Now that Rin have transfered some mana to Shirou, it seems that they are ready to stop Gilgamesh’s evil plan. As expected, there are obstacles that are in the way to make the heroes’ lives difficult.
From the looks of it, it’s quite obvious that Gilgamesh is not going to make it easy for Rin and Shirou to stop his plan. Of course, their strategy involves Saber going to the main gate while Rin and Shirou sneak in to the area where the grail is supposed to be. Apparently, it didn’t go well as planned. Assassin, despite Caster’s defeat is still there guarding the gate and of course, Gilgamesh already found where they are.
As expected, while we only saw a glimpse of the battle between Assassin and Saber, it’s quite obvious that he didn’t stand a chance against her at all. Still, it’s interesting that his origins are based on a fairy tale and such a hero like him does not actually exist. Either way, Saber finished him off, which is expected given the amount of mana she has now with Rin being her master and not Shirou.
On the other front, now we are seeing what Shirou is capable of now that he has the extra mana. He can now trace all the weapons that Gilgamesh produced meaning that he can now neutralize his attacks with the only exception being the sword that Gilgamesh used against the hand. In short, he was unable to reproduce the Ea for obvious reasons.
Although I’m kind of disappointed that Shinji is going to get saved by Rin considering the terrible things he done, I guess it can’t be helped. After all, Shirou’s ideal is “save everyone,” not “kill one to save many.” Either way, Shinji will get what he deserves in the Heaven’s Feel movie. Aside from that, I can’t wait for the next episode as Shirou shows off his own version of Unlimited Blade Works as he faces off Gilgamesh. Given that Gilgamesh is being a bit overconfident by not going all out on Shirou, it’s obvious that his defeat will be because of his hubris. We’ll see.
Sasaki Koujirou’s existence is actually a very interesting topic to think about when you consider the context of “fakes”. A swordsman whom he received his name from has indeed existed, but his image was overhyped in records and lore to the point of being fictitious. I think that was his point. But then you have Heroic Spirits who are just copies themselves. So is he really such a false hero? 🙂
Who knows. one can say that heroes are copies, but of course most heroic spirits are based off history and I won’t be surprised if their spirits lived on for the grail war as they haven’t resolved their problems.
Still, the thing about fakes is something interesting to look into sometime.