Illyasviel's Profile - Reviews

Last Online6 hours ago
GenderMale
BirthdayDec 14, 1993
LocationBig Blue Blob
JoinedApr 17, 2014

Anime List Manga List

Aug 14, 2015

Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

This review contains minor spoilers in the “characters” paragraph and will be about the 2 seasons.
I precise that I had played the Visual Novel before and seen Fate/Zero and the Fate Stay Night 2006 adaptation before seeing the 2014 show.

Art:8.5/10
Overall very solid, we got here the very display of Ufotable’s experience. The background and landscape of various part of Fuyuki city are detailed and beautiful. The palette of color was good and breathe some life into the anime.
As expected from Ufo, the best part was the animation during the fights (through non battle scenes were also good): dazzling effects combined with an excellent fluidity, ... I was really captivated by the clash of high speed blades and the impressive choreography of the servants in battles. The art was a real pleasure for our eyes and the strongest point of Fate UBW.
However 2 flaws, the face of the characters were a bit weird (their chin were often really sharp) and there was a perceptible drop in the quality of the art and animation in some fights of the end. (Budget problem, lack of time?).

Soundtrack:6/10
Lackluster and often too discreet. It somewhat failed to reinforce the epic or dramatic side of the story like Kajiura’s soundtrack in Fate Zero. Personally I found the general tone of the ost a bit weird and quite forgettable. Which is a shame when the original soundtrack of the VN (but also Deen’s adaptation) were already very good, unsurprisingly, the best theme IMO was EMIYA theme’s remix from the visual novel. Sound effects and the seiyuu’s job were good.

Characters: 5/10
Through not the most interesting Shirou of the 3 routes of the visual novel, the anime pretty much failed to describe us Shirou. It failed to stress that he is an empty boy, traumatized by the great fire who had no other dreams than the one borrowed to Kiritsugu and who can only exist by the help he provides to other people. Instead I was under the impression that the anime portrayed a fairly unidimensional idealistic shonen hero who always shout his ideals, louder each time...
Saber was rather uninteresting which was predictable since the story do not really focus on her, but still.
Rin and Archer were rather good I guess, though I was not fund of her tsundere side in the first place.

Story:5/10
Standard battle royal’s scenario and several good plot twist, especially one. The problem was not the story itself but instead the execution of it.
Maybe the greatest problem of this adaptation aside from the weakness of Shirou’s portrayal, was the pacing: too much dull scene that do not really bring anything to the story. Even for someone who had never seen the show, some explanations and events were just too redundant and long. Typically after 5 min watching an episode, I could predict that no major event would happen until the next episode. The thing is that the slow pacing did not really allow to develop Shirou’s intern character.
The pacing of the battle was also too disjointed to be appreciable, for example the greatest battle was extended through 3 episodes which was just too much, generally speaking the dialogues and the flashbacks were unnecessary long and cut the rhythm at the middle of the fight so that I often lost the excitement at the middle of the battle.

Overall: 6/10 The problem is that the serie fails to achieve its goal either as a “popcorn show” (not a pejorative word, I enjoyed Code Geass) with little pretention, just like Deen and either as a more mature anime because of the lack of depth of the characters and the story. In the end I lost all my hype and watched the anime as a rather passive spectator. I must say that is anime is with no doubt my greatest deception of 2014/2015.

Open

Gift

Jul 31, 2015

Zipang (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

This review will include some spoilers about the 1st few episodes in order to make a constructive criticism of the story and the characters. I precise that i have not read the manga.

Story:

This anime is the japanese counterpart of The Final Countdown movie, instead of an American battleship sent into WWII, this time a Japanese ultra modern cruiser, the Mirai, is transported to the battle of Midway.
The 1st turning point is the decision of the crew is to save the life of a Japanese officer, the Lt Kusaka who had drowned in the actual timeline.
The anime then focus on the survival of ... the crew of the ship, since the crew obviously need supply and quickly begun to rise a crucial question: what do the crew of the Mirai should do?
Should it avoid to alter the time line of this universe? Should it stay fidel to the Japan?Should it save as many live as possible, and how, should it fasten the end of the war or prevent any more casualties?
And what Kusaka will do after discovering the fate of the Japan?
We have at first a lot of question raised, and the anime seemed gave us a very encouraging start
However the anime just seemed to delay the answer and only partially skimmed over those questions during the whole time, much to my regret. The second part of the anime especially seemed lackluster whereas there is no proper ending given to the anime, since the manga is much longer than the anime.
Also one of my regret is that "Zipang" skipped the crimes of war committed by the Japanese imperial army whereas it was a major aspect of WWII and it definitely could have been interesting to confront the current Japanese identity and its' past one.

Art: the art was rather OK, especially considering the time this anime was released, the style of the character is rather serious which fit with the tone of the anime through they somewhat look similar, the sea and the imperial navy are really well depicted. The animation was also a good point of the anime and the people passionated by the war of the pacific will enjoy the battle scenes.

Soundtrack: I admit i don't have clear memory of the OST since i've watched this anime quite a long time ago, but the Mirai battle theme is among my favorite anime OST and definitely fit with a particular scene making it really epic.

Characters: The weak point of the story, just like the story they have a rather superficial development which could have been much better. The crew of the Mirai always seems to be without strong personality and their decisions are often childish and lacks proper reflexion from the beginning to the end. Some historical characters are introduced, Isoroku Yamamoto especially which is by far the most interesting character with the lt Kusaka.

To conclude, as a friend of mine said, this anime could really have been a masterpiece, but actually failed to be one primarily because the lack of depth of the anime. While not a bad anime it is just a rather average one and could deserve the curiosity of the watcher since the topic is quite an original one.

Open

Gift

Back to Illyasviel's Profile Illyasviel's Profile

All (52)Friends

Also Available at

RSS Feeds

MoreTop Anime

MoreTop Airing Anime

MoreMost Popular Characters