Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works Anime

[Elf]

Nah,  she does this cute little sway/bounce when she's talking (flirting) to Archer.

[Cherry Lover]

Nah,  she does this cute little sway/bounce when she's talking (flirting) to Archer.

Ah, OK.

Well, I'll have to check it out when I get a chance to actually watch it....

[Alice]

So I finally got to watch the Prologue today. Yay for calling in from work due to ILLNESS.

Owwwww, hope you get better soon.

Anyway, if anyone cares, my random thoughts:

Wow, the Stately Tohsaka Manor isn't very stately anymore and is starting to look like parts of South America.

I actually like the Manor's design here, though then I'm a fan of old mansions like this surrounded by nature. Probably doesn't make a ton of sense in context, though it's possibly justified by the mansion getting overgrown over the years.

WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE KITTY PAJAMAS?!

I actually wondered this too. I want a pair of those, they look so comfy. :< Not that I don't already have kitty pajama bottoms anyway, it's just I could do with more.

Oh, now I remember why I ship Rin/Archer so hard now. They're fighting like a married couple.

It is adorable, no?

Archer you are tsundere as well and a curmudgeon. That's okay, that's part of the reason that I love you.

A curmudgeonly curmudgeon. He's so moe and butlery in this, it's great.

Where's the talk about Reality Marbles?

I think they cut it for time and to streamline things. It should hopefully come up again later in the adaptation. Hopefully.

A Wild Celt appears!

Wild LANCER used AGILITY! RIN dodged the attack!

Lancer smack talk! He calls Archer "old man". Which makes me wonder how young Lancer is suppose to be and how old Archer physically is as a Servant. I mean, since Servants are summoned at their peak, wouldn't Archer be the same age as when he formed the contract?

Lancer I think is my age physically, so Archer's probably a bit older than that at least. Probably late 20's, early 30's.

Archer's being super aggressive during this fight. And holy shit does it look amazing. I wonder if part of the Archer/Lancer rivalry is because Archer still holds a grudge from when Lancer heart-shived him as a kid.

Probably. I imagine heart-shivving is not the easiest thing to forgive.

Oh cool, there's the snake skin with the pendent.

Does it explain why she didn't use it?

It's because the skin is half shredded, rendering it useless.

[YOLF]

I'm not sure how shredding an already thousands of years old fossilized snake skin makes it any less of a usable catalyst when we had things like a tatter of Iskander's cloak used in Zero. The link to FZ was nice but it bugged me.

In general, the episode looked absolutely amazing, but there details here and there that bothered me. I did not get the impression Shinji was this fabulous at the start of the VN! It was also really weird coming back to Shinji after all the cool roles Hiroshi Kamiya has had over the years. It's almost like he made the character likable. Buut then he lost his shit. Good job Hiroshi.

Other things of note. Quoting myself from elsewhere, adapted, because I'm not about to write the same rant three times online:

This looked really awesome, but if there’s something I would have to find to critique, it’s the fight scene.

Yes, visuals wise it looked amazing, and really brought across how powerful Servants are, but it was also a bit overdone. And by that I mean, the pavement cracking and splitting into huge clouds of dust every time Archer and Lancer exchanged blows, and their strikes being so powerful they knock each other away with enough force that they blast through cement, or leaving several meters-deep craters in the ground when they block. And the “Archer presses down on Lancer’s spear with so much power it caves in the ground instantly like 3 foot and crashes Lancer into a building” thing was really unnecessary.

They seemed to be going for additional flashiness as opposed to making the exchange of blows look significant otherwise for that part of the fight, and it honestly bugged me a bit. Lancer would not get knocked around like that by Archer like that either. I think Ufotable could have handled giving weight to Archer and Lancer’s clash, without being so shallow about it.

Yes, I get that it was supposed to bring across how superhuman Servants are, but the exchange of blows actually lost a bit of significance with the way they chose to animate some of the attacks and retorts. It cheapened the experience for me somewhat.

That said, overall the episode looked amazing, and it was only part of the fight that suffered from the issues I pointed out.

Greatly looking forward to more.

[Cherry Lover]

I'm not sure how shredding an already thousands of years old fossilized snake skin makes it any less of a usable catalyst when we had things like a tatter of Iskander's cloak used in Zero. The link to FZ was nice but it bugged me.

Yeah, I'm not particularly convinced about that. But, then, a) Rin doesn't really know what she's doing and b) her only source of information on it would be Kotomine, who has a vested interest in making sure she doesn't use the catalyst. So, I can believe that it would have worked and she just didn't realise it.

Also, on that note, how many "Rin summons Gil" fics do you think this particular piece of information will spawn...?

Yes, visuals wise it looked amazing, and really brought across how powerful Servants are, but it was also a bit overdone. And by that I mean, the pavement cracking and splitting into huge clouds of dust every time Archer and Lancer exchanged blows, and their strikes being so powerful they knock each other away with enough force that they blast through cement, or leaving several meters-deep craters in the ground when they block. And the “Archer presses down on Lancer’s spear with so much power it caves in the ground instantly like 3 foot and crashes Lancer into a building” thing was really unnecessary.

They seemed to be going for additional flashiness as opposed to making the exchange of blows look significant otherwise for that part of the fight, and it honestly bugged me a bit. Lancer would not get knocked around like that by Archer like that either. I think Ufotable could have handled giving weight to Archer and Lancer’s clash, without being so shallow about it.

Yes, I get that it was supposed to bring across how superhuman Servants are, but the exchange of blows actually lost a bit of significance with the way they chose to animate some of the attacks and retorts. It cheapened the experience for me somewhat.

I think that actually is quite logical for a fight between two heroes of such strength, actually. The speed they move at and hit each other at would leave dents in things.

[YOLF]

I refer back to the "Archer presses down into GB so hard it creates a 3 feet deep crater and knocks Lancer into a building" thing.

That just looked stupid. It looked stupid in the PV. I wouldn't even be cracking down so hard on it if not for that bit.

I'm just making a big deal of exposing my thoughts on this matter because I'm worried Ufotable will pull more questionable animation choices like that for the remaining fight scenes.

[Elf]

I refer back to the "Archer presses down into GB so hard it creates a 3 feet deep crater and knocks Lancer into a building" thing.

That just looked stupid. It looked stupid in the PV. I wouldn't even be cracking down so hard on it if not for that bit.

I'm just making a big deal of exposing my thoughts on this matter because I'm worried Ufotable will pull more questionable animation choices like that for the remaining fight scenes.

Well, honestly that made the fight more believable to me.  After all, we're told that Servants are these all powerful and all awesome beings.  This fight shows part of it.

[Kiritsugu_Emiya]

Well I think the Archer vs Lancer fight was fine, way better than any fight DEEN could have come up with

[SINIB]

I refer back to the "Archer presses down into GB so hard it creates a 3 feet deep crater and knocks Lancer into a building" thing.

That just looked stupid. It looked stupid in the PV. I wouldn't even be cracking down so hard on it if not for that bit.

I'm just making a big deal of exposing my thoughts on this matter because I'm worried Ufotable will pull more questionable animation choices like that for the remaining fight scenes.

Well, honestly that made the fight more believable to me.  After all, we're told that Servants are these all powerful and all awesome beings.  This fight shows part of it.

i enjoyed it.

[Kaze]

I've always been into DBZ-esque fights, so even though all the ground exploding and speed-vanishing in the Archer vs Lancer duel was a touch exaggerated, I enjoyed it anyway.

Rin's little dance/bob thing set off my WTF alarm, but after taking a second to think about it, it's not so outlandish. Archer is her Servant, she has no reason to be reserved around him like everyone else. And I have to admit it was cute.

I have no doubt we'll see Saber Moe, but hopefully Ufo will give us some Sakura Moe as well before she vanishes from the route.

[Alice]

I went ahead and made some gifs of the little dance bob thing Rin does. Hopefully these are okay:

Spoiler for Hiden:

[Cherry Lover]

I like the random jump she does in the middle for no apparent reason....

[Elf]

She's an energetic, teenage girl who's with someone she can finally be herself with.

She's probably pretty excited.  Plus she was sort of teasing/flirting with him too.

[SINIB]

sakura Scenes episode 1

MOAR SAKURA, now 1080X better!

[Kaze]

I am astounded by the teasing the opening gives Saber and Shirou. Either they really are mixing up the romance(s?) or Ufotable is being mean.