Recap

Shinji reveals himself as a Master, and Caster makes a sneak attack in the dead of night.

Iro’s Thoughts:

In typical fashion, we’re dumped with quite a bit more exposition, though this time the show has the decency to keep the story moving and to vary up the scenery. The most NASUUUUU of these sequences is Archer and Shirou’s discussion on the nature of Heroic Spirits themselves, which perhaps gives some insight into Archer’s mindset. It’s notable that the anime has changed one or two things from the VN to essentially make him seem more sinister, and his thinly-veiled vitriol towards Shirou is hardly doing anything to lessen this.

On the subject of thinly-veiled vitriol, infamous slimy little shit Shinji Matou (assisted by Hiroshi Kamiya’s excellence at voicing… well, slimy little shits) reveals himself to be the third Master at school, and the Master of last week’s Rider. This means the barrier around the school that’s specifically made to literally melt people into raw mana is his doing, and his claim that he had nothing to do with attacking Mitsuzuri or Random Schoolgirl 826 is so obviously untrue it’s laughable (on purpose, of course). It’s also worth noting that Rin says she can’t sense any magi who are below a certain threshold, and she had ardently assumed Shinji wasn’t a Master.

Of course, the real interesting bit this week was the lead-in to next episode, wherein basically everyone shows up at Ryudo Temple and gears up for a fight. It’s pretty clear that Assassin is allied with Caster somehow, and with their appearances we have officially seen all seven Servants. One of the chief reasons I’m watching this show is for the bits that weren’t in the VN, so I particularly enjoyed the montage where we see snippets of Caster’s memories. If you already know her true identity, the references are a fun little bonus. Conversely, Assassin robs us of the fun of puzzling him out by revealing his name right off the bat, even though next’s week’s fight would have made it obvious. Either way, considering how UFOtable has been performing so far, I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how much cash they’ll be burning.