Wow, this episode was depressingly bad. Not only was it not worth my time, but it’s not even worth the time to blog about it. This time around, the producers do every single thing they can to make the show as bad as possible.

Just a little note to the powers that be, my little aside on Noir‘s overuse of flashbacks was not one of sincere admiration. We had the same flashback of dying Emiya-kun twelve times, and then Saber’s past took over. Now we’ve had Caster’s flashback three times. And of course, Gilgamesh’s very un-epic introduction during the first half of the episode had to be recycled in flashback form in the second half. This is beyond tying with Noir, this is beyond passing it. This is disgusting.

I’d like to note that Assassin is my second favorite character in the show after Ilya. He’s given rise to the only actually good animation FSN’s seen (aside from about 2.5 seconds of Emiya fighting Diablo-II-Barbarian-style this episode, and that was plain ridiculous.) I’d also like to note that Giglamesh disappoints me greatly. My FSN-loving IRC buddy was at one point gushing about how “the king of heroes” would be so cool. … er, talk about not doing the actual Hero justice.

Though I have to admit, his arsenal is pretty large. I guess that if you’re thinking in freudian terms, and Saber’s manly, then Gilgy’s a tentacle monster.

I didn’t like how Caster and Kuzuki died. It was not a jot dramatic. Caster and Kuzuki are not bad people perse; they have their own agenda and means. Caster has her own dreams and wishes, and her passing should not be a simple “oh noes triple penetration from golden boy.” I recently explained one of my qualms with FSN in a comment on drmschsr0′s post about FSN-hating. Power. That’s right. Her death had no power. Nothing involving her had power. Her greatest contribution in making the show better was fighting Rider and getting some really nice fanservice out of it. As for Kuzuki? Eh… he just seemed like to good a person to simply die like that. Sure, it was a fitting and in character for him to go quietly like that, but so what? It sure as hell didn’t add anything to the show.

What else did this episode have? It had no Ilya. It had butt-ugly wannabe bishounen. It had more split screen action. It had stillframe pans with white speed blurs. It had contrast increases on stillframes to make them appear to move. It had no noticeably good sound.

In short, I’m not sure I’ll be able to torture myself into continuing to watch this show. It’s just not worth my time. I think I’m getting more out of Soul Link at this point. That at least has sex in it, albeit straight and legal.