Fate/Stay Night OVA: The Real Holy Grail was the Friends we Made Along the Way

We interrupt our scheduled broadcast of Kiritsugu’s gritty and grim tragic backstory to bring you fluffy and fun surprisingly un-tragic story continuation from the world of Fate/Stay Night. It being a visual novel originally, it has multiple endings, and because they’re presumably residing in a studio building constructed of money at this point, ufotable decided to gift us with a short OVA that depicts the “Good End” of Unlimited Blade Works.

Naturally, I had to come running back. Much like this:

Fate/Stay Night #25: The Road Goes Ever On

Two years after the events of the finale, Shirou is living in a beautifully-rendered London with a collection of masterfully projected swords, a more angular jawline, a hipster cardigan, and perhaps most shocking of all, Rin.

Fate/Stay Night #24: Cancelling the Apocalypse

I would like to thank the Fate series for bringing the desire and ability to say “Shut up, Gilgamesh” to a whole new generation.

Fate/Stay Night #23: On Va Voir

Can a pair of teenagers really dismantle Pure Evil in Physical Form and fight off the infinitely more powerful ancient spirit bent on using it to destroy life on earth? We shall see.

Fate/Stay Night #22: Gems and Jellyfish

Dealing surprisingly well with the fact that they’ve all been nearly murdered and had their ideals, goals and everything that gave them drive and purpose in life thrown in their faces in last 24 hours, Shirou, Rin and Saber settle down to dinner to decide what to do about the impending end of the world.

Fate/Stay Night #21: Dream A Little Bigger, Darling

While Rin moves impractically slowly through the spreading fire on the top floor, Shirou and Archer’s head-to-head battle with the literal power of imagination reaches its peak in the Bladeworks downstairs. Borrowed or otherwise, there is nothing wrong with a dream to help people, gosh darn it, and Shirou is not going to stop fighting until he’s defeated the cranky monologue-spouting naysayer in front of him. Not even after we’ve already had a full episode devoted to it.

Fate/Stay Night #20: T’is But A Scratch

It’s amusing to me that the (pseudo-mistranslated) line that made this franchise iconic is “people die when they are killed”, because half the time that’s very untrue. It seems like you need to kill most of these characters at least twice before they get the idea that they’re meant to stay dead.

Fate/Stay Night #19: A One Knight Stand

Shirou, Saber and Lancer arrive at the decidedly trashed Einzbern villa to confront Archer, who’s lingering in the shadows spouting poetic ideological discourse like he’s the Phantom of the Opera or something. It takes all episode for him to move into the light and he eventually he gets down the stairs, but somehow this frozen, dialogue-filled instalment is still riveting. Probably because it’s very obvious that we’re in the eye of the storm and one shift to the west will land us in chaos again. Somebody also gets stabbed, so it’s not like it was a total talking-head episode, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Fate/Stay Night #18: Rather a Lot of Swords

As the old saying goes, you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain. And then die, and then become a magical undead warrior, then come back to life as a Heroic Spirit and try to beat up your past self.

Fate/Stay Night #17: No One Mourns the Wicked

I asked for someone to punch Archer in the face, and the heavens heard my call and sent us Cu.