As indicated in the last episode, Saber faces off Lancer in a duel. This is where things get interesting.
Compared to last time, the fight brings an array of excitement after a long period of character and plot development. Although it looks rough at the start, the action sequences gets better and more suspenseful as time went on. Saber was able to fend off Lancer’s attacks, but couldn’t land a blow on him. Two of her plans involving her armor being on and off caused injuries. However, it prevented her from being defeated by him. As a whole, her first duel was simply not her shining moment as everything went wrong in addition to him finding out the size of the sword without actually seeing it. I’m not sure if the outcome would be any different had she shown the sword rather than hiding it. Still, I was quite surprised by Lancer’s decision to use his trump card this early in the game considering the risk of others finding out sooner than later.
While the battle goes on, it’s apparent that Kirei used multiple Assassins to spy on everyone. It’s a very sneaky move considering that he tricked all the participants in the Grail War to gather the knowledge of all the servants and observe how they fight without noticing. Thankfully, he doesn’t know the true master of Saber. This gives Kiritsugu and Maiya the advantage to launch an attack on the masters later on without noticing, unless Assassin already found out.
After the anticipated battle, I can definitely say that the execution of this battle was a lot better. Sure, there were some good-looking battles in Fate/stay night, but it was not nearly as good. Also, Rider’s entrance to stop the duel was awesome. However, it completely breaks the seriousness of the battle. I just wonder how everyone will react as Weaver still lacks the awesomeness of his servant.
The fighting in this episode was defiantly an improvement over the fighting in Fate/Stay Night plus the amount of sneaky stuff everyone is doing behind the scenes has piqued my interest. Plus it is nice to see a character like Rider who is the complete opposite and gets everything out in the open. Can’t wait for the next episode.
Although I liked the setting in Fate/stay night, Studio Deen botched it up with its incompetence. But yes, I agree that Rider is the best servant besides Saber in the series.