes to fight Caster, ignoring Archer. Archer slices him down the back, “Fighting for others, but not yourself, is nothing but hypocrisy” Archer pretty seriously tries to kill Shirou. I do like Archer, but sometimes he makes some rash decisions on his own. I doubt Rin would of approved of something like this.
Speaking of Rin, the most we get to see of her this episode is her waking up from a dream about Archer. There are small hints in her dream to the spoiler I discussed before and it exicited me.
As for Saber in this episode, she is mostly fighting Assassin until the part where Shirou stumbled bloodied down the stairs. The animation in their fighting is just brilliant, it’s a lot of exchanges of exposential dialouge on his attacks and their honor. A important point about Assassin that is brought up early in the episode is that he is a Servant, summoned by a Servant. Thus, not the true Assassin.
Something also interesting of note in this episode was how instead of transistioning straight from the fight with Archer and Assassin to the house, they placed the ending in early. Not going to lie, it scared me a little. Years of watching anime have taught me that when the opening starts at 19:48 something is going to happen. Lucky for us, it was just a scene of Shirou and Saber agreeing to train him in sword fighting as soon as his wounds healed.
AH, I can’t even. This episode was just so good all around and all of the fighting looked amazing. Everything is coming together wonderfully, I am so interested in watching all of these characters develop. Even Shirou, do we remember episode 1 where I still had my old opinion of him and called him bland as a wet paper bag? I’m sorry Shirou, never again will I say those mean things about you baby!
~Midnight