Anime can rip out your heart sometimes, or your favorite character can rip the heart out of your second favorite character. literally. So picking up where we last episode, with Illya dead and Shirou being knocked off the balcony. However, due to MC hacks. He’s fine, pretty sure that would at least break the leg of a normal person. Nope. He yells at Gilgamesh to stop, but as Gil says. Without Saber, he’s useless.
Then there’s Shinji, just Shinji. Please, stop touching Gilgamesh. You have no right to lay your hand on the king of heroes. I don’t care if he DID just rip the heart out of a little girl that I adore. Get your greasy, sleazy little hands off him. Thank goodness he’s just a servant on loan. Shinji tells Gil to kill Shirou and Rin, but Gil is like. “You’re not my real master”
Okay, he’s more like, “If we stick around here, the heart will spoil. We have more important things to do.” and leave Shirou and Rin behind. They have a burial for Illya, and set up a tiny grave for her.
Then Rin lays down the law, telling Shirou his logic is stupid. He survived so he should live, that he was disrespecting Kiritsugu by trying to throw the life he saved away. That he needed to live and not try to die to save people, does he listen to ANY of this?
Nope, in one ear and right out the other. Good job Shirou. So now what? They need to find a way to take out Caster and now they have the problem known as Gilgamesh. Good thing Lancer is here to help, and I’m going to be honest. Lancer is the highlight of this episode, Gilgamesh is in this episode, Kiritsugu flashbacks are in this episode, there is a deep scene where Archer and Kuzuki talk about Caster and her goals.
All of that is completely trumped by Lancer. Lancer’s expressions, his smugness, his teasing of Rin and Shirou. Remember how you were depressed a few minutes ago? Yeah? Well are you now? Probably not, considering this scene is impossible not to laugh at. [especially if you have someone occasionally blaring Careless Whisper in your ear while watching it.]
However, I just had to groan at the part where they’re making the alliance and Shirou is like. “Fine, under one condition.” of course, my first response and the logical response here, would of been “Who’s your master” I mean, this is important information. Like, super vital to winning the war information. What does he ask for instead to seal the deal, he tells him to….well, the best way to paraphrase this? ‘Back off my woman.’
Dang it Shirou! You could of gotten vital plot information, you could of made him bend over backwards and you tell him to ‘Back off my woman.’ I CAN’T WITH YOU SOMETIMES.
I just can’t. Also, i’d like to point out the location that all of this is taking place at is a certain…-clears throat- location, people who have played the Fate route or watched the Deen anime might recognize where a certain…mana transfer took place. -insert Careless Whisper here-
So anyway, Lancer thinks this is hilarious and agrees to it. So they make a plan to go take down Caster and her mini-army of servants. Assassin isn’t a problem since he can’t leave the temple. So that leaves Archer and most likely Saber. Rin believes if she can get to Caster, she can throw her off and win. So Lancer is designated to fight Archer and if the time comes, Saber.
So they reach the church and the fight between Lancer and Archer begins, as Shirou and Rin run by and get into the church. Now, we’ll have to see how the fight goes.
Before I finish this review though, there is one thing I want to bring up in particular and that is Gilgamesh. I know very well that there are a lot of people mad at him for what he did. I can’t blame everyone, Illya is my second favorite character. However, I want you to take a look at his face when he’s removing her heart. There is no pomp and circumstance, there is no joy. He’s not enjoying pulling out the heart of a small child.
He is merely, doing what has to be done. Doing what he’s been told as a servant. He is not getting any real joy out of this situation at all. I’m not saying that it gets rid of what he’s done, or lighten it in any way.
I just, wanted to get that out there.
This episode was quite the mood whiplash from the previous one, while last episode I was doing everything I could not to cry. This episode I was doing everything I could not to laugh too hard. Lancer, just Lancer. MVP of this episode. So funny, so amazing, I can’t wait for the fight. GAH, UFOTABLE. NEVER STOP BEING AMAZING.
~Midnight
Re: Shirou’s “under one condition.” At numerous points in the story you can have Shirou make choices that lead to a rather humorous scene, like this one. Most of these are, in my opinion, non-canonical choices, despite the fact that you can still play through and complete the game with them, because they’re something only a stupid person would do. However, they are hilarious.
What concerns me (and it’s probably just me, because I’m the only one who’s soft enough to care) is that I also avoided this dialogue option because it could easily shift the scales to result in getting the “true end” of the route rather than the “good end,” and I definitely prefer the good end.
Re: Gilgamesh. Don’t try to excuse him. Due to his special circumstances he doesn’t have to obey ANYBODY. He didn’t murder Illya because a Master told him to. He murdered her because He. Wanted. To. He is a pretentious, self-absorbed, sociopathic asshole, and he gets no passes from me.
On the subject of the choices Shirou makes, I genuinely regard Mind of Steel as a legitimate end. My other favourite HF choice was:
1. Bring Illya back.
2. Bring Illya back.
3. Bring Illya back.
As for Dr. Gil, I’m sure you know that Miss ‘I don’t need a route of my own, because everyone already loves me’ will see justice done eventually. Having the second half of Prisma Illya 2wei air next season was a strategic decision!
I’m thankful for yet another helping of insight on the VN from you two! Aside from the technical reason why they allowed Shirou to say what he did to Lancer, I originally thought Shirou was also playing it safe. Well, I suppose telling a charming servant to back off the girl you admire is playing it safe already.
I just thought that it would give Lancer incentive to kill Shirou and Rin the moment they won if they knew of Lancer’s Master, so that no one goes after them and gets that information (of course we already know that Gilgamesh knows who is Lancer’s Master… Right?).
I mean, if the trio wins Archer and Saber may theoretically be eliminated in the process, or at the very least Saber won’t be in the best condition to fight after enduring the constant stress on her nerves.