12 Days of Anime (2015) – Day 12 – Watching “Uncensored” Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works

**Warning: spoilers below**

Although I wasn’t able to spend much time at this year’s Sakura-Con, I am grateful that I was able to attend the Pacific Northwest’s largest anime convention for my fourth consecutive year. One of my lasting memories from this convention, as well as for 2015 as a whole, was watching the first three episodes of the second half of Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works (TV) before it even premiered in Japan. How awesome is that, getting to watch three episodes of one of the best anime of the year before anyone else? But… that’s not exactly the point of this post. Instead, one scene in particular from the fifteenth episode of FSN: UBW really stunned me… and it stunned me again when I realized it was omitted from TV broadcasts in Japan three weeks later. In fact, the event that’s reserved for the beginning of my 12 Days of Anime for 2015 is a rather strange tale of censorship, and of how the most emotional scene, to me, in all of Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works went unseen to a majority of its anime fans.

12 Days of Anime (2014) – Day 7 – Witch Craft Works ED

I never watched an episode of Witch Craft Works when it aired in Winter 2014. However, I have a certain fascination for anime openings and endings where there are adorable chibi characters singing and dancing. For example, my favorite ED in 2012 was Kill Me Baby, with that unforgettable song and dance. The Joshiraku ED and Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita OP were also worth mentioning in 2012 for my 12 Days of Anime, too. With that in mind, it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that when Witch Craft Works first aired, I was positively curious about the ED song and sequence that managed to charm its criticizing audience and received a disproportionate amount of praise compared to the rest of the episode.