Review for Fate/Stay Night: Volume 6

Introduction

Ten years previously, a secret war over the possession of the Holy Grail raged between mages and the powerful servants they had summoned. It was a conflict that laid waste to Fuyuki City, and the sole survivor, Shirou was rescued by a mage and adopted as a son. Shirou Emiya has an instinctive rapport with machines, and can sense how things are supposed to fit together, but before his father died, he was told that he had no magical talent at all. Having inherited the Emiya estate, he now lives alone, and goes to high school in New Fuyuki, but his past has left a mark on him. His ambition is to help people, and become a champion of justice. He's unprepared for the havoc that is to come. New Fuyuki will be the battleground for a new Holy Grail War, as seven mages will draw forth their servants and clash. He's also unprepared for the fact that he will be one of the mages, and he's totally unready for summoning the most powerful servant of them all, a cute girl named Saber. Now it's up to him to prevent the destruction that previously devastated his home.


The series concludes with the four episodes on this MVM disc.

21. The Star of Creation That Divided Heaven and Earth
The Golden Servant returns to attack Shirou and Saber, and the two are seriously outmatched. Against all expectations, the Golden Servant can use countless Noble Phantasms, and he's not shy about hiding his identity. His seeming invulnerability and power becomes understandable when he reveals that he is in fact Gilgamesh, and he offers to let Shirou live if Saber will join with him. But Shirou has a counteroffer that trumps anything that Gilgamesh can offer. It's enough to buy time, but he still seems an insurmountable foe. But when Shirou goes to ask Kotomine for advice, he walks straight into a charnel house of a trap.


22. The Result of a Wish
Things appear to be coming to a head. Illya is getting sick, while Rin has been investigating Lancer and who his true Master is. What she discovers is chilling. Realising that Shirou has walked straight into danger, Saber rushes to the rescue, to the church, where the truth about Kotomine is being revealed. There is a Master with two Servants, and Kotomine tempts both Shirou and Saber with the truth about the Grail. But Shirou and Saber have found something more valuable to them both, and have other plans for the Grail.


23. The Holy Grail
Kotomine and Gilgamesh are already way ahead of Saber and Shirou. When they return home, they find that Rin has been attacked, and Illya taken. Kotomine obviously means to use Illya as the vessel to call forth the Grail. Rin has some final advice to give to Shirou, before he and Saber head to the Ryudoh temple where the Grail is already manifesting.

24. The All Too Distant Utopia
It's a fight that they cannot win, but even if they do, Shirou will be faced with a torment of a decision. Can he sacrifice his principles to keep Saber in his life?

Picture

Fate/Stay Night gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer. It's an NTSC-PAL standards conversion of course, but it's the best one that I have seen in a long time. The animation is smooth, there's certainly no ghosting, judder, or problems with aliasing, despite all the dark scenes and well defined edges. In fact the only indication of a conversion that I can spot is an overall but not excessive softness to the image. The anime is impressive, well animated, with good, memorable character designs, a pleasant world design, and fluid and energetic motion.

Sound

We have just the basics for the audio, with DD 2.0 English and Japanese soundtracks, with optional translated subtitles or signs. The dialogue is clear in both versions, although I must state that I found the dub to be surprisingly inferior given the current state of anime dubbing in the US. It's been a long time since I watched a dubbed anime that actually sounded cartoonish, and it was a shame to see this particular blast from the past. The music itself is fairly innocuous and forgettable, despite Kenji Kawai's name over the end credits.

Extras

It's your usual anime disc treatment, with animated menus and a jacket picture for when the disc isn't spinning.

The extras are completed with two music clips running to five minutes, one for Saber, and one for Archer. You also get the trailers for Shakugan no Shana, and Samurai Deeper Kyo.

Conclusion

My reaction to Fate/Stay Night: Volume 5 had no little dismay to it. At the end of the previous volume, The Golden Servant had appeared, creating a violent vertex to a love triangle with Saber and Shirou, and it seemed to me that the central focus on the Grail Wars had been lost. I opined that the final volume could resolve the triangle, or the main storyline, but wouldn't be able to do both. It's a good thing that my words are low in calories, because here I am, eating them. Volume 6 does indeed resolve both storylines, indeed the Golden Servant is actually integral to the Grail Wars story, and how the story plays out not only resolves this round of the Grail Wars, but also fills in all the gaps about Shirou's past, and the destructive Grail Wars that took place ten years previously.


That said, Fate/Stay Night is yet another anime that delivers a less than fulfilling ending. While the narrative gets a big bang of a conclusion, with well-animated fight sequences, and answers to all those niggling questions that have arisen during the series, emotionally it's flat, uninspired and unsatisfying. If you have invested in the characters, any of the characters, then you may share my distaste at the conclusion, as I was left wondering what I had watched the series for. Of course I'm not going to spoil things for you, but if you had hoped for a happy ending, you'll be disappointed. On the other hand, if tragedy, loss and grief appeal to the sadist in you, then you'll be disappointed as well. The characters that remain are back to their happy go lucky selves at the end of the final episode, which given what has happened to them is impossible to take seriously.


Fate/Stay Night is notable for its enjoyable, gender-bending take on the Arthurian mythology. The Fate/Stay Night world is a rich and vivid one, full of possibilities and ideas, and as such it certainly kept me riveted while I was watching it. It's only as the story concludes that it dawns that the possibilities are unexplored, the ideas fail to live up to their promise, and the series is in the end, a faint forlorn hope of what it could have been. Watching Fate/Stay Night is fun. It's the aftertaste that begins to sour. If you have the space on your shelf, and don't mind an also-ran of an anime series, then give Fate/Stay Night a try. It's lightweight fare that doesn't weigh heavy on the mind, or require too much attention. Besides, if this ending fails to appeal to you, the Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works movie that has been released in Japan gave the animators a chance to do it all again. Maybe when that film comes to the UK, we can see if they got it right this time.