Well this episode basically wrapped up the Archer and Shirou fight leading up to the next showdown. Though it’s definitely going to be a tough challenge to make this next setup fight work. They managed to make Archer vs Shirou reasonable and believable. Archer was low on mana and even at the end he hesitated to kill Shirou which prevented his victory, not Shirou just completely beating him on a combat level. But now suddenly trying to push Shirou vs Gilgamesh? That’s….going to be a challenge to make that not a joke. I mean this is the guy who curbstomped Heracles. You could give Shirou all the mana on the planet and it’d be nearly impossible to match up against that. The setup for Archer basically proclaiming that fight is going to be more interesting than the actual fight itself I expect.

Kind of funny that we’ve basically run out of fights at this point. All that is left is Saber, Gilgamesh, and maybe Assassin. I say maybe since he’s not an Archer class so it’s not like he can easily survive without a master and Caster has been dead for nearly a day anyways. You can definitely feel that we are winding down the show at this point. I’ll presume Assassin is fine since unless they are going to have a Saber and Shirou vs Gilgamesh fight, they need someone for Saber to topple. I’m not sure it’d be reasonable to have Saber again be a bystander to this coming fight.

The followup on the Archer and Shirou fight was good. I didn’t think it had the intensity or emotion of last week since they hit so much of the important stuff. This time was a lot more focused on Archer and him just being pissed beyond belief at times. It does show as well how really messed up Shirou is on a certain level. It’s like everything is detached from him and what was saved by Kiritsugu was a shell. He looks to the idea of saving others and being a hero of justice and sees the beauty of it. That wishing for others to be happy is a great and wondrous thing, that it must be.

It was a pretty good showdown still. Shirou stubbornly insisting that his dream isn’t wrong and struggling with his body at its limits to get to Archer. Archer as well struggling with his own memories and at the very end losing to that memory of himself and Kiritsugu. Man I can just wonder wherever Kiritsugu’s spirit ended up, what it would think to see the tragedy that exists in this timeline. Illya murdered and Shirou having gone down these paths.

Just a scary look that Shirou had and Archer in his memories had at times. Living that kind of life had to have been just crazy. And it all ended like this for Archer. Can really feel he’s the real victim here. Even after going back he’ll just continue that ugly repetition forever. It was also interesting though to see Saber’s perspective since she had nothing better to do XD. Maybe a bit of acceptance of her own life. That she had two paths available to her and that she did accomplish some things along the way.

And yeah, you have Gilgamesh being an arrogant jerk and causing all kinds of trouble. Hardly took that much effort to snipe Archer after all. A sad and empty farewell to that guy. Ironic that he did at least save someone at the end, even if it was himself. This episode really just covered a lot of discussion and explanation about how the heck Gilgamesh is still around after the last war. The truth of the Grail is pretty twisted. What an ugly, horrible, and wasteful event this grail war is. Using the servants very lives to fill up the grail and only having it being of use to a mage who is basically given god amount of mana to work with. Of course have the situation with Illya to make it even worse.

So yeah, Gilgamesh has decided to go full psycho villain. Just going ahead and committing mass genocide because he doesn’t think the lives of the masses now are worth anything. So the lunatic wants to just purge the planet and rule over whatever people manage to survive that massacre. Because obviously those people are going to be hyped to be ruled by that blonde lunatic. Just unleashing a hole of death upon the world and wiping it all clean with death. Even if Shirou wasn’t Shirou, he wouldn’t be able to stand that. Frankly no one with any real sense could stand by and let Gilgamesh do that. This does give Shirou what he needs though. A threat so absolute. By defeating Gilgamesh they will literally save everyone since otherwise everyone will die. At least Gilgamesh’s actions now make sense. The attack on Illya, going after Rin, etc. He doesn’t want a perfect grail like the last war, he wants a mess that he can use to wipe out humanity.

And yeah Shinji…nope, no sympathy there. That twisted moron deserved what he got. He stupidly followed someone like Gilgamesh, never comprehended his position and was turned into a total monster as a result. Yeah, it was an ugly scene, but you can’t really feel much sympathy for someone like that. What he would have done to Rin, what he tried to do at his school, the guy is a monster and now finally looks like one. Now all that is left is the last struggle. I’m still hoping we can get an episode as fluid and awesome as the first Saber vs Berserker fight in part 1. We’re low on participants, the truth has been revealed, now it’s just time to see how they can stand up to a force like that.
Score: A-