Today's Menu for the Emiya Family

Episode 7

In its dedicated summertime episode, Today's Menu for the Emiya Family finally gave me what I wanted out of the show: just straight-up Fate/hollow ataraxia-style fanservice involving a bunch of my favorite characters. Unlike previous episodes, it had a solid hook (beach episode), moved quickly from one entertaining interaction to another (swimming to volleyball to cooking in ten minutes), and featured characters who I'm invested in (aka not Shinji or people who literally did not have a character portrait in the original visual novel). This was also the closest thing that we've had to a dedicated Rin episode so far, which was very welcome. My favorite Fate heroine has been underutilized by the show so far, which has focused more on Altria and (strangely) Ilya. It's not quite the dedicated Rin/Archer cooking episode that I've been waiting for, but I'll take it for now.

So after Taiga gifts them some tickets, Shirou, Rin, and Saber make their way to one of those cool indoor water parks that they have in Japan. They run into some familiar faces, party hard, and thoroughly exhaust themselves before the evening. Afterwards, Shirou does his cooking thing, and everyone (presumably) goes off to rest after a long day of play. Our food this week is some sort of cold rice dish called ochazuke, which looks pretty tasty. I like rice, broth, and salmon, so combining all of that into a relatively light package seems like it'd make for a delicious post-exertion meal. Rin is weirdly tsundere about having said that she wasn't hungry earlier, but whatever. This show has run with that aspect of her character to the point where she can seem stupidly stubborn. At least in this episode, it was balanced out by some pretty great Rin moments – for example, when she explained how her “do everything properly” philosophy leads her to party as hard as she works, as well as her general enthusiasm to get the most out of their daycation. While Saber was also prominent throughout the episode, her best moments were more low-key, rooted in her reactions to the water park's thrills. The King of Knights' more innocent, awestruck side continues to be a joy to watch.

Other notable bits this week include an appearance from Medusa, as well as Archer's long-awaited introduction to the show. Regarding that latter point, the spoileriffic Redman has been strangely absent thus far – possibly because the show focuses so much on Shirou's culinary activities. Still, given Archer's true identity, I'm looking forward to at least one episode dedicated to his own skills in the kitchen, right alongside my desired Kirei/mapo tofu episode, which is definitely happening, right? Otherwise, it was nice to see him here briefly, understandably trying to bash out Shirou's brains with a volleyball. He's also hanging out with Cu, which seems a little out of character, but whatever. I can't complain about Cu showing up in his tight t-shirt. By virtue of that alone, this episode earns an easy A – but it's also a nice bonus that the whole adventure is good all around.

Grade: A

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