So here we are, back again with the second half of Unlimited Blade Works. When I reviewed the first half of this series, I stated that it was a very compelling action show with a few solid characters overall, held down by some lousy writing and undercooked philosophical pretensions. In the second half, Unlimited Blade Works steers itself into a long series of monologues largely focused on those philosophical pretensions, while cutting down severely on both the action highlights and non-Shirou character moments. This ends about as well you'd expect.

When we last left off Unlimited Blade Works, Saber had been captured by Caster, leaving Shirou without a Servant altogether. At the beginning of this season, that problem is compounded by Archer willingly surrendering to Caster, saying he's only doing what he can to make sure he's on the winning team. Left without Servants or any allies to speak of, Shirou and Rin's quest to defeat Caster and her team of lackeys consumes the first half of this second season, as they plot their revenge and attempt to recruit allies to fight Caster's supergroup. In the second half, Archer's true nature and goal are revealed, prompting much drama for everyone, and ultimately one more heroic spirit emerges with his own plans for the grail.

All of these betrayals and allegiances and counter-betrayals would make you think this half would be even more exciting than the first, but unfortunately, this season's fights are a big step down from the earlier episodes. With Caster, Rin, Archer, and Gilgamesh as the main combatants, the battles this time tend to be effects-heavy magical duels, which lack the give and take of physical fights starring characters like Saber or Berserker. (Berserker does get one battle!) Most of the big setpieces in this season involve glowing lights or flying swords shattering against each other like fireworks, and though that certainly has its own appeal, things start to feel very repetitive after a while.

This points to possibly the biggest, most inescapable issue of this second half - repetition. The first half of Unlimited Blade Works had a tendency to overtell things the audience could already infer, and in the second half this issue is increased tenfold. A number of episodes here dedicate significant running time to explaining things that were already understandable the previous week; this issue recurs in a variety of guises throughout, but the worst of it falls on Shirou's character journey.

Shirou's complicated relationship with his adoptive father, and the way Kiritsugu's rescuing of him scarred him with a secondhand desire to save others, was a clear and established conflict in Unlimited Blade Works' first half, illustrated both through his self-destructive actions and various conversations with Archer. In the second half, this relatively simple internal conflict is stretched out through a long series of repetitive monologues, all going over this one same point. There's a particular three episode sequence, ostensibly the peak of his character arc, that repeats this one conversation over and over without interruption, featuring little else to break up the motivation review session.

It's honestly a little unbelievable - the show spends three straight episodes repeating the fairly self-explanatory climax to Shirou's character arc, a personal resolution that most shows would likely relegate to the last third of a single episode. That might be acceptable for a long-running shounen attempting to stretch content, but for a focused single-season show, a move like that is a backbreaking failure of composition. Unlimited Blade Works' prose has always been labored and purple, but when scenes of over-explaining monologue were interspersed between exciting action setpieces, that weakness was a little easier to bear. Here, a combination of poor pacing and repetitive content essentially grinds the show to a halt, making this second half an often tedious journey.

Pacing and repetition aside, UBW's many monologues are also reflective of its serious problems with telling over showing. Characters tend to simply announce their motivations and arc turns, with the story failing to put these dramatic turns in an actually dramatic narrative context. Shirou, Rin, and Saber all reach and illustrate their turns through monologue, and though there are occasional moments that demonstrate growth (I particularly liked Archer's move to save Shirou at the end of the conversation-slog, which demonstrated something fundamental to his character through his actions), overall the show far too often just has its characters tell the audience what they feel.

This problem is amplified through the side characters, whose emotional arcs suffer from how closely the show focused on Shirou and Rin up until now. Because they've had so little screentime, characters like Ilya, Caster, and Assassin are forced to play emotional catch-up, monologuing their backstories and motivation just before they exit the stage. This issue is particularly frustrating because some of their stories really do have the potential to be dramatically satisfying and even reflect off the main pair (I'd have loved for Ilya's feelings to have been more consistently contrasted against Shirou's, for example). But making these stories work emotionally and matter thematically would have required their journeys to be seeded throughout the narrative, so the audience could actually build investment in them naturally and feel for them as people before being told to feel right at the end.

Issues of narrative composition and character writing run up and down the second half. The need to make this very specifically “Shirou's story” means Rin and Saber are both sidelined, where their active presence could have kept things interesting even when the main arc was faltering. Ostensibly major players in the grail war appear and disappear within single scenes, while the plot remains focused on one very narrow journey. There are good fundamental ideas here, but from Ilya's presence to Archer's nature to the squandering of Kotomine to the out-of-left-field choice of final villain, this second half is a consistent demonstration of good ideas being used poorly. Rarely have I seen a show with such stellar execution fail due to such textbook issues as “show, don't tell,” “make the best use of your characters,” or "drama should emerge naturally from the variables of your story."

That's a lot of storytelling negatives, but there are some bright spots here and there. Though Rin's character seems fairly simplified in this second half (basically everything gets sidelined for more hammering of Shirou's baggage), some of the scenes between her and Shirou possess an endearing chemistry. The underlying concept of Archer's story is a compelling one, even if it isn't used that well. And the final boss adds a bit of hammy levity to the season's second half, playing up his own villainy and serving as a welcome relief from the season's generally dour tone. The weight of Shirou's presence is a heavy one, but some fun does manage to seep in around the edges.

Unlimited Blade Works' visuals remain strong, though they sometimes don't have all that much to do with anything. Many scenes regress to the unwelcome Fate/Zero trick of simply having characters monologue at each other, but the gorgeous backgrounds do help create some visual interest. ufotable have always had a strong “house style,” and their strengths are all on display in this series, from the grounded but vividly colored backgrounds to the reliance on top-tier CG effects work. Those CG effects help lend some interest to the beam-spam fights, and the few fights that rely on traditional animation are wonderful rewards. There are even a few standout well-directed sequences, like Ilya and Caster's backstory episodes, each of which feel more lively and compelling than the main story. There's definitely not as much strong animation here as in the first half, and the music also seems somewhat less inspired (relying more on simple electronic tracks than the more orchestral first half), but Unlimited Blade Works remains an impressively produced show.

Unlimited Blade Works' second half comes in the same lavish set of packaging as the first, featuring five discs (four blurays plus the second soundtrack disc) inside a firm chipboard display case. There's a booklet full of interviews included as well, which offer a variety of interesting insights into the show's creative process. The introduction discusses how Nasu provided scenes and script supervision for the material that was added for the anime and also provides a pretty telling reflection on what likely led to the adaptation's narrative failure. In the introduction's own words, “what Miura is said to have been striving for was to merely drop everything that was good about the source material into the anime… what he strove for here was to capture that feeling of playing the original game.”

Perhaps even nodding to the awkward issues of the show's climax, the introduction goes on to state “as the original story is exceedingly wordy, one can see through all the rich dialogue how each character was formed. Normally, it would be extremely difficult to use such phrasing, as is, in an anime show. But ufotable understood that this kind of verbiage wasn't merely excessive, it was actually what shaped every element of the world of the original story, and that it was what held it together. That's what gave the characters' narration a Kinoko Nasu-like allure, giving fans the feeling that they were being shown the world of the source material, unchanged, as an anime show, and drawing new viewers to the wonders of its world as well.” So basically, “we're aware this story is overwritten and doesn't actually work as an anime, but the original was that way, and we're staying true to the source material.”

Nasu actually comes across as a fairly down-to-earth person in the included interviews, where he makes jokes to Miura about the “outdated” storytelling of the visual novel and talks about how Miura is somewhat like the Shirou to his own jaded Archer. It's clear through their conversation just how involved Nasu was in the show's production process, and how even he struggled with the question of how to translate visual novel storytelling to anime. We learn that Miura specifically asked Nasu to write the Einzbern backstory, and of a variety of points where Miura deliberately mirrored the framing of battles earlier and later in the series. The booklet even includes discussions between the two on each individual episode, making it a very welcome inclusion for anyone interested in the story behind the show's production

The last physical extra included is a Weiss Schwarz PR card, but the discs have their own extras as well. There's the usual scattering of small added scenes as in the first collection (the bluray actually significantly extends the “Saber bound and leered at by Caster” sequence, apparently deciding the broadcast version wasn't fanservicey enough), as well as textless openings, endings, and a variety of small promotional videos. But the big prize here is the “sunny day” OVA, a ten minute adaptation of the alternate “good ending” where Rin manages to keep Saber in the world by extending their pact. It's a nice inclusion, though definitely less of an appropriate conclusion than the show's true ending. This OVA is also included in the dubbed material, which once again matches the original voices nicely. I generally lean towards the Japanese cast myself, and don't think the dub quite matches the evocative hamminess of the original's takes on characters like Kirei and the last servant, but it's a generally respectable take on the material.

Overall, Unlimited Blade Works seems hamstrung by its loyalty to its source material. There could be a compelling standalone story here that made full use of all the characters on display and really let ufotable stretch their aesthetic muscles, but that would require some truly bold compositional revisions. Instead, the story we got is narrow, simplistic, ineffectively talk-heavy, poorly paced, and not well-suited to a visual medium. Unlimited Blade Works represents an unfortunate failure of ambition, with its clear strengths only making it that much more disappointing that it fails to realize its potential.