Today's Menu for the Emiya Family

Episode 3

First off, a few words on this show's release – it looks like new episodes will be appearing once a month for about a year. This lets the show talk about food on a seasonal basis (it looks like time in-show has been progressing at the same rate as real life) and also explains the four weeks between this writeup and the last one. Now I didn't know about this release schedule until a little while ago, so I naturally assumed that they'd cancelled production upon realizing that they couldn't top Cu Chulainn's appearance in the second episode. It's an easy mistake to make.

In accordance with its March release, this episode is themed around Girls' Day or hinamatsuri, a Japanese holiday dedicated to young girls. It shows up sometimes in anime, and you might recognize it as that thing where people set up tiered displays of dolls in their houses. Taking place on March 3rd, households tend to throw their little girls parties on that day, serving special dishes like chirashizushi. Also called “scattered sushi,” chirashizushi seems to be a deconstructed dish of sushi ingredients that can be served in the shape of a cake. I don't really like sushi myself, so I'm not sure that I'd go for this, but it seems like a great entree for celebrations.

The funny thing about this entire situation is that I'm pretty sure Illyasviel is in fact older than Shirou. While her growth is permanently stunted due to being a homunculus, she was eight years old during the events of Fate/Zero, which means that she'd be 18 by Fate/stay night. Shirou is only 17 at that point, which means that Ilya is actually the elder sibling. I assume that she acts like a child due to being raised like a princess by crazy wizard hermits who were planning to harvest her flesh for the Grail later on and other blah blah blah magic stuff. I wish that the show had pointed out the age discrepancy, though – it'd have made for a good gag.

Otherwise, the character interactions in this episode were entertaining, and it was nice to see Ilya – who went through so much hardship in Fate's storyline – experience a happy moment surrounded by people who love her. Otherwise, this marks the first glimpse we've gotten of Fate's other two heroines, Rin and Sakura, who've been conspicuously missing from the show thus far. It was nice to see them happy too, and I look forward to when they get their own spotlight episodes. Rin and Sakura seem to be getting to know each other as sisters (they even refer to each other that way, which is a major development), while Sakura and Medusa live as companions. This is really the idealized happy ending that these characters never got together, not even in Fate/stay night's lighthearted sequel story, Fate/hollow ataraxia.

The one thing I didn't like was Rin acting tsundere in a dumb, unnecessary way. Seriously, don't act like you're too good to throw a little kid (or grown adult who you think is a kid) a party. Saber, meanwhile, continues to be charmingly dead weight in all things culinary. Overall, Today's Menu for the Emiya Family remains an exceedingly pleasant slice-of-life, and I look forward to what April brings us.

Grade: B+

Today's Menu for the Emiya Family is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Gabriella Ekens is constantly hollering about Fate on her Twitter. Follow her for secret opinions on Cu's abs.