I don't understand why people are saying this was a good episode...it really wasn't. I suppose the "important" part of it was done well, which was the Kiritsugu inside the grail but everything else? Kirei vs Kiritsugu, Saber vs Lancelot, Gilgamesh and saber, the last command spell...ugh.
First, the fight between Kiritsugu and Kirei was too cheesy for my tastes. As soon as Kirei bust out his martial arts stances and did those fancy prep moves i was like "oh no". That, the comical Kirei knife blocking, and the random back flip i saw somewhere did not make me an amused viewer. And why'd they change the location to Bruce Wayne's storehouse?
The thing that
really got me about that fight though, was the lack of tension. Kiritsugu pushing his limits with the help of Avalon, using double accel for extended periods, then triple and square..i saw none of that. I don't know if it was because of the voice acting or the portrayal, i simply just didn't feel it. Also, Kirei throwing those black key's at the end made no sense whatsoever. Yeah, i'm a novel reader so i know what he was doing, but to an anime only person, it would make them think "why?". I'm surprised nobody's commented on that. Another let down was the "end"to their fight. It was supposed to be a life or death situation where they either kill the other or die in that split second, but to me it just felt like another part of their weirdly natural fight before they were interrupted.
I'm going to take it for granted that the Saber and Lancelot fight will be extended in the BD's, including flashbacks and all, so i'll withhold judgement for now.
Finally, Kiritsugu using two command spells looked like he did it for the lulz. It didn't show Saber using her magical resistance to fight it or anything. Sure, people would figure it out eventually, but to me it was just another badly portrayed scene. And Gilgamesh noticing Kiritsugu felt like he had known he was there all along, but just didn't do anything about it.
Yeah, i'm really ripping this episode apart, but i was seriously disappointed
