Finished Unlimited Bladeworks:

I went in expecting something similar in nature to Fate Zero and I definitely didn't get that, I'm not saying this is a bad thing as I still enjoyed myself a fair bit, the story took a more lax approach to the holy grail war, different from...

the serious and gruesome nature of Urobuchi's holy grail war, this isn't a bad thing necessarily, however the tonal shifts were quite jarring, from the more slice of life aspects to consequential developments within the war. Despite this one aspect and a few other minor...

facets of the story, I thought it was great. I really enjoyed both Archer and Shirou's dynamic, being as they're two of the same, Shirou's revelations were interesting, to say the least, and his ability to push on despite knowing the fate laid out for him is quite admirable...

Gilgamesh was as great as ever of course, but I really wished some other masters/servants were touched on a little more especially Illya and Shinji (despite how much of a prick he is), I really think these could have had much more interesting fates than the ones written for them.

But I digress, the actual plot of the holy grail war was quite interesting, to say the least, I especially enjoyed Caster's larger presence in the story as well as her master, but as is the case with most of the cast, I wish we got a little more out of her too.

Ultimately the most interesting part of the story was definitely Shirou and Archer, Shirou's dynamic with Rin was quite fun however I'm much more interested in Sakura's route, she seems a much more fascinating character especially from what we saw in F/Z.

Ufotable, as always snapped. The fight scenes were great and extremely fluid and dynamic. The main part I love about Ufotable's direction and animation is the lighting.. they always seem to have it spot on, it fits the tone of the story perfectly in nearly every scene...

However, the sound design was kinda off this series? Sometimes I felt like I was watching 2016 Berserk at times during a fight scene, the clashing of swords didn't fit at all, it took the immersion out of some the fights at times which sucked but it was nothing too major.

But in total I still really enjoyed watching Unlimited Bladeworks, was probably the route I was least interested in from the get-go, but it grasped me surprisingly quickly. All in all a great experience