With Shirou healed and powered up, will he be able to defeat Archer and prove him wrong about his ideals? We’ll see.
From the looks of it, it seems that Shirou is finally catching up to Archer in terms of his ability. However, he struggled until the last-minute when he admitted that while his wish is a fake, his dream of making others happy is a dream is not. Because of this, he is not willing to lose it. With that, he regained his strength and managed to defeat Archer with his own version of Unlimited Blade Works. It seems to me that Archer finally gave up and decided to resolve his feelings towards Shirou by deciding to help him with the final stages of the war. He ultimately protects him from Gilgamesh’s attack before he vanished.
As expected, it seems that Gilgamesh is after the Grail for his own purposes. It seems that he wants to use the destructive power from it since the contents got corrupted sometime after the Third Grail War. In short, The Grail War can be summed up as a death game with no rewards. Of course, this is not the only way you can retrieve it. You can simply have all seven servants get absorbed in a ritual in order to obtain The Holy Grail. In reality, nobody is going to give up his or her servants for that.
Because of this, there is no wonder why Kiritsugu destroyed it after knowing that The Holy Grail corrupted, which of course unleashed its evil power and the contents that poured out destroyed part of the city. In short, Rin, Shirou and Saber have to stop Gilgamesh before he unleashes its destruction.
As the mansion burns down from Lancer’s fire, it buys Rin, Shirou and Saber some time to prepare for the final showdown with Gilgamesh. With that, I wonder what they are going to do for the mana linking? Will they resort to the CG dolphins or dragons this time? We have to wait and see. Even so, at least Shinji gets what he deserves as a mass grows inside him after Gilgamesh made him the vessel. Who knows what negative effects it will have on the Grail considering that he is not a magus at all. ¶
I wonder if that UBW (blue skies, like the one seen in the ED) is just symbolic or if Ufotable is really going to change Shirou’s Reality Marble for their version. In the VN, Shirou’s UBW is just an underdeveloped version of Archer’s (red sky, no fog or cogwheels).
Either way, the anime executed/adapted Shirou’s victory really well, coupled with Heroic Spirit EMIYA re-experiencing his promise with Kiritsugu thanks to clashing swords with his past self.
I haven’t played the visual novel, so I don’t know… but who knows. I guess we’ll find out his version when he faces off Gilgamesh.