Why We Need the New "Unlimited Blade Works" Adaptation: A Review

Boy, I've been putting off watching the "Unlimited Blade Works" movie for a long, long time. But in lieu of the new announcement that the upcoming anime series of "Fate/Stay Night" will be adapting the route, I figured now was the perfect time to check it out and see just what I think of it.

I'll be frank: not a fan of the movie. I'm very much a purist when it comes to this sort of thing (especially when it's an adaptation of my favorite route), and the issues I have with the movie are a bunch of little nitpicks that just sort of add up. Now, of course there's the issue of trying to fit the story of a 20+ hour visual novel route into a movie under 110 minutes, but the issue is that even if you want to sit back and just take it as eye-candy fanservice for the established fan base, it just doesn't work for me personally. Without further ado, let's start.
STORY: 2/10

As I personally have read every single word of the visual novel, I'm not sure how easy it would be to understand the plot of this route based on the movie alone, but I can tell you a few things that I noticed. First is that the pacing is erratic. There's not really any semblance of time passing, since they cluster as many scenes together as possible. Where the route took sixteen in-game days, for the sake of time, many events have to be clustered together. What we have here is a strange case where Shirou can end up getting impaled by Rider, fighting dragon bone soldiers, getting dragged against his will to Ryudou temple, and having Saber kidnapped all in the course of a single day. Also, after he is killed by Lancer and revived, there's an immediate cut to him in his house getting kicked by our favorite Hound of Culain, which I could see being very disorienting for someone unfamiliar with the plot.

Another thing that is strange is how little time we're given to sit on things. There's little to no exposition to speak of, which is fine for someone who sat through all the infodumps of the novel, but would lead people who didn't to wonder things like, "Who is this eighth Servant and why does he have all these swords? Wait, did Shirou just call him the King of Heroes? When'd he figure that out?" Fact is that this is a movie, a self-contained visual medium. I wouldn't give any adaptation leeway for not handling the plot well, and this is no exception. I've seen some very good movies based on books that I have read as well as ones I haven't (Forrest Gump), and a truly good adaptation is something anyone can understand.

Truth be told, of course I'm not going to give the story a high mark. There's not really any way for a reviewer who is grading fairly would, because the visual novel's route is literally required reading for anyone who wants to watch the film to have even the basest understanding of it. The thing that stuck out to me for some reason was how Kuzuki was just sort of tossed at the audience without any of the establishing him as a badass. Also, why did they cut out a few of the most famous lines, notably Archer's "drown in your ideals and die", his taunting towards Lancer (that enraged Lancer into using his Noble Phantasm in the first place), and the entire Unlimited Blade Works chant at the end?

ART: 7.5/10

Then again, the film was pretty much doomed to have the writing suffer from the start. How's the fanservice and eye candy? It's... Well, I'm not entirely sure how to describe it.

The art style uses models more similar to DEEN's earlier adaptation than the visual novel, and I wasn't a fan of DEEN's art style, so that's a bit of an issue. But they still look more or less functional, and Rin's legs are as great as ever (the camera knows this and infallibly will focus on them in just about every scene she's in). The animation is almost universally pretty, with a lot of engaging, energetic, smooth, and colorful scenes.

Despite this, though, I find myself feeling a bit hesitant to call the art "good." See, the art is functional, but I question the director's motivation behind it. The majority of scenes have very smooth, detailed animation; but others have absurdly off-model shots. On more than a few occasions I've seen shots where characters talk without their mouths moving at all.

This is the most egregious it gets.

Now, there's an explanation for this: the animation is so fixated on being smooth that its budget was blown on that. Rather than fixating on having as many frames as possible, I think they should have focused more on polishing the frames that they had instead of trying to make every fight be as dynamic as possible, since the animation suffered for it. Or they could have taken the in-betweeners they used to make Taiga's scenes absolutely flawless in terms of quality and put them on the non-filler scenes, maybe.

Some more weird directoral choices I found that I didn't like:
- Trying to fit as many shots lifted directly from CGs as possible. I appreciate it for being intentional fanservice, but sometimes doing that can end up getting a bit distracting.
- Overabundance of blood. Every time a character gets hurt, they lose on estimate about a liter of blood. If it's a big wound, they lose more blood than I think the human body contains.
- Shaky cam. This is mostly present in the Berserker fight scenes, but I seriously had to pause the movie and take a break after the first Berserker battle since there's so much shaky cam, and in an animated movie that's just weird. Combine that with the fact that the fight scenes are such particle effect maelstroms that I found it difficult to follow what exactly was going on most of the time.

And now for a few nitpicks on the fight scenes coming from a fanboy of the visual novel.
- How come Archer wasn't taking part in the first Berserker fight? The original novel had him taking pot shots at Berserker all the way up until it moved to the cemetery. The movie has him fire once and then rush off to set up Caladbolg.
- While we're at it, why do the swords Archer loads into his bow just end up becoming a single generic arrow? This is particularly clashing since the novel put a decent amount of focus when Shirou first sees Caladbolg II, and that scene is sort of in the movie but instead of the sword it's Archer's generic arrow.
- Why did Kuzuki's fighting style look like boxing? This was the case in the original anime as well, yes, but it was an issue in that anime as well. Kuzuki's fighting style is meant to be super disorienting and nearly impossible to predict, so I always figured it would look like some weird amalgamation of boxing, various Chinese martial arts (I'm thinking Baguazhang and Tai Chi mostly), and military combatives instead of just boxing.
- Why did Archer call upon Unlimited Blade Works in his final battle with Shirou in the film? That wasn't present in the novel, and it just makes no sense to me. He was running low on mana at that point (he even directly said so in the game), so using his Reality Marble would be gambling
 with his reserves.
- Speaking of Unlimited Blade Works, the game makes it pretty clear that the swords are just called out in there (like, Shirou holds out his hand and thinks of the sword and it instantly flies to him), but the swords that are sitting in the ground are mostly just set dressing in the film. It doesn't really have any noticeable difference from just regular projection outside of changing the battlefield to one that looks cooler.
- One more regarding UBW: the Shirou/Gil fight was ridiculously dumbed-down. Instead of Shirou countering Gil sword-for-sword like he did in the novel, he just sort of runs up and starts wailing on him. Doesn't really live up to the scene in the novel where you find out just how much of a counter Shirou is to Gilgamesh.
- Why could Saber see Rin in the fleshy messed up Grail? She was supposed to be stuck in it, since she had to climb all the way into the center to pluck out Shinji and then walk out as the walls of disgusting meat tried to encroach around her. It just seems odd for her to act like she's trapped when she clearly is about five feet away from the mud without much impeding her movement. Might just have been my impressions of the novel playing with me.

Yeah, very nitpicky. Nitpicks aside, the movie does look good for the most part. Give it a pass.

SOUND: 7/10

The sound is a case where there's almost no way for DEEN or any director to really mess it up in any way. I mean, they keep the original voice cast, sound effects are barely ever bad in anything (and if they needed to they could have just used the effects from the novel). Compared to the novel, the voice actors do sound a lot more lively, for better or worse. Ultimately, I feel that a lot of the charm from lines like, "Here I come, King of Heroes. Do you have enough weapons in stock?" comes from the way Shirou says it in a solemn tone. It isn't that the voice acting in the novel is underplayed, it's just that their manner of speaking is more reserved than most anime. I could take it either way, to be honest, so the voice acting gets a thumbs-up from me. It's the case where, both are equally good for their own reasons.

The sound effects are visceral and nice and do sound like they were ripped directly from the novel. I don't think they were, but I certainly wouldn't doubt someone if they told me that was the case.

As for the music, here's where I feel like it somewhat dropped the ball. Most of the memorable tracks from the novel are gone in favor of Kawai Kenji's new, original soundtrack. Ultimately, this means that we lose really awesome and memorable tracks like "Burst Up", "Ever-Present Feeling", and "Die Lorelei" (which also means we don't get one of my favorite scenes ever, as well as what I personally think is the best tear-jerker in the novel). Even the version of "EMIYA" we get isn't played in the same spot as the novel. HOWEVER, there is technically nothing inherently wrong with Kawai's soundtrack (outside of feeling a tad generic in my mind - though one man's generic can be another man's epic). I just prefer the novel's.

CHARACTERS: 5/10

Oh, how do I grade this one? I mean, I personally think that the cast of Fate is one of its strong points, and do quite like the majority of the characters. I guess I could grade it based on how well they were characterized in the film, to which I'd have to say... "Decently, I guess." There are so many characters that there isn't much wiggle room for development with the measly 1 hour and 45 minutes run time, but thankfully the voice cast (if you are watching in the original Japanese) know them intimately and can convey them rather well through their dialogue alone. Then again, I also know the characters intimately, so I have no clue how well they were established here if some lunatic decided to use this film as a jumping on point into the fandom.

That said, no Mitsuzuri. Son of a bitch.

FINAL JUDGMENT: 4/10

It's mostly-competent when it comes to art direction. That's pretty much the biggest praise I can give the movie. I openly admit that most of my issues with the animation and music are VERY minor nitpicks that are just my personal gripes and that I can easily see why a fan of Fate/Stay Night would enjoy this adaptation. It probably would have gotten to squeak away with a five despite my nitpicks if they worked the budget better, giving money to the scenes that are more important than the daily life ones; or if they included some of the more memorable music tracks from the original novel. Heck, just the presence of the "Berserker, you're strong" scene alone would have boosted its score - I freaking love that scene for tearing my heart out so well.

All in all, I'm just glad that there's the another adaptation on the way by ufotable, that will be a 2-cour show so that they can really polish up my favorite route of the novel and get everything done perfectly. I hope.