lucile33 - 2015-10-04 00:49:45

U

sasha.ferry - 2015-08-24 02:10:41

Watch the Anime version, this is a train-wreck. Don't ruin the Anime surprises by watching this, this is a warning.

hbailey - 2015-03-01 20:20:13

UBW movie is a wreck, and if you're one of the few people that didn't know that, now you do.

What makes it a wreck?

- It's an adaptation of about 15-20 hours long route in a VN. You probably already understand what that implies. Cuts are out of control, to the point where by the end of the movie I couldn't understand what the hell happened despite knowing story of UBW quite well. That's because movie chaotically jumps from fight to fight to get in all the action bits, throwing out a lot of the exposition. Spoiler ahead: my personal favourite is when after first encounter with Shinji and Rider they run away from school while Shirou and Rin go back to their classroom and discover Shinji scared shitless, with Rider lying dead on the floor. Good job DEEN. 

- Bad animation and art. It looks like entirety of the budget was spent on animating first Berserker fight which admittedly looks decent, especially compared to the rest of the movie. Right from the start you will see just what DEEN animators are capable of, as two badly drawn still frames of Archer and Lancer, clash against each other as VFX desperately try to cover up this mess. Even though there's nothing visually pleasing about this movie, it's the shitty art and animation that made me choose 6 for enjoyment. A lot of the time it's so bad that I couldn't help but laugh.

There's really not much more to say. If you want to get familiar with F/SN but really, really hate reading then you're better off with watching 2014 series. Otherwise it's not worth time or effort.

vergie94 - 2015-01-07 02:07:46

I am the bone of my sword, steel is my body fire is my blood.
I have created over a thousand blades.
Unknown to death nor known to life.
Have withstood pain to create many weapons.
and yet these hands will never hold anything.
So as I prey UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS.

The movie that was too short to cover the second best route in the visual novel.

mrau - 2014-12-03 15:08:49

I wanted to like it. I did. The visuals and audio are good and it was a universe I was familiar with and fond of. Unfortunately, it was trying to do far too much in far too little time. Everything is rushed, and large details are glossed over. Had I not read the VN I would've been rather lost.

kadin50 - 2014-02-23 15:04:17

What happens when you try to condense 7-10 hours worth of reading time into 1 and a half hours? This movie.

The original visual novel has three 'routes' based off of each heroine: 'Fate', the route focused on Saber and the main path of the original anime. 'Unlimited Blade Works', the route focused on the extraordinary Tsundere Rin Tohsaka and 'Heavens Feel', the ultra depressing, bleak and grim route focused on Sakura Matou. This will explain the differences between the anime and movie as the exist parallel towards each other, much like an alternate reality.

I am a large fan of the Fate franchise, being a fan of Fate/Stay Night, despite its flaws and Fate/Zero is my absolute favourite anime to date. However this movie has issues.

Firstly, you cannot watch it at all if you haven't already seen the original TV series as it cuts out much back story and jumps straight onto Shirou leaving the church at episode 3 of the show. This trend continues as much of the plot ends up getting skimmed over in order to get to more fight scenes which are admittedly awesome. As a result, if you are a newcomer to the franchise, you will be confused by the story and disinterested about the characters who can't get nearly as much development as they deserve.

An exception to this is Archer as much of the story focuses upon him and shows how he has become a 'memetic badass' as he is quite GAR, (if you don't know this word or its origins-go here http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gar).

Ultimately, as much as it pains me to say this, I could only recommend this movie if you've already seen the original series or played the visual novel as otherwise this is a disjointed mess that is solely fanservice for fans of the 'Unlimited Blade Works' route in the visual novel.

If you are new to the franchise, I highly recomend you instead watch Fate/Zero and await the upcoming remake of Fate/Stay Night that will air in in the Fall season of 2014 .

weber.caesar - 2013-10-19 10:40:39

Arguably, I find this to be the better alternative to the Fate/stay night, blame silly title on Engrish, anime series. So let's tackle this first from the perspective a newbie, then a fan, then overall.

Immediately shot down for the newbies, but not for long. The mere opening minutes of this movie require you to have seen the first two episodes of the anime series to understand how Shirou, our main protagonist, has got himself caught up in the Holy Grail War. From there, it's a rushed, but somewhat smooth ride, to the finish. As an action flick, it's quite decent. The movie never stops being exciting and takes you from one big moment to the next. There just simply isn't much character or world exploration, which is what Kinoko Nasu is known for. It's obvious when moments of unimportance are quickly tossed in to just acknowledge something's existence. However, the movie is true to the plot of the source material and the twist surrounding Shirou's destiny, as said so in the premise, is as surprising as it should be. But to say there is one at all probably already answers the question.

However, now as a fan, the plot is entirely unrewarded. Anything revolving around either Shirou's or anyone else's motives is not expanded upon at all. Rin Tohsaka plays a major role in Shirou's life of the Unlimted Blade Works route, and she is barely given any screen time. Without her, Shirou is little to nothing. But it isn't fair to just exclude the couple from the rest. No one has any character to them except for Archer. His defining moment and motivation still comes across as anger-inducing, to him, but you can be too if you want, and tragic. It's only simply killed by a baffling overpowerment and lack of perspective.

Overall, this movie was over simplified. Leaving out information to catch up those new to the series, and important moments to both please the fans and make the characters seem less close-minded.

The positives to this, strangely, come from the same source as the problem. There's no time wasted on moments that could slow the story down, Fate/stay night has a lot of slice-of-life, and no one is as annoying as they could be. Whether deep characters were unexplored or annoying characters were passed over is up to you.

Addtionally, the music is superb. If only it didn't sound like the same track being played over and over and over again, with exception of the opening credits. Also, I've never seen Studio Deen animation look so good, but this should be expected with a movie budget and the addition of Fate's name. Voice acting is good for both languages as well. I blame dub direction though as to why some of Sam Riegel's lines can come across as laughable.

So, Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works stands at a weird middle ground. It lacks effort, but not enough to stop it from being enjoyable. This factor is what holds Unlimited Blade Works over it's other anime counterpart, which can give off vibes of being lame, annoying, and, worst of all, boring.

ayla.walker - 2013-09-01 23:18:31

Before Ufotable touched any type moon materials it's IP's went through a tough run of unsuitable anime adaptions, tsukihime was made by J.C.Staff and any self-respecting type moon fan will tell you there is NO adaption of said visual novel and we have the fate series

Studio DEEN, a production company built from sunrise animators produced the first two additions to the fate franchise. The anime fate/stay night was built on the fate route, the first of three different routes of the visual novel. Content from the second route "unlimited blade works" and nods to the final route "Heavens feel" was used as filler and the anime was met with average reception but received mostly negative reception from the fans of the visual novel due to its haphazard approach to its source material.

DEENs second production "unlimited blade world" is a movie purely based on the route of the scared name and is what I'm reviewing.

The simple fact is that from the beginning the film suffers from one fatal flaw, in the visual novel each route is about 60 hours of content with a shared 8 hour intro and the film is an hour and a half long, imagine a game like FF13, you could make a film out of it if you just take all the pre rendered cutscenes and put it together but to understand what the hell is going on you NEED TO PLAY THE GAME!!!!

Compared to the series the animation is clearly superior. You can tell that the studio is built from sunrise staff because every movement in a combat scene possesses the "sunrise smooth" animation which was developed off the gundam franchise. Also most of the music consists of remixed music from the series ost which was the best part of it including a remix of the iconic "EMIYA" from kanji kawii.

In short this film is truly only for people who have played the novel, however if you don't have time for 60 hours of homework then the viewing of the series with the addition of about 2 hours of surfing the type moon wiki to understand most of it should be suitable for entry

phoppe - 2013-08-28 01:55:28

What do you get if you take one of the greatest visual novels to have been made, take one of its routes that is approximately 7 to 10 hours worth of reading material and pack it into about an hour and a half movie? If your guess was anything but this movie then... you might be right, visual novels get shafted so often with adaptions it wouldn't surprise me. The visuals and animation were pretty good for a movie but they stuffed a storyline that could fill up a 24 episode anime easily into about 4 or 5 episodes worth of time. I guess you can view it as a bit of fanservice for the fans of the visual novel to see scenes, from what is arguably the most popular route of the visual novel, animated but they lack the impact that they had from the visual novel due to time constraints.

Overall, as a Fate fan I can't say that I like this. It wasn't horrible but if I want UBW I'll just go for the visual novel then bother with this.