Xebek\’s Blog

An exciting episode with a bigger fight between Saber and Rider with enough clues to give away Rider’s identity as well as a big hint to Saber’s.

Summary:

We start off Shinji staggering down the street muttering Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill Everything, Kill every freakin’ thing, which is kind of creepy. Rider is watching him from a rooftop. Meanwhile Shirou is at home safely with Saber resting. He gets off the phone getting news that the teacher and others at the school are fine. Saber wakes up and Shirou says they should go look for Rider and Shinji. Saber says they should take care of Shirou’s wounds first but he insists his safety comes second to that of other innocent people Shinji may hurt again. Saber kind of guesses he wants to do something for those people but he says no, he wants to find and defeat Rider which kind of surprises Saber because of how much he wanted to avoid battles before. He says that defeating her is a good way to make Shinji pay and assure protection for the other people.

Saber and Shirou go looking for Shinji, looking in particular for a force field as they believe he will make another one to try and lure in Shirou to get revenge. They look for a while not finding anything and eventually when Saber notices Shirou struggling a bit because of his injury she insists he sit down for a while. Shirou falls asleep and when he wakes up an hour later him and Saber talk about how the park they are resting in used to be near where he lived. He said a fire took his house and his parents away, a fire from the last Holy Grail War. Saber guessed from this that the reason he wants to save people is because he wishes to prevent more victims from he war like he was. He says it’s a bit simpler then that and that he just feels he should repay the people who died by making sure no one else does, although I think that is kind of the same thing.

Eventually Saber and Shirou stumble across Rider who attacks them. Saber chases after her as they run up a building fighting. Shirou, wanting to help runs into the building and takes the elevator to the top of the skyscraper Saber and Rider are running up. Rider gets to the top and when Saber arrives there is a huge light and Rider is… well Riding a winged horse. Shirou reaches as far as the elevator takes him and runs up the stairs the rest of the way. When he gets out of the elevator we see, although Shirou doesn’t Ilya and Berserker standing in the dark. Saber mentions to Rider how bringing out a mythical creature such as that is a sin but Rider explains how she was nothing more then you humans’ enemy thus the only thing I can control are these poor creatures you have driven away. Saber says how she sees now how Rider isn’t the heroic soul type, but of the evil creature type.

Shirou reaches the top of the building in time for Rider to start powering up her Noble Phantasm. Saber readies her sword and it starts to glow and wind blows everywhere. Rider flies up and powers up a charge towards Saber. While doing this Saber’s sword glows more and eventually the wind around it dissipates revealing the sword itself, a glowing golden sword. Rider yells Bellerophon as she attacks and Saber with her sword still glowing yells Excalibur and swings the sword causing a giant beam to hit Rider. The beam this Rider square on and her eye covers break reveling square eyes. Rider is then obliterated by the blast, dieing. Meanwhile we see Rin who looks into the sky to see the beam of light as it dissipates. Rin is standing outside Sakura’s house, who is looking out the window towards the light. She mouths something and then we return to Shirou. Shirou hears Shinji cry out that his command spells are burning away and before Shirou can run after him Saber collapses and he attends to her.

Impressions:

Two interesting small things I noticed that may be important later on is that we saw Ilya and Berserker briefly in the building as Shirou was running up. We didn’t actually see them do anything but it was odd that they were there. They could perhaps do or did something after the battle and after Saber and Shirou left or come in before they do. The other thing was Sakura. Now depending on how much the game differs from the anime could prove how important this is but when Rider died we saw Sakura looking out the window at it with a really sad face. She then mouthed something we couldn’t hear. That may be important later on or it may just be some feeling she has to the struggle of her brother but it seems like it is more.

One more thing that was interesting in this episode was again the talk between Shirou and Saber when they were sitting in the park. Shirou tells Saber how he used to live here before but he was a victim of the last Holy Grail War, loosing his real parents leading to the adoption of him by his adopted father whom he learned magic from. A bit off topic in the flashback where his adopted dad found him he looked really sad and almost guilty so I have a feeling he defiantly could have been a Master in the last war. Back on topic, Shirou eventually says that the reason he wants to save people is to pay back those that weren’t saved last time.

We got enough information to say who Rider’s identity is, which is Medusa. The clues are plentiful. First, the eye coverage, why else would she have a cover over her eyes? There is also the vague symbol on her forehead which pretty much resembles a snake. There is the fact that she summoned a winged horse and in Greek mythology Medusa was tied in with a winged horse. Also, Bellerophon which was what she yelled out when she used her big attack is the name of a Greek hero tied in with Pegasus the winged worse which is the creature she summoned. Last, her eyes themselves. When her eye covers were broken off we see that she has square eyes which Medusa had.

We got a huge hint as to Saber’s identity by what she yelled out when she unleashed the huge blast from her sword, Excalibur. Now King Arthur is the one who used Excalibur but I suppose I should wait for a bit more information before I put this down because I am basing this on what has been given in the series and not necessarily on anything I know that happens later but it is a high probability that we will find out for sure her identity next episode *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge* “Say no more.” “Say no more.”

Here is updated chart, the strikethough for the Servants mean the Servant is dead, the strikethough for the master does NOT mean they are dead, just that they have no more command spells.

Shirou - Saber - ???

Rin - Archer - ???

Ilya - Berserker - Hercules

Shinji - Rider - Medusa

??? - Caster - ???

??? - Assassin - Sasaki Kojirou

??? - Lancer - Cuchulain