IT’S HAPPENING
Impression
I’m so gar for Kuro.
No, seriously. Not only is she the lewdest, she’s also the coolest.
And look at this projected Excalibur, made broken and turned into an arrow!
KURO, PLEASE MARRY ME
I look forward to the day when the word ‘perfect’ in the dictionary is accompanied by a picture of Kuro next to it.
Even without Kuro, I would have been frothing at the mouth anyway – because this episode was everything I wanted Herz to be. It’s everything Herz should have been, rather. My only disappointment is not being able to see Caren change into her Exorcist outfit. In terms of excitement level, the only comparable thing would be the fight against Saber in the first season – and like how this strange Card is a whole class above the Saber card, so too was this fight in terms of length and scale. The difference is that, unlike with Saber there’s going to be no lull from here on out – the wild roller coaster ride has started, and you’re not getting off. Isn’t that exciting?
I know some people were speculating that the eighth Card might be Avenger instead of Gilgamesh, but it is indeed Gilgamesh – and if he wasn’t already enough of a super overpowered Heroic Spirit, he’s also been absorbing lots of mana due to the ley lines around him, which means he’s just as much of a monster as Kuro is perfect. I know the Class Cards were always supposed to be mindless versions of Heroic Spirits, but I wonder if the mana overdose made Gil as crazy as he was – because it felt like he was extra mindless. He seemed to display even less mental cognition than all the others, with not an ounce of strategy – not that he usually needs to do anything other than skewer whatever’s in front of him with his Gate of Babylon. All he was doing at the start was warding them away with his black mana thing, and everyone was already struggling. Except Bazett, I suppose – but she did kind of die after getting stabbed in eight places before she was resurrected and came back to life.
Bazett was almost as cool as Kuro. I mean, you can’t really beat projecting something which can’t even be projected, all whilst a remix of EMIYA is being played (I guess she got really close to the actual Excalibur or something, like what happened in the Saber fight, unless we’re going to break canon Nasuverse rules). I especially liked that zoomed-out shot of her running against countless Noble Phantasms all aimed at her – and of course, all those punches she landed on Gilgamesh. I do wonder how she managed to defeat Archer if she had so much trouble against Gilgamesh – as seen in the recent adaptation of Unlimited Blade Works, Shirou and thus EMIYA are practically natural enemies for him. Is it the mana overdose? Or is it because EMIYA would use high-speed projection as a counter, and wouldn’t fight like that against anyone but Gilgamesh? At any rate, as a card he must be worth so much – if they were doing a trade, it’d definitely be worth multiple Class Cards, at least half of all the others combined maybe. Imagine if the events of Prisma Illya became a trading card game. Gilgamesh would be an ultra-rare only found in limited quantities in booster packs.
Miyu and her shock at there being a second Archer card is important. It’s just as important as the discussion about the Holy Grail War last week, and I’m honestly not pleased with how the preview has Luvia spoiling the fact that there’s different Grail War going on. Illya is very mistaken about them having escaped the danger though, because of Ea – remember what that does? Well, you should, because you shouldn’t be watching this without having gone through a bit of Fate first. Like how it crushed Ionian Hetairoi when he fought against Rider, this time Enuma Elish is breaking the boundary between the real world and the Mirror World – which means that they’ll have to go up against him in a place where he can no longer be contained. And they’ll have to go along with all the consequences of what that brings, including the strange fact that he seems to be looking for the Holy Grail. At long last, after seven long weeks of waiting… it’s finally happening.
THE HYPE IS REAL.
Comparing Bazett to Shirou and Emiya is a terrible comparison when dealing with fights.
Bazett is more adept at one on one fighting than taking on multiple opponents or multiple projectiles, while Shirou and Emiya’s abilities make them the perfect force to fight Gil. On top of Gil normally being too arrogant to use his full power.
Nasu even recently confirmed Gil can see the future just like Merlin can, but he’s too arrogant to even use it.
Bazett is more adept at single combat, that’s exactly what I mean – EMIYA is so effective against Gil because he can match him weapon for weapon in whatever comes out of the Gate of Babylon. So EMIYA, too, can use a high speed barrage of projectiles. My question was how, if Bazett struggled so much this episode, she managed to defeat EMIYA, who should theoretically be able to counter Gil because he can use a similar fighting style – as she was the one who collected the Archer card (as well as Lancer) before Rin and Luvia were given their mission at the start of the series.
A different kind of situation. EMIYA does not generaly use his multi-weapon attacks: Shirou only developed the concept as a direct counter to Gilgamesh’s weapon-spamming. Also, Shirou mostly defeated Gilgamesh in hand-to-hand combat, at least in the visual novel. Gil is not actually a very good swordsman, while Shirou gains instant mastery with any weapon he creates, so while they were fighting up close Shirou could pick and choose a weapon to counter Gil’s weapons, and beat Gil just by being a better fighter. While both Shirou and Archer did counter Gate of Babylon in the VN, they only countered short bursts of it, not the true “rain of weapons” attack like Gilgamesh was using here: it was very clearly implied that they could not keep that up very long, while Gil can rain down his supply of weapons all day.
Bazett could beat EMIYA the same way she could beat Kuro: EMIYA wouldn’t USE a “rain of weapons” style attack against her. It would instead focus on high-speed single-target sword and bow attacks, which Bazett was able to dodge or counter. Perhaps if the card had been an intelligent being it might have figured out a better way to fight her, but (with one exception) the cards are not actual thinking beings, so it just attacked her blindly and she kicked its butt before it could change tactics, assuming it ever would have done so.