The second season of Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works is thirteen episodes long with an OVA. It finishes off the adaptation of the Unlimited Blade Works route of the visual novel. The concept of the plot is Holy Grail War is currently happening in the background of modern day. With the participation of seven Masters, and the Servants that they have summoned, they fight it out to eliminate everyone else in order to obtain the Holy Grail. The war is not a straightforward affair where participants fight each other in succession to declare a winner; rather, there is a lot of background scheming and planning involved. Although for such an important event, it is localized to a single city.
The season starts straight after the ending of the previous season and pretty much throws another twist into the works. On the flipside, it starts to solidify the romantic interest between Shirou and Rin. It’s a bit awkward at first but their interactions quickly become more natural and easygoing. It likes to stop and start on this aspect, given that it’s barely shown after the initial confession before unexpectedly popping up towards the end of the season. Shirou and Rin are placed in plenty of tough situations. As the viewer and being able to see the strengths of their opponents, it can feel like that it is impossible for them to overcome. It does feel that luck comes into play for several tricky situations where they receive the most unlikely of help.
The introduction of the remaining Masters and Servants rounds out the cast. However, several of the Servants seems to be overpowered, easily seizing the upper hand and makes the whole war seem unbalanced. This is due to the powers of other Servants having little chance of overcoming one or two of the most powerful Servants.
There is effort made to develop several of the characters even though we don’t see much of some of them. It gives context to their actions and allows you to sympathize with their plight. However, it is a shame to see some of them killed off so quickly. Saber is also sidelined pretty heftily with significantly lower screentime compared to the first season, which already wasn’t much. Archer, Rin’s servant, is a sly dog. He has a lot more history behind him than at first suggested. His actions are puzzling and confusing at first and takes some time before his true motivations are revealed.
Shirou really improves as a character as he loses his doubts and indecisiveness. He doubles down on his ideals, which places a higher priority on everyone else over his own well-being. However, it is because he is much more confident of his goals and ambitions that it is easier to stand behind him. Despite the build up, the resolution of some arcs can be anti-climactic. It favors the focus on Shirou, Rin and Archer against everything else, so a lot of the arcs suffer from being rushed or having little attention place don it. A lot of time was dedicated to the trio in fleshing it out and revealing several surprising facts.
The final episodes naturally deal with the conclusion of the fight for the Holy Grail and the true nature of what everyone was fighting for. The anime tries to justify the main villain’s reasons for his actions although it can be tough to swallow considering their background and their overwhelming strength. Saber is regulated to being a background supporting character while Shirou and Rin is brought to the forefront.
The ending was fairly epic in terms of visuals and Shirou unleashing his abilities to their fullest. However, at the end of the day, the plot overall is still fairly simple. The anime ends with an epilogue style final episode. Having a full episode where the tone is completely different to the rest of the season did feel kind of weird at first. It solidifies the relationships and “happily ever after” for Shirou and Rin but in a way, the romance and main storyline felt too discrete to work properly.
The animation quality seems to be an improvement compared to the first season. The backgrounds in several scenes are extremely pretty. The storytelling is also at a faster pace, probably because all the set up is now done and it can focus on its climactic developments instead. The OVA is a short ten minute alternate scenario to the ending. You can interpret it as the OVA either ignoring the epilogue or doesn’t contradict it given it takes place before it. While it is supposed to be a “good” ending, it does brush off one of the most impactful scenes in the climactic battle.
Overall, the second season of Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works is a decent adaptation and a good finish to the story. However, there are plenty of times where you feel that the build up was good but the resolution was quick and glossed over. This leads to a plethora of underutilized characters. This feel of under-utilization extends to the ending of the story where Shirou faces off against the main threat where it seemed that after a long battle, the villain was quickly and unceremoniously dispatched and forgotten. The good outweighs the bad though and Unlimited Blade Works (spread out over its two seasons) is no doubt the far superior adaptation of the visual novel than the first attempt.
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