Production
The idea of creating an animated film based on the Unlimited Blade Works story arc of the Fate/stay night visual novel was first suggested to producer Mitsutoshi Ogura of Geneon Entertainment in 2005. At the time, he was organizing the production of the anime series for the same game. Ogura felt that Unlimited Blade Works and Fate – the latter used as the basis for the plot of the series – were the most interesting story arcs in the visual novel. Director Yūji Yamaguchi from Studio Deen had similar opinions, and noted that Unlimited Blade Works had many elements in common with shonen manga, with a large number of bright scenes. He stated that he felt that the plot and dramatic components of the story arc could be conveyed well in cinematic format. As a result, the film-making project was approved immediately after the work on the 2006 TV series was completed, and producer Norimitsu Urasaki joined the project.
According to Sato, the largest challenge for the production was the limitation on the length of the film. He had several meetings with producers and lobbied to increase the runtime to 107 minutes, which was approved. Yamaguchi understood that this runtime was extremely short in comparison to the 2006 series, where a similar sequence of events was told in 480 minutes. Therefore, he decided to try to create a balance between everyday scenes and battles by increasing the intensity and emotional weight of the latter, which led to a significant reduction in the content of the prologue shown earlier in the series. The director recalled that he originally wanted to demonstrate many everyday scenes between battles, which were prepared in Sato's drafts, but most of them never entered the final script. In the initial planning stage, Archer was considered as the central character, but attention was shifted to Shirou during production.
Since there had been a conflict between Fate author Kinoko Nasu and consultant Yamaguchi during the production of the TV series, Type-Moon only assigned a secondary advisor for the production of the film, and his opinion was taken into account only on general grounds. The director refused the complete exclusion of Nasu from the production team only because of fear of an excessive departure from the canons of the Fate franchise. The head of Type-Moon, illustrator Takashi Takeuchi, retained the role of a character design consultant. The only wish expressed by the creators of the visual novel to the producers was that the battle scenes should not become the dominant element of the film. However, Urasaki did not approve of this approach, as he feared that the audience might lose interest, and gave the right to finally determine the direction of Yamaguchi's work.
Shortly after the screenplay was approved in 2008, Studio Deen staff prepared a storyboard that was approved without major changes. Since the project budget exceeded the amount allocated for the 2006 series, it was decided that more work should be put into special effects during battle scenes. Special attention was paid to the rendering, since the creators sought to ensure that all the characters were equally well distinguishable and that there were no errors in the position of shadows relative to light sources. Staging of battles between masters was performed by Tsujitani, who took influence from the way tokusatsu Kamen Rider and Metal Hero tracked the movement patterns of the characters.
In contrast to the 2006 series, shades of red were emphasized in the color palette, which, according to the director, should have "added to the film entertainment and adult atmosphere". Due to the intense work with the script, Yamaguchi did not have enough time to track the accuracy of the transfer of the original character design, and this part was completely given to Takashi Takeuchi and studio staffer Megumi Ishihara.
The position of the recording director was given to Koji Tsujitani, retaining his position from the 2006 series. All the voice actors selected in 2005 for the series reprised their roles in the film, and were notified before work started on the animation. According to Junichi Suwabe, most of the voice actors were not told that they would be working on a film version of the Unlimited Blade Works route, and only Ayako Kawasumi, who played the role of Saber, had learned this exact information. Suwabe and his partner Kana Ueda, who voiced Rin, stated they were happy to be invited to participate in the film, as their characters were the main focus of the route.
The actors recalled that they were surprised by the abundance of dialogue in a relatively short film – in total, the entire script took up about a thousand pages. The dubbing took place over four days in the fall of 2009 and lasted continuously from morning until late evening, during which, according to Ouedy, the tired seiyū made a large number of errors. However, according to Suwabe, the entire cast did well with their work, because for three years since the release of the series, they had also participated in voicing new versions of the visual novel and other material of the Fate/stay night franchise. Also, Sayu noted that this experience, obtained through familiarization with the original source material, gave them a more complete understanding of their characters, which they tried to reflect in this film. Nevertheless, Tsujitani was dissatisfied with his own work, because he believed that he could not request the voice actors to give fundamentally different performances, and seriously thought about a complete rewriting of the voice track. However, after listening to the final version, Yamaguchi rejected this suggestion of the recording director and considered that the play of the seiyū exceeded his initial expectations.
The DVD and Blu-ray versions were released on 31 October 2010 in Japan, on 12 June 2012 in North America by Sentai Filmworks, and on 30 September 2013 in the UK by Manga Entertainment.
