Fate/Stay Night Volume 6   Starring (voice): Ayako Kawasumi, Kana Ueda and Noriaki Sugiyama MVM RRP: £15.99 MVD2295 Certificate: 15 Available 07 June 2010

It has been ten years since the last confrontation between the master mages for control over the Holy Grail. Now another war is on the horizon, one that will draw Shirou into its dark heart. As a survivor of a calamity Shirou, to honour the memory of his father, uses his magical gifts only for good. But how long will goodness keep you safe in this new war of the mages...?

Fate/Stay Night: Volume 6 (2006) contains the last four episodes for the series - episodes 21 to 24 - The Star of Creation That Divided Heaven and Earth, The Result of a Wish, The Holy Grail and The All Too Distant Utopia. The show was directed by Yuji Yamaguchi and animated by Studio Deen, originally based on a 2004 visual light novel game; the concept produced both a manga and the anime show.

So, we finally come to the final confrontation in the War of the Grail and Shirou is pretty much one of the last surviving mages. The ending of the show is pretty dense as there are many threads to resolve. In the first episode the identity of the Golden servant is finally reveal as Gilgamesh the First and most powerful king. This does bring up another unresolved thought. Are all the servants dead kings? Saber was originally King Arthur albeit n a dress. Here he seems more interested in having Saber come over to his side than defeating Shirou.

Kotomine is revealed as the mysterious hidden master who plans to use the grail to destroy the world and will stop at nothing to achieve this; he mortally injures Rin and kidnaps Illya to use her to open the portal to the grail, so the final confrontation is set up. I won’t ruin the ending, only to say that for an anime it turned out to be emotionally a bitter sweet experience and a fitting end to the series.

Presentation of the disc remains the same with either an English or Japanese 2.0 audio track, which does its job well. Visually the show is impressive, with a 1.78:1 anamorphic picture, but then it’s only a year old. This time around the extras consist of trailers for Shakugan no Shana, and Samurai Deeper Kyo as well as a Saber Music Clip (2 min, 29 sec) and one for Archer (2 min, 46 sec) both of which consist of montages from the show.

The series ended well and I feel that fans of the show will feel pleased about how the various threads are resolved. As a standalone series it wasn’t brilliant, but then it wasn’t half bad either.

7

Charles Packer