- Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
- Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
- Resolution: 1080p/24 (23.976Hz)
- Audio Codec: Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit); English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit)
- Subtitles: English
- Subtitles Color: Yellow
- Region: A (Region-Locked)
- Rating: TV-14 (V)
- Run Time: 105 Mins.
- Discs: 1 (1 x Blu-ray)
- Studio: Sentai Filmworks
- Blu-ray Release Date: June 12, 2012
- List Price: $39.98
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Overall
[Rating:4/5]
The Film
[Rating:4/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0/5]
Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures
(All TheaterByte screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG at 100% quality setting and are meant as a general representation of the content. They do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)
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The Film
[Rating:4/5]
Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works (フェイト/ステイナイト無制限の刃は働く) is a feature length anime film based on a Japanese visual novel and subsequent anime series based on the same. An epic action fantasy following a young man named Shiro Emiya who has trained as a magi for ten years and summoned a beautiful “servant” named Saber to fight alongside him in a battle against six other battle teams for a powerful prize known as the Holy Grail, Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works is a marvel of sight, sound and animation.
Shiro is a tortured soul who empathizes too much with his other opponents to do the ultimate – take their lives. He comes up against his greatest nemesis, a powerful servant named Archer whose master, the magus Rin, is a young woman who Shiro has come to like. But Archer breaks his sacred contract with Rin and is determined to kill Shiro no matter the cost. Shiro and Rin must team up to fight Archer and the other magi in what inevitably hurtles toward a titanic battle and shocking revelations.
Visually, the film is stunning, one of the best works of anime I have seen recently. The use of color and shading is impeccable. Character designs are meticulous and superbly done while the backgrounds, a mixture of hand-drawn with a small amount of CGI, are gorgeous.
With that being said, the story can be a bit convoluted and difficult to follow. Perhaps one would need to be more familiar with the entire universe of Fate/Stay Night from the visual novels through the anime series to jump into this film and understand everything. I, personally, was not. It took me a full 45-minutes to get a grasp on what was really taking place, despite the fact that the imagery and voice acting kept me well entertained.
Video Quality
[Rating:5/5]
The spectacular animation of Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works gets an equally awesome transfer to Blu-ray with this AVC/MPEG-4 encodement from Sentai Filmworks. Beautifully saturated colors, especially reds and colors in that family seem to really “pop.” Line art is crisp with no issues at all concerning aliasing or compression artifacts. There are some instances of video noise, but these are all intentionally added as an artistic choice, not due to the transfer.
Audio Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
The audio, Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit) and English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit), is almost as good as the video transfer. Dynamic and filled with lush amounts of ambience and discrete effects, the lossless audio has deep low frequencies and clean dialogue. It brings you into the center of the action while the airy high frequencies help to avoid fatigue at higher volumes.
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0/5]
No supplements here, just additional Sentai Filmworks trailers and English disc credits.
The Definitive Word
Overall:
[Rating:4/5]
A spectacular visual effort that fans of Fate/Stay Night are sure to enjoy, this awesome feature-length film is filled with epic action and gorgeous animation. Despite a somewhat confusing storyline for newcomers to the franchise, I don’t hesitate to recommend this to anyone who is a fan of fantasy based anime.
Additional Screen Captures
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Overall
[Rating:4/5]
The Film
[Rating:4/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0/5]
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