Fate/Stay Night: Volume 3 (Review)
Tuesday, 2nd March 2010, 18:48

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

There are a few more extras this time around, beginning with the Opening and Closing Music Clips, offering 2-minute snapshots of the music videos for the theme songs. Rider’s diary is a 6-minute long comedy piece, reediting some of Shinji and Rider’s interactions with Rider adding her own commentary. I could only find the English track on this, but given the captions on screen, there ought to be a Japanese audio track for this somewhere. Trailers on this disc are for Slayers and FLCL.

Conclusion
The third disc in a row, and I find that I’m still at a loss for words when it comes to Fate/Stay Night. I had hoped that this volume would throw up some quirk, some spark of originality or individuality that I could latch onto, and justifiably praise it for its brilliance. Alas, there is none of that, as when it comes to Fate/Stay Night’s story, it almost makes the heart sink with its familiarity. When it comes to the stereotyped and prefabricated characters, it ploughs such a well-worn furrow that it’s scraping bedrock at this point. It’s almost as if it’s anime by the numbers. And once again, this makes me sound like I hate the show. Far from it in fact, as while it is an anime show by the numbers, it’s put together with such vibrancy, such elegance, and such skill, that it outshines all of its identikit peers, and even surpasses some of the more original titles. Fate/Stay Night is ultimately just fun to watch, it’s entertaining, and what more can you ask for than that?

Fate/Stay Night does step it up a gear in this third volume though, with a greater emphasis on character development now that the main players have been introduced, and some higher stakes action sequences, as the Grail Wars intensify. It doesn’t seem that way at first though, with a rather abortive encounter with the new Servant on the scene, Assassin, and a fleeting glimpse of the mysterious mage that controls him. But it does lead to a major development in Shirou’s character, the realisation that if he continues to insist on leading from the front, he’ll have to have the skills to back that up. So sword training with Saber commences. There’s more character development in the next episode, The Calm Interlude, which lives up to its name with a distinct lack of Grail Wars action and emotional intensity. But it does offer a more human side to the mage Illya, whose appearances thus far have amounted to a veiled warning, and an outright attack. She breaks free of her servants (and Servant) for the day, and decides to spend some time in Shirou’s company, who Berserker previously tried to kill. However this time she’s more like a kid sister than a ruthless Mage, raising questions about just what is motivating her.

This episode also sets up the finale of this disc, when Shinji tries to make a deal with Rin Tohsaka, and is roundly rebuffed. That sends him off the deep end quite frankly, and the final two episodes are devoted to the first major battle of these Grail Wars, with Shirou having to deal with his friend Shinji before he goes too far and kills someone. It’s the battle that tempers the partnership that has been forged between him and Saber, and both finally learn that they truly have to work together to succeed, Saber’s chivalry, and Shirou’s instinctive protectiveness notwithstanding. The problem here is that Shinji is Shirou’s friend, even if he is a little psychotic at the moment, and more than that, he’s Sakura’s brother. There’s more than just Shirou’s innate reluctance to do harm staying his hand in this, and that reluctance could prove disastrous.

This third volume is the best of Fate/Stay Night so far. The animation is of high quality, and the action sequences are thrilling. Also the mythology of the show is really beginning to tantalise, with each of the Servants apparently resurrected heroes from the past. We learn the identity of Saber’s sword in this volume, and the implications it has for her own identity are enticing. I hope we find out more in the next volume. I can definitely say this is a worthwhile anime now, especially as it’s one where I can’t wait for the next volume to turn up. But annoyingly, it still remains extremely middle of the road in terms of narrative and character. It’s just that it does it better than all the others.

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