Fate Stay Night Unlimited Bladeworks Pt2 Blu Ray Collector's Edition [Blu-ray]

Overall this series stand out points were the cliffhangers and revelations in the first half, great battles and back story episodes. Also a masterfully directed final battle sequence. I think the creators, ufotable, managed to adapt the source material perfectly with the aid of the universes creator Kinoko Nasu. Also you get a poster and some postcards and I have not read the booklet yet. These extras are enough to easily clinch the five star rating. Regarding the unbridled creativity of Fate/Zero lets not forget that this is the original. Thank you for all your hard work ufotable you are the best.

The product is great, thank you! The seller was helpful and solved my delivery problem.

This release just has one problem, the overprice...

Before I start the review you'll need to know a few things before hand, if you haven't watched any of the Fate/Stay Night series that is. First off, this is based on a visual novel game. The visual novel has three routes; the Fate route (Which the original series, Fate/Stay Night, is based on), then there's the Unlimited Blade Works route (This series), and then there's the Heaven's Feel route (Which will be adapted into a movie sometime this year). There is also the prequel series, Fate/Zero. If you haven't watched anything Fate/Stay Night related before I recommend watching it in the release order; Fate/Stay Night, Fate/Zero, then this. However, if you don't want to watch a series that came out ten years ago then I can recommend watching Fate/Zero first then this. Though the original series does require watching for certain minor plot points. I'm recommending this because there are somethings which aren't in this series, but can be found in the original. If you've played a visual novel game before-like Steins;Gate, If My Heart Had Wings, or The Fruit of Grisaia-then you'll probably know what I'm talking about. Anyway, onto the review!STORY & CHARACTERSThis is difficult to explain without giving away spoilers, so I'll just say that it is good and glorious. There are a lot of things to enjoy from this series that is done better than the original. It's also not just half a rehash of the original and half new material, but it is in fact mostly new. The first half is similar to the original, but there are plenty of differences for fans to enjoy. It's like watching an all new series, especially when we are given a reason to care about minor characters. In the original some minor characters were injured but there wasn't much of a reason to care because they had just appeared, whereas now they're given screen time and it is enough time to care about the character when something happens.Out of the cast of main character's it is Shiro and Rin that get a huge amount of character development over the course of the series, but are also handled significantly better by Ufotable than they were in the original series by Studio Deen. Rin used to be an arrogant, one-sided, side-character that didn't really have much of a reason for helping Shiro in the original series, but now she is sarcastic, smart, and just feels a lot more developed as a character. Her reason for helping Shiro is even made clearer. The same could be said about Shiro; he used to be a one-sided character that made some of the dumbest decisions out there and put complete faith in everyone he met, despite whether or not they were trying to kill him. Whereas now he is somewhat cautious and has a lot more character to him.ANIMATION & SOUNDIf you haven't watched Fate/Zero then you have no idea how good the animation is; if you have watched Fate/Zero then you'll probably be surprised by how good the animation is in comparison. There isn't much of a difference in comparison, but it is noticeable at which one looks newer and ever so slightly better animated. The animation is difficult to describe without you yourself looking at pictures or videos; it is amazing. This is by far the best animation I've seen in a Japanese anime, and the best 2D animation I've ever seen. In fact, I’d go as far to say that it is the best animation I have ever seen; it is just so beautiful to look at. Everything is so well and fantastically done that every frame could be an art piece. For animation alone, I can easily recommend buying the Blu-ray and nothing else.The music is probably the only downside. It is good and stands out on its own; it’s just not as good as the music in Fate/Zero by Yuki Kajiura. However, the music is still very good, even if most of the tracks are remixes of the tracks in the visual novel and the original series, but some of Yuki Kajiura's tracks do make their way into this.The dub is something you'll either like or hate. It is a mix of new voices to Fate/Stay Night, as well as returning voices from Fate/Zero and the original Fate/Stay Night series. Most of the cast does sound good and a lot better than most of the original voices in the original series; it is hard to say that I was disappointed because of the great performances from everyone involved in the dub. It sounds great and majority of the cast play’s the characters to the best of they’re ability. If you’ve watched Fate/Zero then you might know what to expect.Mela Lee (Celica in Xenoblade Chronicles X, Rachel Alucard from BlazBlue, and Yuki Cross from Vampire Knight) returns as none other than Rin Tohsaka, and I can't imagine anyone else playing her. Tony Oliver (Arsene Lupin III in Lupin 3rd, Ulquiorra Cifer in Bleach, and Minato Namikaze in Naruto) returns to play Lancer, and the infamous Stephanie Sheh (Sailor Moon / Usagi Tsukino in Viz Media's Uncut dub of the Sailor Moon franchise, Yui in Sword Art Online, Scheherazade in Magi The Kingdom of Magic, Eureka in Eureka Seven & Eureka Seven AO, as well as Mikuru Asahina in the Haruhi Suzumiya & The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan series) returns as Illyasviel von Einzbern. Bryce Papenbrook (Rin Okumura in Blue Exorcist, Kirito in Sword Art Online, and Eren Jaeger in Attack on Titan) is Shirou Emiya). Megan Hollingshead (Mai Valentine in Yu-Gi-Oh, Rangiku Matsumoto in Bleach, and Shizune in the Naruto franchise) surprised me as Caster, and Kari Wahlgren (Anemone in Eureka Seven, Celty in Durarara, Tayuya in Naruto, and Tsuruya in the Haruhi Suzumiya series and the The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan) is great as the legendary Saber. The only person I wasn’t really satisfied with was Kaiji Tang (Wingul in Tales of Xillia, Koen Ren in Magi The Kingdom of Magic, and Santana in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) as Archer; his voice took a few episodes to get used to and while I do think he played Archer well I still think that a better job could have been done. I do also have to mention Crispin Freeman’s (Holland Novak in Eureka Seven, Itachi Uchiha from the Naruto franchise, and Kyon in the Haruhi Suzumiya series and The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan) portrayal of Kirei Kotomine, because even though he is briefly in the series his scenes are just fantastically well done. For more details on the cast please visit behindthevoiceactors.com.OVERALLFate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works is an amazing series with a fantastic cast, probably the best looking visuals ever and will definitely be a benchmark for animation in years to come, some fans don’t refer to this series as Unlimited Budget Works for no reason. The only other thing I think is worth noting is that some characters just don’t get as much screen time, or are just dropped, either two thirds of the way through or even half way through, which I can then say is where watching the original series before this can be a bonus.Overall, I give this the highest recommendation I can possibly give to buy it. It is something that all anime fans, or just animation lovers, should watch. You don’t even need to like anime to watch this series; in fact, I will say just watch it for the animation because it is so impressive that it makes me wonder what Ufotable will be like on a movie budget. This is a great series with a great story and has some great characters with the bonus of having some of the best animated visuals I have ever seen. It is defiantly worth the buy on Blu-ray for the best possible experience.

Great series.But way too expensive. And why are 13 episodes split across four Blu-Ray discs? Relatively huge amount of shelf space taken up for no reason at all.

It's a good series but £60 for half a series is extortionate..