Let’s talk about this, shall we? Since there’s bound to be people who are going to be upset with the anime original content, expanding few characters and their relationships.
First, I’d like to say that Visual Novels and Anime are a completely different medium. In the VN, Unlimited Blade Works is simply a route that has a focus on certain characters, that characters would be Shirou, Archer and Rin to a certain extent.
When we’re dealing with Anime, we can’t simply screw over other characters and yell ‘we’ll get that in the next route!’. No, there are no routes this time. Therefore, if Studio Ufotable were to be 100% accurate with the source material, we would have static, card-board cut-outs of a characters, with no substance in them.
Studio Ufotable has brought life not only to Ilya, who doesn’t play a large role in UBW, but to her maids as well. That little scene she had, revealing the quirks and substances of these characters is what makes this adaptation so damn good. It also what makes us feel despair over their deaths, the visual story-telling in the recent episode was spot-on. The expressions Ufotable draws tell so much story and are so crucial to bringing fictional characters to life.
As for Ilya, you won’t get your audience to sympathize with her demise unless you tell us about who she is and what happened to her. You might be a Zero watcher and you already know, you might be a VN reader and also know, but what if I’m an anime only watcher? I wouldn’t get why the anime would be making a big deal out of a minor character’s death.
Now for Caster. This is a servant, along with her Master Kuzuki, who had zero substance in the VN. Oh yeah, a witch, evil, we must defeat her! Ufotable clearly saw a problem in that and expanded her backstory to once again, give us a substance and more detail to her character, so that when her eventual fall comes, we will feel regret and sorrow.
If it cannot reach you emotionally, it is a failed anime. You can have your “exact-same-no-alterations-adaptation”, but what would come from it is as I said, boring, static characters that are just mere obstacles to the main characters of the route.
