lockman.pink - 2015-01-03 01:51:02

Disclaimer: Do not confuse this anime with the original "Fate/Stay Night" anime, this one is a good deal better in every single respect.

If you enjoyed Fate/Zero, you will likely enjoy the anime adaptation of Fate/Stay Night's "Unlimited Blade Works" route. This series is an excellent addition to the Fate series and has all the great elements that Fate/Zero had, save for an interesting MC. Emiya made for a much more interesting character than his adopted son, but aside from that shortcoming, Unlimited Blade Works continues to deliver what the Fate series excels in: excessively awesome fight scenes in a "battle royale" setting. 8/10

ima.kassulke - 2015-01-01 04:54:14

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works is definitely one of the best anime I have ever seen. I'm sort of a newcomer to the Fate Series and it was just excellent.

Ufotable has exceeded all expectation and clearly put a lot of time and effort making the beautiful atmosphere the show creates. No other anime can compare when it comes to animation and artwork. The soundtrack is also amazing, especially the final ending song, "This Illusion" Remix by LiSa.

The Characters have a great amount of development and you truly fall in love with them.

The story is truly something amazing, I can't really describe it.

Overall I think the show is very enjoyable and I would recommend it to anyone! It is probably the best anime of 2014 and anyone can get into it!

celia24 - 2014-12-31 20:01:14

wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow  

tbotsford - 2014-12-28 15:08:01

A Review of “Fate/StayNight: Unlimited Blade Works (2014)”

A wonderful revisit to ananime classic! Fate is back, and better than ever?

Nowadays it can be hard to find some new high quality anime to watchbetween the many seasonal shows that are airing. People tend to search for newstuff as they crave for new experiences, but jumping into something new alsopose the risk of being a letdown, or maybe just not the new experience that wasanticipated. But sometimes a new experience can come from a show that hasalready aired and finished, but is being reborn with a greater understandingand more power than the previous. This is the case with Ufotable’s adaptationof “Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works.”
The show is only halfway to the end, but in this review I’ll do my best tocover the show up to this point. In advance I would like to thank you forreading this review ^.^ Now then, hachime mashou!

A quick sum-up of the Fateseries
The Fate series started as a visual novel from the visual arts studio“Type-Moon.” The novel ended up being a huge success and spawned an animeadaptation in 2006 made by animation studio “Deen.” This adaptation followedthe “Fate” storyline from the original visual novel and is looked upon withboth praise and hate to this day. Deen also made another story route into amovie in 2010. This story route was called “Unlimited Blade Works.” (Confusedyet?... Good.. It gets worse ^^). In 2011 another animation studio called“Ufotable” decided to make a spin-off series of the popular Fate series, thiswas called “Fate/Zero” and acted as a prequel to “Fate/Stay Night.” This animereceived high praise and Ufotable decided to make an adaptation of thealready-made “Unlimited Blade Works” route. Why am I mentioning this? Well, peopletend to get very confused about the series’ and how to watch them and in whichorder. My recommendation would be to just watch Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night:Unlimited Blade Works by Ufotable in that order, and completely skip the Deenversions.

All out tactical warfareto the death! Almost…

UBW takes off as the sequel to Fate/Zero and we once again findourselves in a Holy Grail War. A war where 7 mages (masters) are participatingto win the ultimate price, the Holy Grail. These mages all summon a heroicspirit (servant) from any time period to help them achieve victory in this war.It’s basically just a hero-orgy where a bunch of people die, or at least, somedie.
Compared to Zero, UBW isn’t as mature and consequential as its predecessor. Youfelt the weight of the war in Zero, but in UBW, it is kinda dulled down a tad.The story is still great, mostly because of it being so well-written (kudos toType-Moon), but it sometimes struggles to keep to the main story and mightdrift off from the good stuff every now and then, with some whole episodesdedicated to explanations and such that doesn’t necessarily brings us closer toa conclusion.
Also it can have a slight problem with predictability, but that is only forthose that have seen the Deen version (movie), as they have seen the storybefore, even if just a part.
All in all, I think the story of the first season starts well and is doing agreat job being consistent throughout, leading up to a 12^th episodeconclusion that makes you crave for MORE.

The Good, the Bad, and theShirou.
If you liked the mature and motivated characters from Zero, then youmight not like the characters as much in UBW. The Grail is the almighty wishfulfilling entity that every master craves, just not so much in this story.Their motivations are for the most part hidden and some of the masters andservants don’t even care about the Holy Grail at all (how come they all becamemasters then?). All in all the characters of this show are much morecomplicated to figure out than in Zero.
Shirou is still the main character, but while I really didn’t like him in Deen’sadaptation, I can accept his character and his way of being in this version. I didn’tlike Shirou because I thought he was 1) Very, Very, Naïve, 2) the way he thinksabout girls (that they have to be protected and can’t fend for themselves), 3)his uselessness in almost every situation, making him more of a side characterthan the main one, and 4):

While he is still the same character, he is much more aware of hissituation and the weight that the Grail War has on his life. His male chauvinismis still there, but I feel like there has been put a damper on it. He is alsobetter at making decisions and fending for himself, with variant results. And Rinseems to have taken over Shirou’s… Uhm… yeah, that thing…

Rin is back and has a bigger role in UBW. So does Archer and they areboth some of my favorite characters so I am very happy to see that. But therehas also become less focus on Saber, which is in my opinion a sad thing to see,even if it isn’t her original route. There are a lot of supporting charactersin the show, and people who have watched Zero will be happy to see some of thecameos made throughout. Could have used more Gil, but he will definitely have abigger role in the second season.

 “Unlimited Budget Works”
… is what the series could be called.That’s thanks to Ufotable’s desire to blow every little penny they own intothis series. I dare you to go find me a better animated anime series! I doubledare you mothereffer!! Beside some anime movies, it doesn’t get much betterthan this. And you want to know the best thing of it all? It is very consistentthroughout all 13 episodes! I in fact couldn’t spot a dip in animation quality thatI found to be even the slightest bit unacceptable at any point in the show. Theoverall style of Ufotable is that they use a mix-up between hand drawn imagesand computer made effects and lighting. It is a style that is very beautiful tolook at and very soothing for the eyes. And then there are the action scenes…Man.. The action scenes were just… I don’t even have words...

This also marks the first anime I have ever watched in 60fps. I wouldnormally never recommend anyone to watch an anime in 60fps as some people getheadaches from high frame rates and it can destroy the natural flow of a showthat should have been 24-30fps at most. But if you are willing to try, then Iwould highly recommend this anime as a test subject as the 60fps (in myopinion) makes the animation even better!

The final piece of amagnificent puzzle!
I usually think that sound and music is the most underappreciated partof an anime. It deserves just as much attention as the other parts, I mean, gowatch an anime without sound and give me your thoughts! I’m just ranting atthis point… The music in this anime is solid throughout, nothing mind-blowingthough. Hideyuki Fukasawa has done a great job using his particular style oforchestra-techno-rock-mash up. The OST especially shines through in the actionscenes, which is nice!
The OP and ED of the show are both rather generic and they were skipped overfrequently. (Hope the next ones are better).
The voice acting is what you would expect from top-quality voice actors like; Noriaki Sugiyama, Ayako Kawasumi, JunichiSuwabe and Jōji Nakata. All inall, it is pretty good… Yeah ^^

Final Thoughts
Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works definitely a candidate for anime of theyear, in my opinion. It is not just a remake. It adds so much more to theseries and helps Fate soar to a new level of popularity. A definite must watchof not just the fall season, but for years to come. Now if you’ll excuse me, I mustgo back to my rewatching of the show until the second season airs in April2015.

icie50 - 2014-11-22 23:11:13

الانمي رائع جدًا والقتال الي فيه رائع 
وما ننسى مسألة تصميم الشخصيات ورسمها الرائع 

وفضلاً عن توازي القوى بين الشخصيات 

وليست كما هي العاده بجعل شخصية واحده هي الافضل دائمًا الافضل 

the anime is so great, what i like about it most 

is that every character in the anime it's strong not like most of the other Animes which the only good super hero is there and u can tell just by looking at it ..  

elmo81 - 2014-11-20 04:29:41

As a fan that is passionately into type moon's work despite being unwilling to read the visual novels, this adaptation was something i long awaited for. Fate/zero drew me in and this doesn't disappoint. The added scenes give more connections to zero and make Shirou a more likable character. So far, it is easily within the top 15 best anime ever. Story is great. Animation is masterful. The sound effects are incredibly hard hitting and blunt. I love the characters and i overall enjoy it very much. I really hope they don't go on hiatus in the *spoilers* HEART scene.

jamey86 - 2014-10-30 01:31:45

The Fate/Stay Night story in itself is amazing, the Unlimited Blade Works route especially. Plot twists, action scenes, character development, everything you need. So far ufotable have been considerably faithful to the original novel, therefore I assume that most of the character development will be kept and same applies to the story.

The Animation is incomparable to any other anime. I have never seen any animation like this. It legitimately breaks the scale, I would have to downgrade the ratings I gave to every single anime that had 10/10 animation. I give this an honest 11/10 in terms of animation.

While not that many tracks have been played, the tracks so far especially during Archer scenes and fight scenes have really stood out. So for now I will give this a 10/10 in terms of sound in hopes that it remains consistently great.

I have loved the anime so far, 10/10 enjoyment no doubt. 

The hype goes through the roof, it is unbelievable. I am calling now that this will be better than Fate/Zero. But we will never know until this finishes.

angelita31 - 2014-10-26 07:48:38

Episodes watched: 3 + prologue

First of all, I did not play the eroge and did not watch previous anime adaptations of this. So... Keep that in mind.

Premise is quite simple and common: a guy becomes a part of a "hidden war" for a powerful artifact despite his knowing and desire to and then decides to join the fight to prevent potential disaster. The war is conducted between mages, who can sue some (limited?) magic and have "servants": Those servants are"reincarnations" of mighty heroes of past (long-ago past or quite recent one - does not matter), which wield magic power and badass fighting skills. And despite having their own personalities and thoughts and emotions and motivation, they can be ordered to complete obedience by their masters, but only up to 3 times. I'm sure there may be more "rules" for all this, but let's stop at that.

This is more about the characters and fighting. As I mentioned even the "servants" have their distinct personalities and they may not always agree with their masters. Even though so far anime was mainly about fighting, those moments of communication between characters was equally interesting to watch. And I'm definitely waiting to see if there will be that "ero" part of the "eroge". Not purely for the eros, but to see how the characters will change to come to it. And for the eros, too: both Rin and Saber are quite... Attractive. And from what I've seen from fanarts - not only them.

And on subject of art - it's great. Smooth, detailed, magic seems to be mainly digital, but it suits the style amazingly (way better than what you could see in Karas). I think even in 720p-rips quite a number of frames could be turned in some good wallpapers: dynamic and vibrant.

I'm not sure if I have any desire to watch previous adaptations (and from what I gather, I'm not required to), but so far I really enjoy this one. I give it 8/10, but have a feeling it may increase the score to 9/10 in near future.

kihn.heather - 2014-10-06 03:12:25

Hopefully this isn't bad like the original Fate/stay night. 

libby83 - 2014-10-05 16:00:13

A Fate/Stay Night UBW 2014 Episode 0 Haiku: 

The hype overflows

Ufotable vs. DEEN 

There is no contest! 

In all seriousness, I'm just praying that the series doesn't fall apart as it goes on. It should be a fun watch regardless!