When it comes to giving a CGI light show, Unlimited Blade Works 2nd Season is the prettiest show I have ever seen, and if there is an exception that would be Unlimited Blade Works 1st Season. It’s not the best, not by a long shot. I still hold that given the challenge of squashing a thirty hour visual novel route into a 25 episode show, ufotable did the absolute best they could. How can the show match the level of bonding we have with the characters when we are with them for so long in the game? You can't, it's simply infeasible. How can you make Shirou’s agonizing struggle over having chosen the wrong path in life actually deliberate enough for us to feel the pain, and have him find an answer with enough deliberation for it to not be perceived as contrived? You cannot, and Unlimited Blade Works 2nd Season very often comes across as just that: rushed, unpainful, and contrived, albeit flashy and gorgeous.
The biggest change from the first season in terms of characters is the relative absence of Saber, the guardian who had been constantly at Shirou’s side until the very last moments of season one, where her soul and contract were taken hostage by the increasingly powerful and sinister magician Caster. Having her contract broken with Shirou also meant having her contract broken with the writers, although given that Unlimited Blade Works isn’t originally her story there are few surprises there. Soon it will be time for destroying the scheming Caster, the invincible Berserker, the cocky golden man who shows up at the most convenient of bad times, and possibly a few more foes who have been silently biding their time since the start of the war. By which I mean Archer.
There isn’t anything to discuss about Unlimited Blade Works 2nd Season if not Archer. In my opinion his character was a stroke of genius on the part of the writers for the visual novel. His existence is the product of a loophole mentioned only in passing in the show’s early stages, and he subverts the notion of both the Holy Grail War and the heroic spirit itself. He proves to be the absolute worst nightmare of practically every character in the show, and the actions he takes with his allegiances to Caster and his old master Rin early on are often a delayed backhand from the character we see later on. Astute viewers, fans of the visual novel, and people who have accidentally come across what became one of the most famous plot twists in visual novel history will probably already know where everything leads, but knowing Archer’s true identity isn’t the same as experiencing Archer as a character, and his wry ironic sense of humor, frustrations, opportunism, respect for Rin, hatred of Shirou, ever-growing list of skills, and dazzling combat scenes all come together and give us a real show, something to talk about with friends and rewatch a few times just for the sheer enjoyment.
And that is why Archer is the true victim of Unlimited Blade Works 2nd Season; not in the sense of a tragic figure or victimized martyr, but as the recipient of plot elements that flat out don’t make any sense. For the purpose of advancing the true protagonists he is left to get defeated left and right in ways that are beneath him as a hero and as a character. In the end even his convictions, the focal point to understanding his entire purpose in the Holy Grail war, are gutted, gutted by the naivety of characters with an iota of his experience and suffering. He takes part in a literal deus ex machina that nonsensically ends the two major events of the show’s climax, and rather than any explanation whatsoever we get another chance to appreciate just how far his character fell.
And then there are Shirou and Rin, the idealist who borders on narcissism and the narcissist who goes way beyond the border of being tsundere. I like Rin, and the fact that her confidence and her extreme competence work together to give a strong female fighter, much stronger than Shirou. She also has a sarcastic personality, which presumably helped ward off idiots who have tried to court her before. Thankfully Shirou is such an idiot that her sarcasm just blows over his head, leaving Rin with nothing but flustered excuses for “not liking him”. Fans of the visual novel will all share a laugh as their sex scene from the source material is sidestepped in favor of some harmless magic ritual, but frankly I can’t figure out which was more demeaning to Rin’s character. Shirou’s treatment towards women is chivalrous until it becomes veiled chauvinism; he routinely forces Rin and Saber into conducting fights his way even when both are infinitely more competent than him, simply to satiate his masochistic self-centric sacrificial tendencies. What saves him? An abnormal plot device introduced at the last second. I would have been happier with him going into battle covered with ten inches of Kevlar from head to toe.
Actually, I'm convinced that Shirou is an anomaly that warps the quality of Unlimited Blade Works 2nd Season around himself. Archer, Rin, and Saber all lose the truly defining parts of their character to his simplistic headstrong attitude, and suddenly a show filled with calculating, political maneuvering, and secrecy is overwrought with headstrong nonsensical blathering. A teenager with no magic and absolutely no ulterior motives or plan whatsoever comes in to fight the supernatural heroes of legend head-on and succeeds, when subtle character development and instances of struggling against overwhelming power are the moments where the Fate/stay night game shines. For the real Grail War, go back to the first season. For a fantastic subversion of the Grail War, wait until the Heaven’s Feel movie comes out. For animation fans looking for more of what made ufotable famous, even Shirou can’t take away an animation budget well spent.