Saturday, October 23, 2010

[Movie] Fate / Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works


This is an alternative setting / alternative story line of previous adaptation TYPE-MOON's famous visual novel, Fate / Stay Night.

To shrink a story that is long enough to fill a long anime season into less than two hours, there are a lot of stuff have to be cut out. If I have not seen the original Fate / Stay Night, I'd probably be slightly lost during the first half of the movie trying to figure out the overall premise this story is based upon because it jumps right into the action with very little dialog that trying to explain what's going on. However, the upside of this is that there's never lack of excitement throughout the course of the whole movie--fight after fight, there's never a dull moment in the movie that does not require your full concentration.

For those who like Archer (over Saber that is, which I know quite a few people do), you're in luck, because this movie is all about Archer. Although Saber may still seem to be the main character in the beginning, but the story really is all about Archer, directly or indirectly (I can't say anymore without spoiling anything, but you'll know what I mean when you watch it).

Also, unless I remembered wrong, aside from the alternative setting, there are some major plot points of the story that did not exist in the original Fate / Stay Night anime. But it's possible it has existed in the visual novel all along and I'm just not aware of it since I've never played the visual novel.

Usually, I'm pretty skeptical about movie remakes of existing anime franchise because majority of them are no more than the final squeeze by the production studio for more cash out of the franchise before it's forever forgotten. Before I watched this movie, I thought this is the same case.

But it ISN'T.

To summarize in short, Fate / Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works is a fast paced story with some highly explosive actions and quite some original contents that were not seen in the anime series. Although it's a bit difficult to catch on with the background if this is the first time you've seen this franchise, it's still a great action anime just by itself even without the understanding of the significance of what the plot of this movie contributes to overall Fate / Stay Night story.

Score: 93

Recommendation: Highly Recommended! Also, it'll be highly beneficial if you watch beforehand either the original anime series or the Fate / Stay Night TV Reproduction OVA which recaps the entire story from the TV series in two one hour episodes.

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