48 min x2. 96 min, one and a half hour, size of one movie, about four episodes, but movie and series have different standards and ways to use it effectively. With these two episodes, they managed to build a sense of normality and destroy it as well as give characterizations to both Shirou and Rin.
You might think that "It's one hour and it's not that great," but when it comes to series, I'd say it is better to count in episodes and how well those episodes are executed. I mean, I really don't see that reducing it to two standard length quick-paced episode would make it better, quite the opposite in fact. They have executed and used their resources nicely if you ask me. Also, I really appreciate them going the extra mile and make two 48 min episodes just to execute things right, when they could have cut corners. That sort of effort for one of my favorite series is something I really appreciate.
Well, I can sure as hell see that I have a minority opinion!
I'd like to reiterate that I'm still
watching. I'm not saying it's
bad. I'm saying I think it's nowhere near as good as I think it should be, and laying out the things I feel are weaknesses.
And fair is fair, I'm doing this based off years in the fandom where I've been steadily cooling on it until quite recently, and perhaps
especially because I used to be very into it, I'm more critical than usual. I don't think I'm saying anything unsubstantiated, but in terms of raw emotional reaction there's that too.
With that in mind... no. I don't think there's anything to be gained by counting per episode rather than by runtime. Certainly the format changes and you may do things that are hard if you have only 20 minutes, but given that my criticism is basically that most worthwhile shows manage to get further along,
even if we only count per episode.
And here's the thing that really gets to me. UBW has
tons of material on Shirou, including many opportunities to either reiterate, expand or clarify Shirou's character. I have as yet been unable to think of anything EP1 particularly says about his character that couldn't have been integrated into future episodes which would have tightened the pacing.
Instead, what I see is basically slavish adherence to the source material. I don't
want slavish adherence to the source material, I want a new angle! I want to be surprised somewhat! I want the series to twist things around and show me this same story from a different perspective.
If the end product of this series amounts to essentially a prettier version of the UBW VN route with some much needed editing, then that's hardly bad, but it's also not really going to fundamentally impress me. And that's basically what I want. I want this show to impress me.
At this point I'm just afraid it won't.