Headscratchers / Fate/Zero

Blame For the Fuyuki Fire

• Looking at Fate/Zero's character page, I noticed it written under Kotomine Kirei's profile that the Great Fuyuki Fire was triggered when he wished for the world to burn before dying (See Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum entry). Based on my research, the only source that makes mention of this is the TYPE Moon wiki's entry on Kirei. However, the passage from the wiki containing this info provides no reference for its claims. On the contrary, there is far more evidence in the Fate/Zero light novel to suggest that it was actually Kiritsugu who caused the fire as seen in the following excerpt.

"Following which, through the fragments of debris, Kiritsugu saw ‘it’ in the revealed night sky. A black sun — that which he had seen when he had touched the black mud. The sign of the end of the world. At that time Kiritsugu had not seen clearly that its physical form was actually a true ‘hole’. It is a space tunnel that connected with the Magic Circle of the Greater Grail, which had been hidden beneath the altar of the ritual of descent, deep underground in Mount Enzō to the east of Miyama. The insides of the Greater Grail, which had drawn energy from the leylines for sixty years and now had obtained the souls of six Heroic Spirits, had been filled to the brim and turned into an enormous prana whirlpool. That was the true form of that black ‘hole’. The ‘Vessel’ that had been removed from the Einsberns’ homunculus was only the key to open that ‘hole’, and also the control that sustained the stability of the hole. Kiritsugu, who did not know anything about this secret, had made a fatal mistake; he should not have commanded Saber to destroy the Grail, but instead should have made her use Excalibur to burn down the hole in the sky. No longer controlled by the ‘vessel’, the black sun began to melt; the hole gradually shrunk, but before it closed completely, it was already completely impossible to prevent the black mud from flowing out from within the hole." - Fate/Zero:Act 16 Part 9

• Just to clarify, I'm just asking to see where the idea that Kotomine Kirei wished for Fuyuki to burn came from. Is this documented by canon or just Fanon?
  • It was Gilgamesh's final nail in Kirei's realization that Evil Feels Good by claiming that the Holy Grail had granted Kirei's wish by triggering the Great Fuyuki Fire (which was actually unwittingly instigated by Kiritsugu by destroying the Lesser Grail instead of the Greater Grail). The actual scene where he converses with Angra Mainyu was omitted in favor of Kiritsugu's, both in anime and novel, though the after-dialogue reveals that he wished for the birth of the Angra Mainyu to affirm his own existence, which would've certainly wiped humans from the world regardless of his intent.

Gilgamesh: "It is we who have obtained the Grail, so you only need to open your eyes wide and watch. If the Grail can really make the victor’s wish come true, then this scene before you — Kotomine Kirei, it is exactly what you desire."

Not The Bees!

• So when Natalia assassinates Odd on the plane, a bunch of bees are released from his body, which turns everyone on the plane into ghouls. Natalia gets trapped in the cockpit, and Kiritsugu has no choice but to blow up the plane, lest it lands and the bees infect the rest of the city. Now, during all this, Natalia mentions that she didn't plan on having to jump out of the plane. Um, why didn't she? She's a master assassin and mercenary, so you'd think she would have prepared for any possible outcome. Did she really think her plan was going to work so well that she didn't need to work out a way to get off the plane if things went south?
  • Presumably jumping out of the plane wouldn't be of much help to her over the middle of the Atlantic.
    • That's the point of having a plan in the first place. There's really onto two options for having a confrontation on a plane in mid-flight: either it goes your way and you just finish the ride, or it doesn't, and you need to bail out. It would be one thing if failure meant death as a foregone conclusion and that was an accepted possibility, but.. not considering it at all?
  • Could be that there isn't a magical means to survive. When Emiya blew up the hotel, he specifically said that there's no ordinary magical way to survive such a fall. Seems unlikely, but possible.
  • A thought has occurred. Do planes have parachutes in the event of an extreme emergency? I know nothing about air travel.
  • Usually? No. Most people aren’t trained in using a parachute, and most children would probably pass out or be too injured due to pressure shock and the like. Modern planes are designed with crumple zones (to bleed off kinetic energy and minimize damage to the hardened structure) and skid landings in a catastrophe rather than just abandoning. That being said, Natalia could’ve packed her own ‘chute, burned the plane if needed (and it was), and simply radioed Kiritsugu to pick her up (he was relatively close by).

Berserker, Kill Dad

• Why did Kariya spend all that time and effort and agony to get his father to let Sakura go? What would have been wrong with just offing the old bastard and taking her? Or, if he has some sort of moral objection to killing his father, simply taking Sakura away from him by force?
  • Kariya, of all people, kill an ancient semi-vampire mage lord made out of killer insects? With that, the flashbulb on his camera? His deadly fashion sense? His adroit sense of morality?
    • A command spell?
  • An interesting idea. Here's my thoughts. Berserker could probably kill Zouken's bodily form, yes. But as we know from Heaven's Feel, that doesn't do much to kill him since the real Zouken is a Crest Worm nestled within Sakura's heart. Knowing him, it would be entirely likely he told Kariya about this, if offscreen, to prevent him from getting any smart ideas. And even then, Kariya's body is still filled with Zouken's worms. If the old man wanted to, he could probably have them fry his nervous system with a snap of his fingers.
    • He put himself inside Sakura's heart? Just when I thought he couldn't get worse.
  • Well, yes. If you didn't know, I assume you're not familiar with Heaven's Feel. I'll elaborate a bit, then. Basically, what we see of Zouken isn't really him, it's a puppet (if you've seen The Garden of Sinners or read Tsukihime, that might ring a bell. It's something some powerful magi and vampires can do, create an artificial body and control it from distances via magic and willpower). The puppet appears to be made out of worms grafted together with biomass and prana. As long as Zouken can cannibalize people, he can restore that shape as often as he wants. Kotomine completely crushes his body at a point, but he doesn't suffer any personal damage from it. That's because the real Zouken is a Crest Worm (well, to be more precise, he's probably just a disembodied spirit possessing one of his Worms). Choosing Sakura's heart as his nest made sure she could never really be twisted from his control, even if she were to flee home, like she does in HF. The Worm has such a position and setup that it can't be removed or killed without destroying Sakura's heart as well, even with Kotomine's magical surgery abilities. Once Sakura is able to tap into the powers of Angra Manyu though, she can survive without a heart, so she just rips him out of her chest and crushes him.
    • Going to point out that he doesn't do that until after Fate/Zero.
    • Also, Kariya volunteers to be Sakura's stand-in willingly, but Zouken has to tell him that she's already been infested, which means he wouldn't have known about it either way. He has no problem getting into the manor and Sakura freely roams the house when she's not in the worm pit, he could have just kidnapped her. In the long run it wouldn't have worked, and returning her to Aoi would just get Sakura sent back, but he still could have attempted to just get her the hell out of there instead of letting Zouken infest him. Zouken isn't trustworthy, Kariya knows that better than anyone. Even if he had succeeded, Zouken wouldn't let Sakura go anyway just because she's useful to him even without a grail war to fight.
  • Kariya's internal dialogue in the VN indicates that as soon as the Crest Worms are implanted, rebelling against Zouken will be impossible. Given that the worms are the only thing keeping him alive once the Grail War starts, any attempt to directly assault Zouken would just result in Kariya immediately dropping dead and Berserker rapidly fading afterwards.
    • That's still kind of a cop-out. Obviously if Kariya had tried to kill Zouken it would have failed, but he doesn't actually know any of the information that tells the audience that, and he at least trusts Zouken to keep his word that he'll let Sakura go free (even though it should be obvious to Kariya in particular why that's not a good idea). The problem isn't that he couldn't do it, the issue is that he never tries, even when he's got at least a small chance to succeed. Of course, it's equally perplexing that nobody looks at Zouken Matou and thinks "y'know, the Grail War is pretty cool, but maybe we should just all agree that Crusty von Rapeslug is a problem that needs solving with fire", but still.
    • Kariya spent several months learning up on the Matou family magic even before sticking worms inside his own body. Even if he doesn’t know the specifics, he probably realized that Zouken’s body isn’t real and has the worm containing his soul somewhere else. He definitely doesn’t trust Zouken, but he’s desperate; at the very least, he figures if he gets the Grail, Zouken won’t need Sakura anymore (why worry about heirs and descendants if you’re immortal after all?) and would let Sakura return to her family. He’s banking on that; even if it’s low odds, it’s still better than not doing anything (in his mind at least). As an aside, it makes sense that Zouken pushed Kariya to summon a Berserker. If Kariya decided to sic his Servant on dear old dad, a Berserker w/o access to activation-type NPs would be the worst Servant to use. They’d only destroy some easily replacable worms, then Zouken has his worms eat Kariya. The most dangerous Servant (to Zouken) would be a Caster, or maybe an Assassin. Zouken really has nothing to fear from a Berserker.

Kill or Kidnap

• Why didn't Kiritsugu and Maiya just kill Sola-Ui instead of kidnapping her? Kiritsugu admits that since she was the sole Master of Lancer at that point, killing her would have put Lancer out of the game anyways. He cites Kayneth as the reason why, but Kayneth is no threat because he can no longer function as a Mage or a Master; he can't supply a Servant with prana even if he regained his Command Seals. Kiritsugu, being the one who shorted Kayneth's circuits in the first place, should know this more than anyone. Yet when he justifies to himself killing off Lancer, Sola-Ui, and Kayneth the way he did, he never even brings up Kayneth's Fried Circuits.
  • No, Sola-Ui and Kayneth were duel Masters, and even if Sola-Ui was killed, Lancer would remain in this world. There's an entire subplot in FSN about what happens when a direct mana link isn't present; Lancer can regenerate his own mana to an extent, though overexertion will dispel his summoning.
  • Even unable to supply mana to a Servant, Kanyeth was still a Master. As mentioned in the work, he'd probably be first in line for new Command Seals if another Master was eliminated without killing their Servant first. Since there are ways for Servants to generate their own mana and Kiritsugu usually tries to kill the Master while Servants fight, this means he'd just be leaving Kayneth to be another opponent later versus taking a minimum of effort to kill him while he's weak.
  • My two cents: Kayneth seems to be very important in the Mage's Society so he might want revenge on Kiritsugu once the Grail War concludes. At least, that's what I think because the whole geas loophole business seemed like overkill.

All He Did Was Break A Spear

• Not really important but still annoying:after defeating Caster,why is it Kayneth receiving the additional Command Spell?It was clearly Saber killing Caster, others helping or not shouldn't matter here(otherwise the others have just the same right for the reward).
  • They did have the right for a reward. If Kayneth had done it by himself, he'd have received all the command spells instead of just one. That's why Kayneth shot the Supervisor in the back after getting his spell, to prevent others from getting them.
  • Everyone who participated in the fight earned the right to get a reward, Kayneth was just there first and murdered Risei among other things that he would not give their rewards to the others.
    • Well, that and mostly to try and frame Kiritsugu, since he was the only competitor to use guns. Nothing actually came of that, though.
  • In short, politics. Right before the subject comes up they were talking about how hard the incident would be to cover up, mentioning the mage's assoication being talked into assisting. Not only was Kayneth evidently there first, but it's likely he offered some form of help with that deal, as a bribe in exchange for the promised command seal reward. And then for good measure, he promptly backstabbed Risei to ensure no one else could talk him into distributing command seals to the others involved in the battle (since he was the one that needed to make up for a used command seal, having several of his opponents gain the exact same reward would put him just shy of being back to square one).

Avalon and Cursed Wounds

• Saber struggling with her right hand that cannot heal. Kiritsugu has Avalon. We know Avalon can undo Gae Buidhe's curse. Why didn't Kiritsugu just return Avalon to Saber, even if only for a short moment, to remove her handicap? It's not a hard guess that Avalon's ability as a healing noble phantasm exceeds Gae Buidhe's ability as a spear to cause wounds that cannot heal.
  • He's the Combat Pragmatist incarnate. Saber is powerful enough to survive even with the wound, and if she dies he can still technically win the war. If he gives it back to her, even for a little, someone else (Kotomine probably) could attack and take him out (even though nobody else knows about it, Kiritsugu is not the type to take chances, no matter how slim - it explicitly states that he's the hitman-style of killer because he's a coward). Besides, Avalon's healing ability vs effects (like curses) is unknown (Shirou was captured by Illya's mystic eyes, for example) - in the middle of a war is not the place to test it.
    • Where does it say that Avalon can heal Gae Buidhe? Gae Buidhe is supposed to be a curse on the soul (pretty much like Void Avesta's effect). How was it described...? "Instead of doing damage, it lowers the maximum HP." Even when Saber told Irisviel to heal the gaping hole in her hand, Iri couldn't, because "she was already at full health."
    • There's also that it was being used to keep Iri from becoming a drooling grail cup, and it's pretty much easy to see that Kiritsugu likes Iri a lot more than Saber. There's also the "Servant-is-just-a-tool" thing, and that Kiritsugu's plan was to just take out the Masters in the first place. To him, Saber was easily expendable, even though she was a valuable commodity.
    • Irisviel bore Avalon for the period that Saber was wounded with Gae Buidhe's curse, if that alludes to anything.
• Fate/stay night's Berserker was unable to fight skillfully due to his madness (which is about the only weakness he had), so why is the Black Knight's skill seemingly unhampered by the Mad Enhancement? Is there any reason for this other than the fact that the Knight isn't an unkillable demigod and thus, plot-wise, needed his skills to be a credible threat?
  • Yes, the Black Knight possesses an ability called "Immortal Arms Mastery" which allows him to make full use of his combat techniques no matter what kind of mental restriction he is under. The explanation being that he trained his abilities to such a peak that they became natural instincts to him. As for why he can automatically use any weapon as his noble phantasm... that ability is his noble phantasm. Anyway, Nasuverse is all about having rules and then subverting the crap out of them for the most ridiculous Game-Breaker advantages you can get.
    • Also, his Mad Enhancement is a lower rank the FSN's Berserker. He has more of his mind in him as it is.
    • On top of that, Berserker was also being driven mad manually by Ilya for most of it.
  • Part of the Arthurian legend is that Lancelot du Lac fell into madness and was cured of it by a vision of the Holy Grail; in effect, the Heaven's Feel Grail is just playing it straight.

Beardy Rider

• Kind of a minor thing, but...why does Rider have a beard? He lacks one in every historical depiction, and he's supposed to have issued in the custom of being clean-shaven.
  • Why is King Arthur a woman?
    • Fanservice.
  • For the same reason that he is ten feet tall and rides around in a cart driven by the bulls of heaven.
    • Something weird happened during the summoning to cause him and Gilgamesh to switch bodies without noticing? I guess I could sort of imagine a blonde Alexander...
  • You've got historical representations, and how a legend actually was (if it even was at all). It's pretty much up to random which one will be matched with a Heroic Spirit. Which is to say, in the Nasuverse, rules are rules until they aren't.
    • Which actually makes sense in a way. When you read a story it usually isn't to see an average person. So I suspect that outside of the events of Fate/Stay Night, Fate/Zero, Tsukihime, etc.. the vast majority of the world obeys the rules. We're just looking at the few who can break them.
  • If we want to justify it logically, think about this: the Graal summons the heroes with their bodies at their phisical peak. For Alexander this means at the start of his conquest of Persia (a combination of dozens of heavy wounds during that caimpaign and heavy drinking ruined his health), and before he issued the custom of being clean-shaved. And before you ask, he didn't shave again during the war because he doesn't have the time to learn how to use modern safety razors and he's not stupid enough to use the sword (apart the obvious danger it would do a crappy job).
  • Adding to the list of 'minor things that Just Bug Tropers about Nasuverse hero appearances,' they couldn't at least give Fionn the hair that gave him his nickname? Granted, it's not a universal myth - some versions don't mention it - but seriously. If they wanted to avoid making him look too old with white/silver hair they could have just gone with blond.
    • Another for the list. Saber tells Irie that she is used to wearing men's clothing because she had to pass for a man in her own time. Cue every single flashback to time as King Arthur, and she's still wearing her weird Battle Ballgown or some other garment that does not even remotely resemble men's clothing. Did everyone in Camelot wear dresses in the Nasuverse?
    • Because what we see is altered by our perception of her, just like her form. Otherwise she and Berserker would look more like this◊.

Great Names

• An equally trivial question: why is Rider called "Iskander", the Arabic rendition of his name? Why not "Alexandros", or even Alexander?
  • They call him by both names. It's stated in the novel that his people called him according to their own language.
  • Iskander or Eskandar (or what you will) is also what he's called in modern Persian. Probably someone read that and back-projected use of the form with the suggestion that this is what he called himself after conquering Persia.
  • If you watch carefully when he signs for his mail-order t-shirt, he does spell it "Alexander". It's consistently inconsistent!
  • It may also have something to do with the fact that the Greater Grail does the legwork of summoning the Servants, and providing them with knowledge of the modern world (languages, history, customs, etc.). The same Greater Grail that’s been corrupted by Angra Mainyu...

Gae Dearg Is Not Rule Breaker

• Why didn't Lancer simply use Gae Dearg on Gae Buidhe to remove Saber's hand injury without losing his Noble Phantasm?
  • Because that's not how the spear works. It doesn't override curses. Same reason the contract between Servant and Master doesn't break if he stabs a Servant with Gae Dearg.
  • This. Yes, curses, by Nasuverse definitions, are magical in nature, but work by actively changing the inherent properties of an object so that continuously pouring Prana in isn’t necessary (this is why the Curse of Immortality causes a healing factor; rather than convert Prana into Magecraft to Heal, it changes the subject into an existence that heals of its own volition). Gae Dearg disrupts Prana connections within objects, but doesn’t actively affect their conceptual nature.

Plane Must Blow, Dad Must Die

• That interlude about Kiritsugu's backstory. I get the point of making sacrifices to ensure there will be no risk of further losses of life, but still, wasn't what he did a little too much? He had time to prepare, the plane would've taken an hour or so until it arrived. He could have called the police and told them a lie or something. Or hired mercenaries. Or hell, just rig the landing pad with remote-controlled explosives, then wait until Natalia was out and then blow the plane to hell. Besides, even if there were 300 of them, they were still just The Dead, i.e. Nasuverse zombies. MEODP nonwithstanding, two teenagers with knives could cut through them like a whirlwind. Even in a weakened state, Arcueid could annihilate them in seconds. Even alone, a fully-armed Kiritsugu shouldn't have THAT many problems with these zombies, especially with them not having many exits since they'd be on a plane. Normally, I wouldn't be bothered by this too much, but with someone like Kiritsugu who gives so much attention to detail and strategy, it just seems glaring.
  • The Dead are fully capable of things such as breaking through concrete so they could probably smash their way out of the plane given enough time. Arcueid at full power is one of the strongest beings in the setting so her annihilating them ina weakened state doesn't say much. If by two teenagers with knifes your refering to the Kara no Kyoukai reanimated corpses Shiki Ryougi needed her eyes to deal with them since they could continue after taking damage that would normally kill a human. The Dead are the same but with the advantage that they probably have part of the curse of Restoration (a.k.a. vampire regenetation). The MEODP are the only reason Shiki Tohno was able to kill them so effectively, sure mundane means can kill tehm but it would take a lot more time. Also Kiritsugu knows that the church and magic association both seem to react to vampire outbreaks with purge everything he saw it first hand as a result of his fathers own experiments into vampirism. So if they think even a single Dead escaped and it's in an area they care about theres a possibility the town could wind up missing. Finally this was probably the act that drove him to become "someone who gives so much attention to detail and stratagy" it was over a decade before the holy grail war after all.
  • Arcueid in her weakened state was incapable of fighting off a rape attempt from Shiki, and was thrashing a bunch of Dead a moment before. Just sayin'.
    • She probably wasn't resisting Shiki with as much force as she'd fight off the Dead. I always had the feeling that she didn't want to end up injuring him, so she kept a lid on her own power in that situation and was waiting for him to "calm down".
  • There is also the fact that none of your proposed "Alternatives" work. Call the police? And tell them what, precisely? That zombies have taken over the plane? Assuming that they don't dismiss it as a prank call, they are unlikely to send enough people down there to contain The Dead until they've lost at least a couple of dozen guys. Even if they do take it at face level, because of magic or some such, the masquerade would have been blown wide open, in which case the Mage's association is liable to declare exterminatus on the entire airport. Hiring mercenaries? From where? Using what? Even if he did manage to get an army of mercenaries on the tarmac before the plane lands, it's still going to end up breaking the masquerade, and result in the exact same scenario happening, only this time you have a bunch of trigger happy killing machines running around shooting at everything. It'd be lucky if this doesn't end up being an international incident in that case. Also, "just rig the landing pad with remote-controlled explosives, then wait until Natalia was out and then blow the plane to hell"" At that point in time, Natalia is stuck inside a narrow, pressurized tube together with 300 super-fast, super strong zombies and a Dead ancestor in close quarters. She'd be lucky to survive for more than 10 minutes in that kind of situation, nevermind 60 of them.
  • The bigger problem is actually the bees, which are capable of quite easily converting humans into The Dead without the influence of their master Vorak. Natalia didn't botch the actual KILL, she didn't make sure that she cleaned up. Open the plane for a moment's time and those things come swarming out en masse, and now the problem is much bigger than it was before. Kiritsugu knew that the only way to stop this right then and there was to turn the entire plane - bees, Dead and Natalia all - into a fireball in the sky. Imagine the devastation that would have been wreaked by a swarm of bees flooding out into New York. Kiritsugu had accepted that he had to sacrifice one to save a city, perhaps a whole continent. By his current math, he did so, and it was an intelligent choice. Not every choice is easy.
    • The continent would have been saved by the Counter Force. That would have still disintegrated the airport and the city near it, and Akasha knows what else. Better blowing up the airplane with Natalia on board before it landed than having to get the Church to go Exterminatus and still risk the Counter Force...
    • You know how Africanized Killer Bees became a thing because the people who bred failed to keep them contained. The risk of letting that plane land is kind of like that except the bees not only kill you but start a Zombie Apocalypse. If they had access to remote runway within the plane's fuel range, then there might have been a way to save Natalia. Or if she had packed a goddamn parachute...
  • Kiritsugu's treatment of El-Melloi bothers me; not killing him and his wife, the whole loophole thing was just smart playing, but refusing to finish Kayneth off. I get that the contract disallowed him from harming Kayneth (or Sola, who was dead at that point), but Maiya couldn't have fired again? Or just kept shooting until both her targets were dead? Kayneth was a dick but allowing him to expire suffused in mind-boggling pain (and despair, let's not forget that) seemed needlessly cruel. After Saber's What the Hell, Hero?! I couldn't help but agree. I get that's part of the character, but are they actively trying to make us dislike Kiritsugu?
    • It could be he really couldn't even order Maya to shot again. Think about it, if the contract didn't disallowed him from consciously doing indirect harm, it would be meaningless. He could have ordered Maya to kill Kayneth before hand because the contract wasn't accepted by that time, however.
    • One assumes his order - yes, before the contract was made - ran more along the lines of "Kill them" rather than "Shoot to wound." Unless Maiya is literally incapable of taking any actions without Kiritsugu (or Iri) making it an order, at the very least you'd think she'd have kept shooting until her targets were dead since there was no benefit to keeping them alive/allowing either of them to live. It seemed that scene played out the way it did expressly to illustrate Kiritsugu's personality.
    • Kayneth was already fatally wounded. He had at most 10 seconds to live. Maiya had already fulfilled her task.
    • Plus, it is highly unlikely that she can actually tell hat Kayneth is still alive at that point. The only indication that he is still alive would be his plea for death, which she probably can't hear from that range. As far as she can tell, he was dead at that point.
    • And that's assuming she didn't leave and return home as soon as she saw Kayneth down with a lethal wound. She had done her job, why staying there?
  • Let's talk about his dad - why did Kiritsugu hold Papa Emiya responsible at all for anything that happened on Alimago Island, and why does the narration portray this as the correct point of view? It's not as if Emiya Senior could have predicted that Shirley would have been dumb enough to ingest a highly untested magical cure just so the other villagers would stop viewing him and his magic with slightly mild suspicion, in blatant violation of basic common sense lab safety. Even if the experiment involved zombies...look, this story takes place in the 90s, way before internet-savvy humans internalized the attitude of "any research involving zombies will inevitably end badly". Heck, Kiritsugu himself is more responsible for the zombie outbreak (by not killing Patient Zero when she asked him to and then not going to dad immediately when he found he couldn't) than Emiya Senior (because again, who would expect their lab assistant to break into the lab and then take the highly experimental drug when she doesn't even have the disease it was meant to solve, or rather, since this is old age, she won't be seeing the effects until decades later). Does the novel add more detail or something that makes young!Kiritsugu seem like not an idiot?
    • I chalked this one up to Kiritsugu acknowledging that his father's work was inherently evil and wanting to prevent such a disaster from potentially occurring somewhere else. After all, his father seemed to be remarkably indifferent to the outbreak. At most, he seemed slightly irritated that his work had been set back.
  • Norikata Emiya pretty much confirmed that he was going continue his research into vampirism if he got away, and being Designated meant that both the Church and the Enforcers would chase him and kill anyone who the cross fire to preserve masquerade. For Kiritsugu, the only option that would preserve the most lives was for Norikata to die.

Pretty Sunlight At Night

• In the 2nd episode of the anime, in the scene when Caster is summoned, it is clearly night (looking outside the window, it's dark and lights are on in neighboring houses), but when the little kid is released, the front door has a bright light shining in as if it's light and sunny out (the angle and intensity of the light seems to be unfitting for any streetlight or porchlight IMO). And when the scene goes back into the room, it clearly still night.
  • Caster is a spellcaster. A little sunlight outside the door is child's play. He probably just did it to be even more of a sick son of a bitch. Besides. It's the little details that make the end result even greater.

Sola Wants To Fight

• Just what exactly was Sola's issue with Kayneth's strategy? Even if Masters usually show up alongside their Servants, that's clearly not a rule; zero has Assassin roaming freerange as Kotomine scrys, and Servants in Fate/Stay show up alone so often that part of the plot is figuring out who their Masters are. If Kayneth had actually been present like Iri and Waver, he'd probably have been sniped; at the very least, he'd have been Magic Bullet'd to death a good deal prior to his actually biting it. If Kiritsugu had played by Mage rules Kayneth would have been a serious contender for the Grail, particularly if the Fourth Heaven's Feel hadn't been a Foregone Conclusion. Or was she just interfering because Kayneth was reading Lancer the riot act and everyone knows that Sola's hot for Lancer's pretty, pretty face?
  • A bit of the last reason, but also because while Kayneth actually loves Sola, she can't stand him and is resentful of their arranged marriage. Even if Lancer wasn't in the picture Sola would probably try to find some way to get out of their arrangement and if it means offing him, she'd just be one more person shedding no tears over it.
    • Have to disagree there; though Sola sure as hell wasn't happy about it, she seemed resigned to it or at least had dealt with it the same way she dealt with the rest of her life as a political tool, by shutting off her emotions. Given what's presented in the book, it seems more likely that she just ignored him most of the time. According to the LN and Sola's internal monologue, she only began to feel like a woman once she met Lancer and saw how brave and whatever he was. This may be Unfortunate Implications since her womanly feelings eventually lead to Sola becoming a mutilating Stalker with a Crush, and we should probably be glad she didn't just try to "fix" Lancer's loyalty in a more straightforward way.
    • You're saying Sola was trying to shame Kayneth into fighting openly in the hopes of getting him killed? Sola did come off a bit icy, but that's a whole new level of hardcore. Then again, given what we see of her, she does seem the type.
    • I always just took it that she was using whatever excuse she could to needle Kayneth.

Lancer, You're Too Nice

• Why does Lancer have such respect for Grainne's decision to run away with him? He goes on about her abandoning her future for love and all that, but if we're going by Sola the girl was probably crazy with love at that point and not thinking of much besides "OMG DIARMUID~" Granted, she probably didn't regret anything that happened, but that was probably because she'd been brainwashed by his Mystic Face. I'm pretty sure the virtuous thing to do would have been to think about how this'll effect a guy who - at least in this universe - places literally nothing above his duty as a knight; essentially kidnapping him and making him a traitor plus a murderer of his former comrades/allies is the opposite. Of course, this is assuming everything happened Fate-style rather than according to the original legend (or versions thereof), where Grainne was checking out every guy at the wedding-feast as potential escape-routes before Diarmuid's love-spot came into play.
  • Places "literally nothing above his duty as a knight"? Really? It's precisely because he's so god-awful terrible at actually being loyal and CONSTANTLY places his own selfish wants, desires, and motivations before those of his Master that Kayneth doesn't fair MUCH better in the war. If Lancer was loyal and obedient as a knight should be, rather than constantly eschewing not only Kayneth's desires but little things like strategy and logic, Saber would have been dead 2 or 3 times before the point that Kayneth takes the origin bullet to his nervous system.
    • I object! The big problem is that Lancer really is trying to be the perfect ideal of the knight. There's a lot more to being a knight than simply obeying his lord. It means holding himself to certain codes of conduct when in battle. The big problem lies in the fact that while Lancer and Kayneth have the same goal, their personalities don't mesh because Lancer is a devoted knight whose idea of fulfilling his duty is to win the grail for his Master while following the rules of honor and fair play. On the other hand, Kayneth is a selfish prick who can't actually conceive of someone competing in a battle for the Holy Grail without some kind of selfish desire for the Grail itself automatically refuses to believe Lancer's reasons. Kayneth is incapable of understanding that the act of competing in the Grail War as Kayneth's Servant was Lancer's wish itself and assumes Lancer has a hidden agenda. This leads him to distrust Lancer and so the two of them are unable to properly cooperate.
    • Lancer should have said as much, since given what we're given Lancer's half of the contract was literally just the agreement to serve and win the Grail for Kayneth. If Lancer had actually said "... going by these antiquated rules which are the stereotypical and Romanticized ideals of knighthood and chivalry," Kayneth would have been expecting Lancer's behavior and thus wouldn't be chewing him out after the scene at the harbor as if he were surprised by Lancer's actions. Miscommunication really does kill, it seems. Also, let's keep it civil guys. Besides which, everyone is competing for a selfish desire: Regardless of the specifics, whether they want Akasha like Tokiomi or want to "save" their kingdom like Saber, their goal can only be achieved by pushing aside everyone else's respective wishes. Lancer, in attempting to recover his 'honor' and assuage his own feelings about what happened in his life - everyone else is dead now, it doesn't matter to anyone besides Diarmuid - is no less selfish than Kayneth, who's in it for magely duels/hopefully impressing Sola a little, maybe. That doesn't make either of them any less selfish or any more selfish than people like Waver, who participated to spite Kayneth and prove his theory correct, or Alexander, who intends to re-conquer a world that probably wouldn't be too happy about it despite him being Broskander. Also, the above doesn't seem to have responded to the actual question, which could probably be answered with: "Because Nasuverse Diarmuid is the kind of person who holds no grudges, whether it's against the girl who magically ruined his life or against the man who let him die."
    • Judging from his last words, he learned. A depressing thought if your theory of him not holding grudges is correct.
    • Notable in that the novel at least doesn't implicate Lancer's actual Masters in any way: Upon seeing Kiritsugu show up with an unconscious Sola and a defeated Kayneth, despite clearly having been ordered to kill himself via Command Seal (which thus means either Kayneth or Sola gave the order), Lancer curses the world that engineered his death and Saber and Saber's Master specifically. He gives no implication of blaming either Kayneth or Sola, so his rage is not at dying but at the "dishonorable" way that Kiritsugu (and therefore Saber) ended the Lancer/Kayneth/Sola team's run. Incidentally, Nasuverse Diarmuid not holding grudges is canon: He makes it plain that he blames neither Fionn nor Grainne when most people would, and as noted he never displays resentment against his current Masters despite Kayneth's berating and Sola's clear if unwitting insult to his honor (by insinuating he'd jump Masters despite swearing himself to Kayneth). Lancer's final words were not him suddenly gaining a tendency for grudges so much as it was a Dying Curse against those who screwed over his chance at redemption; grudges are resentments bottled up and held over time, Lancer's last words seemed more a spur-of-the-moment outpouring of despair given that his prior thoughts were less "Eff the world" and more "If I defeat Saber here my honor will be restored."
    • Note that the anime visual guide explicitly said that Lancer also cursed Keyneth.
  • Diarmuid did not respect Grainne's decision, he got a Geas that made him fall in love with her. Had she just asked him to run away with her, Diarmuid would have just reported the thing to Fionn and asked for a job away from her.
    • In the novel, at least, Lancer's narration makes it clear (during the part where he's reflecting on how he doesn't hate Fionn for letting him die) that he (paraphrasing from memory) respects the fact that Grainne acted on/was forthright about her feelings, comparing her to Sola. Since Lancer has no feelings for Sola, it seems to be Diarmuid's objective opinion as opposed to some lingering effect of the Geas, the effects of which would probably have ceased to exist by the time he's summoned as a Servant.
    • Actually, the geas was only that Diarmuid leave the household with her before Fionn and her father woke up from their drug-induced sleep^note "I put you under geasa of danger and destruction, O Diarmuid, that is, under the geasa of dread and vengeance, if you take me not out of this household tonight before Fionn and the Ri of Erin arise out of that sleep", the logic being that Fionn is the "shoot first, ask questions later" sort of guy who won't hear any argument that it's Not What It Looks Like. Dick move on Grainne's part, but Diarmuid's eventual love for her was entirely his own. Additionally, geasa aren't mind control; they're magically backed ultimatums. Fulfilling the geas might bring you power or some other blessing, whereas violating it is guaranteed to bite you in the ass. Grainne was taking Diarmuid's argument of "Fionn would kill me if I ran off with you" out of the picture by making the alternative just as dangerous. Diarmuid even consulted the members of the Fianna who were still awake on what action he should take, which was universal agreement that he should leave with Grainne.

Lancer, Kill Sola

• So... Why didn't Kayneth use a Command Seal to summon Lancer and prevent Sola from carrying out her threat to break/remove anything else? Did he really not want to burn those Command Seals? Was he still in shock and/or just not thinking clearly? I'd hoped the anime episode would clear that up a bit, but...
  • I assumed it was the shock and pain of the woman he loves going completely yandere on him.
  • It also has to do with how little Kayneth trusts Lancer. If he used a Command Seal to summon Lancer to his side and Lancer ended up siding with Sola (which we know wouldn't happen, but the story makes it clear that Kayneth believes such an outcome was perfectly feasible) then he would only have one seal left to stop Lancer with, which would have taken him out of the game. To his mind, Kayneth had very little reason to hope that summoning Lancer would actually make things better.
    • Kayneth later accuses Lancer of encouraging Sola to take the Command Seals, in his mind Lancer being present would only make things much worse.

Who Needs Smell?

• Assuming she hadn't already done so (which I doubt—The Corruption couldn't be that bad if only one Servant had died)...if Iri needed to cut off senses to boost her magical control, why didn't she turn off something less necessary than touch, like smell or taste?
  • Rule of Drama.
  • The usual answer for why a character with magic doesn't do a thing that would make their life much easier: the magic doesn't work that way. Presumably, smell and taste are so minor that conserving the power they would take wouldn't really help at all.

Beardless Bluebeard

• Why doesn't Caster have a beard? It's in the friggin' title by which he is remembered!
  • Why is King Arthur a woman?
    • Fanservice.
    • Her canonical name is explained as actually being Arturia, and her covering up of her gender is a plot point. Bluebeard, however, is known in-story as having been Bluebeard, but no explanation is given for his bare chin or why he might fool people about it.
  • Gilles de Rais is the inspiration for the story of Bluebeard. He wasn't famous for having a beard while alive. Caster just went by the name because he understood that was how people remembered him.
    • Exactly. When first asked his name, Gilles thinks for a moment and says "What would be the best way to identify myself in this era? Ah, let's go with 'Bluebeard'." He didn't use the title because it was accurate, he used it because it was linked to him in the public memory.

Real Iri?

• Was it really Irisviel that Kiritsugu choked to death during the illusion that Angra Mainyu cast on him at the end of the Holy Grail War? It just doesn't feel probable that Irisviel wasn't aware of the fact that the Holy Grail of which she is the vessel has been corrupted all this time that she contained it.
  • Interesting question. With the answer of yes. And no. Like how Dark Sakura isn't Sakura but also is.
  • It wasn't Irisviel the wife of Kiritsugu, mother of Ilya, partner of Saber. It was essentially a clone of her with all her memories and personality.

No Backup Call To Illya

• While we're on the topic of homunculi: While the curse of Angra Mainyu effectively disabled him from using his Magecraft ever again, it also doesn't sound reasonable that Kiritsugu, with a lifetime's worth of training in using non-magical methods in countering Magecraft or bypassing bounded fields, was not, for five years, able to ever get past Einzbern Castle's defenses to retrieve Ilya, or at least see her or communicate with her. Even assuming the curse also negated said training, someone like Kiritsugu must have already had this in foresight way before the Holy Grail War began, and prepared countermeasures for it (like, say, Probably leaving a recorded message or non-magical communicator hidden with Ilya.
  • His skill with bounded fields was all magic. Why would he leave a record for Ilya in case of failure? He wasn't planning to fail by destroying the Grail.
    • Slight ambiguity aside on Kiritsugu's plans (at the start, he indicated his wish to destroy the Grail, but sometimes in the middle of the story, he wanted to wish world peace upon the Grail) , he would've known that destroying the Grail would've pissed the Einsberns off, especially given how their sole objective in winning the Grail War was to achieve the Third True Magic, Heaven's Feel, something only achievable by fully manifesting the Grail (whether or not they knew it to have been corrupted, i.e., by hook or by crook). Given that, Kiritsugu must've had the foresight on handling the aftermath of destroying the Grail in a way where he still keeps Ilya. Poor girl.
    • Destroying the Grail was never part of the plan. That was Kiritsugu's alternate wish where he gives up the Grail and just leaves. Again, none of his plans accounted for his circuits being destroyed.

We Have Avalon!

• Why did Kiritsugu not want Saber to know about Avalon existing, let alone the fact that it was implanted within Irisviel and later himself?
  • So Saber wouldn't want it back. They don't trust each other.

Re-summoning Spirits

• If a Heroic Spirit dies in a Holy Grail War, what stops them from being summoned once more to the next one?
  • I don't think anything stops them, but returning to the Throne of Heroes resets their memories of the Grail Wars anyway. Saber is a special case because she returns to Avalon instead of the Throne of Heroes.
    • Nothing stops them from being summoned again. They wouldn't have memories of the previous War since each summoning is from the base template. It's just hard to get artifacts. Waver tried to participate in the 5th War, but the Grail didn't provide him with Command Spells and Master status.
    • Yeah, on that note: This is less a question, and more a wish: I hope Type-Moon makes a behind-the-scenes story or something for Fate/Stay Night working in whatever loose ends have been left in Fate/Zero, and/or just to further develop the character of the others.
    • Fate/zero is, according to creator interviews, essentially an alternate-universe prequel to Fate/stay night, which is why some things don't match up perfectly/seem like retcons. They could still cover the FSN continuation of the zero timeline, but they've already handwaved the inconsistencies.
  • The Heroic Spirits themselves never leave the Throne of Heroes. What the Grail does is make a copy of the Heroic Spirit and manifest the copy as a Servant. That's why they 'forget' everything between wars, the memories the copy has are lost when it is destroyed. The Heroic Spirit back at the Throne does get a sort of after-action briefing in what happened during the summoning, though. Theoretically, not only would it be possible to summon the same spirit in a subsequent war, you could have the same spirit summoned twice in the same war.

Berserker and Glory

• I'm a little confused as to how For Someone's Glory works. According to the source material, Lancelot would have been able to masquerade as other heroes. Does that mean that he would have been able to go as far as imitating their abilities and weapons? Or is it appearance only?
  • Appearance only. It is born from his legend of disguising himself to gain fame and/or glory.
  • Because of Kariya´s pathetic mana supply, he has to use 2 Command Spells´ to give The Black Knight the appropriate magic supply. If Berserker had had say Kiritsugu as his master, he would´ve been absolutely unstoppable (he only lost to Saber because Kariya blew his magic circuits trying to sustain Arondight, and his stats with a stronger master would´ve been even higher (his stats are already incredible: A Strength, A+ Dexterity, A Endurance with an A++ Noble phantasm and one that allows him to wield normal weapons or Noble Phantasms like it was his only purpose in life.)). The power would only be in appearances, but it would still prove extremely useful.
    • For Someone's Glory isn't sealed because of Kariya; Berserker is just too dumb to use it while he's a Berserker. The two command seals were "Shut up for a second and use For Someone's Glory to look like Rider" and "Don't attack Saber, for once, please".

Kayneth's Mercury Ball

• Wait, so what was the point of that scene where Kayneth's Mystic Code shows up out of nowhere at a construction site (and presumably kills everyone)?
  • ...dude, that was the remains of the hotel. It shows how Kayneth survived having ten floors drop on his head.
    • Thanks. I might've not been paying attention but the anime played it rather vaguely.

Destroyed the Reality Marble?

• So, how did Gilgamesh using Ea on Ionian Hetairoi and destroying it affect the reality marble itself? Purely theoretically, assuming Iskandar would have won the fight with his charge across the bridge and then had enough time to restore mana to be able to use IH again, or if he was summoned in another Grail War in the future, doesn't really matter, how would IH look? What happened to all the Servants that Ea killed? Are they gone for good or would they be restored the next time Alex were to deploy Ionian Hetairoi? Can he even still use it after this battle? The way I see it, a reality marble is created based on an unchanging template and then destroyed after use, but is recreated based on the template every time it is deployed again. Also, isn't IH working beyond space and time? Then earlier in the story Iskandar shouldn't even have had access to it if it was to be destroyed in the future? The way the anime played it, it looked like the destruction of Ionian Hetairoi was permanent and final, though. That's what I'm wondering about.
  • I would assume that, like anything else, the next Iskandar would get an IH because he's a new Servant created based on the "Iskandar" template. However, IH is probably lost to that particular Iskandar forever, much like the Gordian Wheel.
  • I don't think the IH was forever destroyed; the anime was just going for a more dramatic presentation of the event. A Reality Marble is a manifestation of the person's inner world, so I don't think it can be destroyed without destroying its creator.
  • Ionian Hetaroi is manifested by the combined power of Alexander and all of his Servants, Alexander himself isn't even a mage and thus can't manifest it on his own. When Gilgamesh swung Ea, the other Servants were "slain" (as much as Servants can be) and thus the Reality Marble collapsed (stopping Ea's erosion in the process, since Enuma Elish only affects the world it's unleashed in). Ionian Hetaroi, as the Noble Phantasm of Servant Rider, was destroyed, but the Servants themselves would still exist since they exist beyond time and space and Enuma Elish (for all it's absurdity) doesn't retroactively erases people. So if Alexander ever appears under another identity, be it as another Rider or as himself, he'll be able to call to them again and they'll answer. In addition, even if we assume that this incarnation of the Noble Phantasm still existed after Enuma Elish, it's unlikely that Alexander and his Servants had the prana capacity to recreate the Reality Marble, given that they could only hold Caster's monster for a few minutes.
    • The anime briefly shows one of the IH soldiers that strongly resembles an older Waver. Presumably, the reality marble could and would be reformed with the sufficient mana/prana in the future.
    • Noting that the long-haired Waver-lookalike is confirmed via an artbook to be Eumenes, not an older/Heroic Spirit Waver.

Arturia Orientation

• In this universe, Arthur is a girl, Lancelot is a guy; what are Guinevere's gender and orientation?
  • Guinevere is a straight woman cursed to a lifetime of bearddom.
    • Arturia being straight as well might explain why she never cared that Lancelot and Guinevere were sleeping together ...which led to Lancelot's madness.
    • I wouldn't call Arturia straight as much as not possessing a defined sexuality at all. Before she fell for Shiro (and Rin) in FSN, she never had anyone she loved and she distanced herself from people. That'd go twice over for romantic love. So it's likely she treated Guinivere the same, probably feeling guilty for making the woman take up this whole queen facade already, so I can imagine her not expecting or demanding anything else from her other than making the public appearances required of her, anything else would go against this whole "the king is always lonely" thing. I mean, I'm pretty sure that there is supposed to be much more behind this whole tragedy than simple incompability of sexualities.

Battle in the Bat-Cave

• For Kirei and Kiritsugu's fight, why did they change it from the novel's "smoke-filled, burning hall" to "Batman's headquarters from the Nolan trilogy?" Time constraints? The animation budget went elsewhere? Did they use up all the fire in the Saber vs. Berserker scenes?
  • Actually, probably the latter. Having two fights going on in two different burning rooms could have been confusing.

Your Wife is Still Alive

• Tokiomi's will that gave Kotomine custody of Rin, and made him administrator of the Tohsaka estate, until Rin came of age. Aoi was alive and well at that point, so even if Tokiomi died, Rin would still have one parent left. I can understand him making a will, just in case, and leaving the magic aspects to his senior apprentice since Aoi doesn't seem to have been trained as a mage, but why sign custody of Rin and the estate over to Kotomine instead of his wife?
  • My guess is the whole Rin goes to Kotomine thing in his will had a clause stating that this would only come into play if Aoi couldn't look after her for some reason. And given that she came out of the war mentally damaged, her ability to do was compromised.
    • That seems most likely, it's just odd that the way it's presented is "And if anything happens to me, you get all of this," instead of "If anything happens to Aoi and I," so it sounds like the will was written with Kotomine in mind, instead of having him as a back-up.
    • Well, Tokiomi is an old-fashioned mage. To him, the thought of having his daughter taken care of by someone who is not trained in magic, even if it's his own wife, is probably highly distressing.
    • The above is correct. Tokiomi is specifically someone who values being a Mage above anything else. Kirei was his apprentice, having recently finished his training, and someone he trusted more than anyone else. It's quite likely that he never even considered leaving Rin with Aoi instead of Kotomine. (Keep in mind that even when he died, Tokiomi couldn't understand that Kirei had betrayed him. That's how much he trusted him.)

Mordred in Credits

• So in the first ED, there were lots of anime versions of famous scenes in the stories of the servants. However, the final scene, depicting the Battle of Camlann◊, showed Arturia impaling Mordred with a spear, but I'm pretty sure it was the other way around. In the final battle in Excalibur, Mordred impaled Arthur, and Arthur cut Mordred's neck
  • Those scenes were based on real-world paintings, and the one in question is based on this◊ Arthur Rackham painting, titled "How Mordred was Slain by Arthur, and How by Him Arthur was Hurt to the Death." The one getting stabbed is Mordred.
  • Who says the film Excalibur is the be-all, end-all? All the Arthurian legends say is that they both mortally wounded each other during that fight. Artistic license as to how.
  • Well, according to semi-official materials regarding Mordred, that's actually how it played out — Arturia ran Mordred through, and then as she turned away, Mordred got back up and stabbed her in the back before finally succumbing to their own injuries. This is actually the entire reason why Mordred's canonical Stat-sheet has Battle Continuation...
  • Arturia's backstory seems to be based most closely on Le Morte d'Arthur. In this version, and in the Vulgate Cycle on which it in turn is based, it is Arthur with the spear and Mordred with the sword. It was Excalibur that reversed them.

Fantasy Flashbacks

• About Arturia and Lancelot's appearances. As Servants their appearances would be affected by how people imagine them, but why are they using 15th century plate armour even in the scenes set in the past? The Britons used the same equipment of the Roman Army of the era (chainmail (rank and file) or scale armour (officers and elite troops), round or oval shield, ridge helmets (and, occasionally, more classical helmets) and javelins, in addition to long swords (that had replaced the gladium even for infantry. Excalibur and Arondight would still be too big, but are excused as Fairy-made weapons) and thrusting spears (now the main weapon of infantry and armored cavalry), the armour of almost a thousand year later.
  • Gilgamesh is blond, beardless, and has an Indian nuclear spaceship, Arthur is a woman, Lancelot has purple hair, Alexander is about four feet too tall, three feet too wide, and has the undying loyalty of men who historically could not follow him to the ends of the earth and dragged him onto the route home, and Gilles de Rais can summon creatures that were invented in the early 20th century. It is safe to say that, in the Nasuverse, either history books and legends are radically different or the Magus association is better than it should be at keeping actual historical documentation out of mundane hands. Types of weapon and armor used are the least of the problems.
  • Or maybe their appearances were influenced by how we perceive them. When we think of King Arthur and the Knights of the Rounds we don't think of a Roman Cataphract◊ (that is, how they would have actually fought), but about this◊ or warriors wearing a knightly armour of the fifteenth century◊-hence Lancelot (the perfect knight) wearing a stereotypical knightly armour and Arturia wearing a Battle Ballgown based on that kind of armour. Still, would have been fun hearing the characters who would have worn one in battle complain about how they got cheated out of their helmets just because people don't imagine them do the sensible thing and protect their heads and the only guy who kept it did so because he needed to hide his identity...
  • The past of the Nasuverse is pretty different from that of real life, and not just in ways influenced by popular perception (at least, not popular perception in reality). People in real life don't generally picture Caesar and Nero in tailcoats and gowns with obvious 19th-century military influences, or Medb and Boudica fighting in delicate white lingerie. It's safer to consider it a nice bonus when Nasuverse history does stay true to reality.

Hey It's Not That Voice...

• Any reason why certain characters got replacement voice actors in the dub, like how Matthew Mercer is Kiritsugu instead of Kirk Thornton, like back in the Fate/Stay Night anime dub, instead of Kate Higgins (Fate Route TV anime) or Michelle Ruff (Unlimited Blade Works movie, though now she voices Aoi Tohsaka), we got Kari Wahlgren as Saber, David Vincent (who was Assassin "Kojiro", as Archer/Gilgamesh, even though Grant George voiced him back in the sequel, Crispin Freeman as Kirei instead of Jamieson Price (currently Rider/Iskander/Alexander), and Cristina Valenzuela, as opposed to Sherry Lynn as Sakura?
  • These things just happen. It's usually scheduling conflicts or being dubbed in different locations. Dunno what the case is here, specifically, but it's generally that kind of reason.
    • I thought Bang Zoom! Entertainment handled both dubs of FSN and FZ?
    • Then...it's probably a scheduling conflict. I assume it is. The only other reasons I can think of are soured business relations or union shenanigans, but it's probably not the latter—VAs use pseudonyms to get around this all the time.
  • For added confusion or hilarity depending on your view Kirk Thornton is the VA for Kiritsugu's father.
    • I guess we can chalk it up to Fridge Brilliance now since Kiritsugu got older within those 5 years leading up to his death and that sounded more like Noritaka (his father's name mind you) when his time came.

White Gilgamesh

• Anyone want to talk about the fact that Gilgamesh is a white guy for no reason? I can accept King Arthur being a girl, as that is a thing they have in Britain, but I don't think there were many pale blonde dudes kicking it in ancient Sumeria.
  • It's because of Artistic License. Really. That's it. As someone mentioned further up the page, Alexander and Gilgamesh should just switch designs and it'd be infinitely more accurate. You can probably Hand Wave Gil's complexion with something like "he's divine", but in the end it's just because Nasu thought it mite b cool.
  • Out of universe, because he's cool. In-universe, because having two fathers who are also gods can screw up genetics, and anyway he so ancient he predates Sumerians, and could have been any ethnicity.
  • For this specific instance, purely artistic license. However, even today there are (very few) native people in that region of the world that could be considered "White", with some even having blond hair and blue eyes. Sumerian art also frequently used blue stones for eyes, so light features from that time period aren't outside the realm of possibility.
• The blond hair was probably to exaggerate his affinity with gold. The medieval looking armor, well, who's to say it was actually his? Those weapons he summons with Gate of Babylon sure aren't. The skin color, you got me there.
• "Oh my God, Karen, you can't just ask people why they're white."
• Actually, there’s implications that the Mesopotamian Gods were white in the Nasuverse, or at least had common physical forms that would be analogous to Caucasians. Ishtar’s implied true appearance (when she’s not body-jacking someone), is implied to look like an Evil-Diva, female Gilgamesh.
• From how it was explained to me, Gilgamesh is white because he's a god. Humans were brown when Gilgamesh was alive, because the Mesopotamians understood that the gods created them from clay and dirt. As the gods themselves were not, they had fair skin. Gilgamesh is 2/3s god, so he's a blond white dude because Mesopotamian gods are blond and fair skinned.

Tasty Crest Worms

• Why was Kariya so badly screwed up by the Crest Worms when Sakura seems relatively normal despite them outside the Heaven's Feel route?
  • For starters, Sakura was modified by them over years and years, as opposed to Kariya being a hastily done patch-job. Secondly, the point of the worms are different; Kariya's are to compensate for his lack of training as a mage while Sakura's are to make her an acceptable host for Zouken. Finally, Sakura just plain has more potential as a mage than Kariya does, which means that the worms don't need to eat her up nearly as much.
  • Also, Zouken hates Kariya and likes to make him suffer. For instance, he had Kariya summon Berserker not because it would give them an edge in the war, but because Berserker's out of control prana requirements will keep Kariya in agony by agitating the Crest Worms. It's entirely possible Zouken could have prepared Kariya for the Grail War without leaving him on death's door, but Zouken's only goal in the fourth War is to kill Kariya as slowly and painfully as possible.

Mortal Gilgamesh

• Okay so Gilgamesh became naked and human in the end. How exactly does that make him different to how he was before? He can still call all his noble phantasms like before. Still materialize his armor even though he popped up with no clothes on. Still fights just like a servant as far as I can tell. Most importantly he still needs mana to survive since I recall it being said somewhere that Kotomine kidnapped kids for him to eat during those years. So what actually changed for him? Did he just loose his ability to take a spirit form and warp around the place at leisure? He didn't even seem to age that much during the ten years. What differences did true incarceration carry for him?
  • He doesn't need prana to survive, the orphans were strictly so he could spam his abilities as much as he wanted. (And probably weren't even necessary.) He didn't age because he spent those ten years as a child in order to blend in with modern society. (Since as a child, he could tolerate modern society better than as an adult.)
  • Gilgamesh was still a Heroic Spirit. He just had a physical body. As for why he didn't age... he did. Word of God is that he drank the immortality potion he's shown using in Fate/hollow ataraxia and de-aged himself 10 years.

Blue Hair Skips a Generation

• Minor, really, but it still bugs me: Why does Kariya have black hair compared to the rest of the Matous that we see? Did the blue gene skip him or something?
  • Probably it's to further mark him as the family White Sheep.
  • Maybe he's just dyeing it. After all, getting a job while having blue hair would be difficult (outside of Magi families, people seem to have real world hair colors), especially in an overly conformist society as the Japanese one, so to get a job he dyed it to make appear he's not dyeing his hair.
  • I thought the odd hair color had something to do with the "training" Matou mages go through (which is why Sakura's is an odd color even though she's a Tohsaka). Kariya's hair was normal because he rejected the family magic stuff and bailed, leaving Shinji's dad to get wormed.
  • Shinji, having no magical ability, was not wormed, and Byakuya was a pisspoor mage, so it seems unlikely that he ever was, but both of them have the wakame. Perhaps there is a genetic link between blue hair and the Matous' dying magical trait, and if so, Kariya is either a genetic sport or inherited more of his potential and appearance from his non-Matou parent.

Gae Buidhe vs. Cthulhu

• Caster's monster couldn't be beaten because it regenerates too fast. Too bad we can't give it a Wound That Will Not Heal. Wait a minute. TLDR: Why didn't lancer just use Gae Buidhe on the monster until he digs his way in?
  • Because not-Cthulu was growing bigger, because a spear isn't exactly a good tool to dig into a massive mass of flesh and because Lancer would have had a hell of a time not getting caught while trying that.
  • It wouldn't be enough. One of the major concerns of the battle was how the monster was on the move — as soon as it reached the shore, not only would it wreck havoc on the city, but it would also be able to sustain itself by eating people. As seen with Saber's left hand, having a wound which does not heal would not completely incapacitate the monster.
    • The Nasuverse's wonderful RPG mechanics magic system comes to the rescue again! Gae Buidhe is a B-rank Noble Phantasm, Caster's monster has a bit higher than rank A regeneration, so only Excalibur's A++ attack could overwhelm it. Not even kidding here.
  • What good is one unhealable wound the length of your arm, max, when you still have to deal with hundreds of tonnes of putrid flesh and tentacles? Even if the wound itself doesn't heal, there's still a lot of flesh to go through from the surface to where Caster is. The monster also moves and actively retaliates. It would be like trying to scoop up a swamp with a teaspoon.

Grandpa?

• When playing the Heaven's Feel route of the Visual Novel I assumed Shinji and Sakura calling Zouken grandfather was just a shorthand since, being over five hundred years old, he's really their great, great, great, great, great grandfather or something. But then going back and watching the first episode of Fate Zero I noticed that Kariya calls him father. This confuses me greatly. Does that mean Zouken waited until he was about 450 before fathering the next line of the Matou family? In which case the whole power declining because of a foreign land happened extremely quickly, one generation.
  • Probably Zouken just told Kariya what to call him. Since the man's been around since before he, Shinji or Sakura were born, they don't have much proof of his true relation to them.
    • Grandfather is a lot more general than father as far as terms go. Calling Zouken father would be really disrespectful towards Kariya's actual father unless he died at an early age and never knew Kariya. Of course the possibility that he was a person well worth disrespecting is also a real possibility considering the family.
    • Kariya's father could have actually died before Kariya was old enough to remember him.
    • Zouken's body might not have looked as decrepit and aged back then too making it a much more natural thing to call him.
  • Maybe Kariya's father was also named Zouken and was devoured and replaced by the monster. It's stated he does periodically insert himself in the family's genealogy still using the name Zouken, but it has never been stated how.
    • As I wrote above, I had a moment of Fridge Horror: what if Zouken replaces his descendants and then has children who continue the Matou bloodline? It would explain their loss of power: Zouken, not knowing the issues with inbreeding, is the cause of the Matou's loss of magical ability due having reinserted the same DNA in the family line again and again, with the new blood coming from their spouses preventing the full instance of degrade that should have happened.
  • It seems that Zouken periodically takes the place of deceased family members to hide his actual age and relation to the family. Here's a relevant line from the prologue of the light novel:
    To tell the truth, even Kariya couldn't determine the exact age of the old man. The aberrant entry in the family register said he was the father of Kariya and his brother. But even at his great-grandfather, his ancestor at the third generation, there were records of the old man named Zōken in the family tree. There was no way to figure out for how many generations this man came to reign over the Matō family.

Kayneth's revolver

• It's easy to assume he procured it in Japan, but then we take a look here and find out it's a Webley Mk IV .38/200 Service Revolver, a British revolver adopted only by the British Army and a score of military and police forces around the world, can't fire the more widespread .38 Special and .357 Magnum, and whose ammunition is now extremely rare, so it wouldn't make sense for Japanese black market to have it for sale. Logically, he brought it with him from Britain... But why?
  • Personally I don't shop around the Japanese black market often but why would it be unlikely? Why wouldn't a black market dealer have a rare model in his collection? Kayneth's personality would definitely suit buying the most expensive thing he can find. Buying it over there and buying it because it was rare seems more likely than bringing a gun with him given his belief in magic superiority.
    • Simple logic: any Webley Mk IV would have reached Japan as war prize during World War II or as the service weapon of a Commonwealth officer during the occupation after the war, and it fires an extremely rare round that is only produced in India in any significant quantity. Also, Kayneth's revolver was apparently custom-made with a different grip (possibly the result of the original grip breaking and being repaired) and a shorter barrel (only possible due being custom-made). While not impossible, it's extremely improbable that Fuyuki's Yakuzas had one, especially a custom model, while it would be extremely easy to find in a Commonwealth nation.
    • It's most likely an example of Gen's fondness for rare guns; Kiritsugu's stash is at least partially justified, but Kayneth had a much smaller role, so there wasn't any need to justify it. In all likelihood, it's Throw It In! Gun Porn because Gen figured a rich British guy should have a rare British gun, plausibility be damned.

Zero to Stay

• I'm confused as to how come the ending of Fate/Zero did not match with the first or two or three minutes of Fate/stay night where there was an explosion, a burning portion of town and a fight between Saber and Gilgamesh in the open space. Like how can that be when in Fate/Zero, the events happen to be that Saber was erased from the battlefield after the explosion, so therefore there was no fighting that ever occurred during or within that scene between the two and Gilgamesh was darn naked? Can somebody please explain to me the discrepancy around here? My head really, really, really hurts trying to fit the two together.
  • It's best if you assume that the version of Fate/Zero that we see takes place in an Alternate Universe separate from Fate/stay night (whether it's the visual novel or the anime). At least, that's how I'm choosing to Hand Wave the inconsistencies regarding the Saber vs. Gilgamesh showdown, Kiritsugu rescuing Shirou, Kirei going to ask his father for protection (but that could also be explained by the fact that Kirei's not known for being entirely truthful), Tokiomi's parting gift to Rin, Saber and Gilgamesh being voiced by Kari Wahlgren and David Vincent instead of Kate Higgins and Grant George, among other things (and the AU explanation is apparently Word of God, anyway).
  • More like, DEEN incorrectly adapted this and never bothered to ask Nasu and Urobuchi, who were already working on Fate/Zero at that time. Saber spoke of a fight between her and Gil in a sea of fire at the end of the war, but she also has a strange definition of "conversations" she had with Kiritsugu. The sea of fire was actually in the light novel, but ufotable chose to not adapt it for whatever reasons. Gil is naked because he was showered by the Grail mud. He no longer has a spirit body after Angra Mainyu gave up trying to corrupt him, so what you see at the end is a true body made of flesh and blood. There are no major inconsistencies between FSN and FZ, so you don't have to handwave anything regarding this matter here.

Arturia, Altria, Arutoria...

• Why does Netflix romanize Saber's real name as Arturia when the official romanization is Altria?
  • Her name is Arutoria, if we want to be nitpicky, so Artoria (female form of Artorius, who supposedly is the source of King Arthur) is probably her name. I have no idea why they romanized Saber's name as Arturia though. They probably looked up the translations made by fans who thought it's closer to Arthur, even though official romanizations are Altria and Artoria.
    • It might also have something to do with the English dub pronouncing her name as "Arturia".
  • Because Arutoria and Altria are two bad cases of Engrish and Arturia makes more sense as the feminine version of Arthur, whatever the origin of King Arthur's name is (some say it comes from Brythonic words for "Son of the Bear King", others from the Irish name Artur (Bear-like) or its Brythonic equivalent, and a few scholars from the star Arcturus).

Britain Needs Saving?

• Saber says her wish is to save Britain. Why doesn't someone - let's say Waver, who's actually from England - take her aside and give her a history lesson on how successful her country's been, in part because of her legend?
  • King Arthur wasn't Anglo-Saxon. Rather, he defended his people from the Saxon invaders.
  • Comparison between the legend and Roman records show that Arthur was the overlord of the Britons, that is everything on Great Britain south of the Hadrian's Wall, and directly ruled over Logres, that was the area of Britain south of the line between the Humber and the Severn Estuary and east of Dumnonia (south-western England west of the rivers Parret and Axe), with a soft spot for Dumnonia as it was ruled by his family on his mother's side (tellingly, Arthur's chosen successor Constantine was the king of Dumnonia and Gorlois' successor). Now, Logres and most of Britain was overran in waves by the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings until the latters won out as the Normans (worse than normal Vikings as they were vassals of the French, successors of the Franks that gave his friend Lancelot so much trouble) and merged with the Anglo-Saxons as the modern English, Dumnonia was slowly overran by the Anglo-Saxons with conquest completed shortly before the Norman conquest, and the last holdout of Wales was lost, according to legend, through stupidity^note The various Welsh princes accepted to let Edward I of England name the Prince of Wales that would be their overlord, on condition said prince would be "born on Welsh soil and speaking no other language". Edward named his infant son, born on Welsh soil and too young to speak any language. I think that, between the mess done by Mordred's rebellion, Constantine being a moron and a loathsome sinner, what happend after that and the English having the gall to claim him as a predecessor, Arthur would have many reasons to consider Britain lost.

Lancer vs Lancer

• According to Word of God, the older is an hero the greater is the advantage they get, and Diarmuid would defeat Cu Chulainn in a straight fight outside of Ireland (where Diarmouid's fame would give him a decisive advantage). But Cu Chulainn comes from the Ulster Cycle, set in the first century AD, while Diarmuid comes from the Fenian Cycle, variably set between the second and the fourth century AD (depending on who you listen to), meaning that Cu Chulainn has the age advantage and had the most impressive myth.
• Welcome to the Nasuverse. The land where Word of God contradicts itself all the time. From a Watsonian perspective, Nasu gave that statement when Zero was insanely popular, so he was just shilling what was making the money. From a Doylist POV, maybe it’s just referring to Cu as he first appears in Stay/Night (when he’s being weakened by Kirei’s Command Seal). Otherwise, you’re correct; Cu is basically Irish Heracles and only Fionn (Irish Achilles) would have a chance from the Fianna.

Historical "Accuracy"

• In life Saber was a rather successful warlord of Briton blood and Roman culture. And not only the Romans were quite the Combat Pragmatists, she lived in a time and area where worse things than usual would have been fully justified. Why is she so fixated with things as honor and chivalry?
  • Because this series doesn't actually care one whit about real history. Hercules had spikes coming out of his elbows, Gilgamesh wore plate armor, and Jack the Ripper was a prepubescent girl. The Knights of the Round Table were supposedly the perfect knights in shining armor and that's what Nasu went with.
    • More to the point, Saber and most other Heroic Spirits are shaped equally by their historical selves and by the legends that bloomed around them. Artoria/King Arthur and the Knights are, according to legends like Le Mort D'Arthur and such, the very embodiment of chivalry and honor. Thus, Saber Artoria strives for the same.

Chivalrous Saber

• On a similar note as the headscratcher above, why is Saber portrayed as being obsessed with knightly chivalry when in Fate/stay night, she's as pragmatic and ruthless as they come? Not to say that she doesn't display honor in Fate/stay night (she refuses to feed off of innocent peoples' mana and feels honor-bound to reveal her true name to Assassin), but this is the woman who was described as dishing out perfect justice, ordered her men to ransack villages whenever supplies were low, and was more than happy to try to kill Ilya even after Berserker was defeated. This doesn't even make sense from a Character Development standpoint because Arturia's idealism was shattered by the time she made the deal with the world. What, does Gen just hate Saber so much that he deliberately Flanderized her?
  • Since Saber remembers previous Grail Wars, it can be assumed that her failure and losses in the fourth hardened her when it came time for the fifth.
    • Except she should already have been hardened before she was ever summoned for the fourth Grail War, what with her pragmatic methods of ruling and her perceived failures at the end of her reign. Really, the only way a transition from "idealistic in the fourth" to "cynical in the fifth" would make any sense is if Kiritsugu somehow summoned Arturia from the moment right before or right after she pulled Caliburn from its stone, but that's obviously not possible.
    • Maybe she was attempting to conduct herself with the honor/fulfill the idealism that she was unable to practice during her life lived for others? When Saber's honorable behavior sabotaged her participation in the Fourth War, she might have decided to go back to a "winning" strategy and reverted to her King-Arthur-of-the-Britons self by the time Shirou summons her.
    • It's important to remember that Saber's persona in Zero is more Arturia than King Arthur. In the VN, Saber is described while dying as her kingly self being satisfied with how things went, while her "true" personality mourns for her kingdom. Thus, Saber acting more idealistic and honorable is because she's acting like herself, not like the King of Knights.
  • If we want to nitpick it, Saber is probably treating this as a competition between champions, as it's a personal thing for her, just growing more desperate and bitter in the fifth war. Had she been treating this as a war, she would have fought as pragmatically as a Roman and made Kiritsugu look like a saint in comparison (I can easily see her tracking down Rin and then force Tokiomi to murder Gilgamesh and then himself, swearing on her honour as King of the Britons she wouldn't harm a hair on her head if he did so, and then kill her without touching her hair to make sure she wouldn't come up for vengeance and provide a distraction at the wrong moment).

Telling Tokiomi

• Did Tokiomi know how horribly Sakura was being treated? Just the crest worms alone would be a huge no-go for a parent who cares about his kid as much as he does.
  • It's unclear if he did or not. On the one hand, he's an old school mage who genuinely believes Sakura having magic is the best thing that can happen to her, but on the other hand he wanted her to improve and prosper, and being turned into Zouken's puppet is the opposite of that. There's no proof he knows the secrets of the Matou magics, but also nothing that says he doesn't know. Personally, I feel he didn't know, and if he did he would have done something about it immediately. Mainly because it makes Kariya and his fights all the more tragic.
    • Agreed. I would imagine he knew Sakura was in for a tough time, but not how bad it was going to be.
    • Word of God has stated that he did not.
    • You'd think Kariya would mention that to them at some point. "Hey, maybe nobody told you, but this cloud of locusts that hangs around me? Yeah it pretty much flies out of my nipples, it's sorta the low end of what Zouken does in his free time. He literally force-fed me Sakura's virginity, you should maybe look into that."
    • Tokiomi didn't know about the crest worms, but Kariya assumes he knew, which is why every time they meet Kariya just flies into a rage and tries to murder Tokiomi. This is at least partially due to Kariya's long-running resentment of Tokiomi, who "stole" everything Kariya wanted for himself: By the time the adoption was going to happen Kariya is clearly willing to believe the worst of Tokiomi, including the idea that he'd willingly condemn his daughter to a living Hell just for his "honor as a mage."
    • Doesn't that beg the question of how he doesn't know about crest worms? Zouken keeps his true identity a secret, but the whole point of sending Sakura to him is that the Matous and Tohsakas are long allies, right?
    • Tokiomi is also an incredibly traditional mage who is, in large part, honoring the old alliance despite the fact that the Matou have been in decline; this is the basis of Sakura's fostering, since the Matou no longer have a capable heir. Mages are notoriously secretive about their magecraft so it wouldn't be too unusual if Tokiomi had no idea what form the Matou magecraft took, or at least the specifics of what Sakura would undergo. It's also possible that this specific use/method is unknown to outsiders because it's relatively recent, since it's implied that these worms were made to empower weak mages (like the last few generations of Matou) and/or to allow a non-Matou like Sakura to inherit the Matou magecraft; note that the Crest Worms aren't the original form of the Matou/Makiri magic, it's an adaptation Zouken developed after the creation of the original Grail.
    • At that point Kariya saw defeating Tokiomi and Saving Sakura as one and the same. Neither of them could see eye to eye on the one cause that might have united them. Had he a cooler head, Kariya might explained exactly what was being done to Sakura and Tokiomi might have been willing to work to save her.

Feed Berserker

• Since Berserker's mana usage was a huge strain on Kariya, why didn't he have Berserker eat the souls of other people like Caster was doing in Fate/Stay Night, since Saber states that any Servant could do so to sustain and replenish their mana supplies.
  • Could be Kariya was unaware of the possibility, having had no magical education save the bare minimum instruction Zouken (who wants him dead) gave him. Berserker is too mad with bloodlust to have any regard to his mana needs, so it would have taken a command spell from Kariya to happen, and Kariya might be unable or unwilling to give that command (especially as he needs command spells to control his servant).
  • Because Kariya is good (albeit damaged) person, and good people don't go around stealing souls to complete their missions. For all the personal sacrifice he goes through, he never sacrifices anyone else for his goal.

Neglected Assassins

• Why don’t Tokiomi and Kirei use the Assassins for what they’re primarily good for, which is assassinating other masters? I’m referring to episode 12, when Gilgamesh, Rider and Saber are having their conversation with Irisviel and Waver present and the Assassins appear out of the shadows and promptly go for Rider rather than attempting to take out Irisviel who’s serving as Saber’s decoy master and/or Waver (Heck, one of the Assassin apparates only a few inches from Waver which should have allowed him to kill him.) If the Assassins had killed one or both masters, then either both Rider and/or Saber would have disappeared due to losing their mana source or been forced to fight the other or Gilgamesh to claim the other’s master resulting in Rider or Saber dead. Either way, it would have been a win-win situation for Tokiomi who would’ve had to deal with one or two less servant-master pair. And why couldn’t they have kept one of Assassin’s spare bodies around for further use?
  • As Kirei had initially no desire to be in the Holy Grail war, it's likely he wasn't using Assassin to his full potential. Kirei might've figured killing off Assassin would get himself free and not have to bother with this feud anymore.
  • That's a funny question to answer, because the Assassin were there to kill Waver. Kirei ordered them with a Command Seal to "kill Rider's master with all your strength" (the last part is why they didn't leave a body behind). Tokiomi was actually willing to sacrifice the Assassin to discover if Rider had a secret Noble Phantasm. With every single Assassin attacking at once, Rider wouldn't be able to save Waver even with Saber's help unless he had a trump card stronger than Gordius Wheel. If he did, well, sucks for the Assassin, but in Tokiomi's mind they had already done their job. Thanks to them, he already knew that Saber was cursed, that Kayneth had to give his Command Seals to a weaker Mage, and that Berserker's master was a weakling who almost died summoning his own Servant. Add this to how he ensured Caster would be targeted by everyone in the war, and the only one who could be a problem for Gilgamesh was Rider, if he indeed had a trump card.

Build-a-Bracelet

• It says in Gilles' stats that he lost the Item Construction skill as a trade for being able to use Prelati's Spellbook. How did he make that bracelet?
  • Maybe it's an extrapolation of his true identity? He's actually kind of a crap fit for the Caster class, but the notes mention that if he were summoned by someone who knew what they were doing, his time as a wealthy knight would make him better-suited to another class and his being stupidly rich could be seen as a more valid part of his legend than his being a general. Maybe for him, making jewelry falls under some other innate ability.
  • The bracelet is an anime-only item (in the novel Rin never comes into contact with either Caster or Ryounousuke, but instead faints after seeing one of the monsters summoned by Caster), so it might simply be an oversight. Either that or like the above troper said, a derivation from his "Appreciation of the Arts" skill.

The choice of two boats

• The Grail tells him that he has to choose between repairing two boats with different numbers of survivors aboard. Kiritsugu chooses to save the one with more survivors therefore the other would sink. But then the Grail says the survivors of his boat split themselves between the two, travel on, then later he has to make the choice again. How is that possible if the choice was to repair just one boat? The second boat can't be around unless he apparently fixed both, which means there was no reason for him to kill anyone aboard it...
  • The Grail says that the 300 survivors split themselves between two ships, so it could potentially be lifeboats (albeit space would be an issue). That aside, the reason the scenario seems so bizarrely convenient (the ships keep on springing leaks that only Kiritsugu can fix at exactly the same time) is because it's basically a philosophical thought experiment and not meant to be entirely logical. Its purpose is to deconstruct Kiritsugu's means by pointing out that after enough sacrificing the few to save the many, you end up having killed more people than you saved. The Grail's more interested in making its point than in minor details, and presumably Kiritsugu is too baffled and disturbed by the changing surroundings, the boat covered in corpses, and the Grail's argument getting to him to realise the logical issue himself.
    • That's still a crap metaphor, even if you ignore the "where are we getting all these shitty boats" thing. By that logic there's no point in saving anyone specifically because you can't save everyone, which ignores the part where choosing to do nothing means killing 100% of the people through inaction, and choosing to save even a single person means killing fewer than all of them. The Starfish Story covers it in two paragraphs. And it's especially meaningful in Kiritsugu's case because of Shiro. The Grail is unfairly stacking the deaths while ignoring that all the people who are saved get to go on about their lives. Saving one person saves that one individual, but also saves all their descendants and anyone they save themselves. Hell, it's the Grail War, it's being presided over by the Church, you'd think the whole Adam and Eve thing would remind it that you can save the entire planet if you manage to hold onto a fertile couple.
    • This Grail is not the fabled relic of the Last Supper (there's been over 725 other artifacts claimed as such). The Church ostensibly presides over the war to investigate whether or not it is the real Holy Grail, but this just a front to keep an eye on the giant reality warping mana battery. The Holy Grail was basically demonstrating how it was going to save the world through Emiya Kiritsugu's methodology. Since the last war it was polluted by the spirit of a man who was martyred as All of the World's Evil and it was trying to grant the wish of the people who martyred that man by turning him into All of the World's Evil. So naturally it was trying to grant Kiritsugu's wish in the most destructive way possible in the way of Kiritsugu's method. Had it not been corrupted, it might have still used Kiritsugu's methodology but it would have only killed the people responsible for conflict in the first place while leaving the tolerant and the peaceful alone. That's not what he wanted either, Emiya wanted the Grail to render his own methodology obsolete because surely a miraculous wish granting device should be able to end human suffering without shedding a drop of blood. The Corrupted Grail however could not comprehend the lesson you put forward. The idea of saving one life being equal to saving that life's descendants as well as the others that life has saved is valid, but it is also alien to the Grail. By that same token, if you become responsible for the lives saved by the one person you rescued, you also become responsible for lives that person takes. To put it another way, by saving Adam and Eve, you've also saved Cain. Essentially the whole scene makes Kiritsugu realize that the wish granting machine he sacrificed so much to reach was another evil he would have to destroy for the good of the world.
    • If it understands the concept of sinking ships, human fertility shouldn't be too difficult for it to grasp, but I digress. The problem with the scene is that even if the Grail is going to grant the wish in the most destructive way possible, it doesn't have a reason to throw Kiritsugu a logic puzzle, let alone a logical fallacy puzzle. It's magic, it ain't gotta explain shit. Sure, in saving Adam and Eve you still save Cain, but that's the nature of the beast. Even if you only save one person, no matter how many others you fail to save or however many the survivors may kill in the future, as long as the number of survivors is more than zero, it's still a net win for Team Salvation because there could have been no survivors at all. It's not what anybody would prefer, of course, but it makes no sense that Kiritsugu's philosophy should be compromised by a thought exercise that contradicts itself.
    • The puzzle is a thought experiment. The entire point of it is to deconstruct Kiritsugu's entire philosophy by pointing out that without the miracle he so desperately wants, humanity will only find itself in new peril that will eventually leave Kiritsugu as the only one alive. Kiritsugu's problem is that he always believed that all he had to do to improve the world was kill the people who were harming the many, but he realizes that even if he could improve the lives of the many, his journey could not truly lead to the world's salvation because he could not stop humanity from fighting. This is why he wanted a miracle, but as already stated, the Grail cannot bring about a miracle. The point isn't necessarily that Kiritsugu's ideology is wrong, but that he put too much stake in it as the be-all-and-end-all of how to improve the world. This is the crux of the show's themes. Other characters like Saber have to contend with the fact that their ideals cannot lead to a perfect world either, and Rider dies happily because he appreciated the journey that his ideals led him on rather than the destination. The show is about how, if you are to truly hold onto your ideals, you must acknowledge that they are not perfect, and that you will likely die without seeing their fruits. Small acts of goodwill, like Kiritsugu saving Shiro, add up over time, and are what will truly lead to the world's improvement, but you can't hope to see that immediately.

Crest Worms, the zero-calorie torture

• Crest worms have mass and volume. They're essentially rubbery dick bugs. Kariya has them visibly squirming around under his skin, they're physically present in his body. So how the hell is Sakura in flawless condition and completely free of physical effects (except cute purple hair and eyes) despite going through many, many more years of being raped by literally thousands of these things? The whole point is that she is infested with these things, by the time Fate Stay Night happens her internal organs would have to be stuffed chock-full of worms like the frickin' villain from Nightmare Before Christmas!
  • See "Tasty Crest Worms" folder above.
    • I'm not asking why they're different, Kariya's infestation was done poorly because Zouken doesn't give a shit about him. I'm asking how Sakura is not bursting at the seams with these bugs when we clearly see that they're actual, physical creatures. Kariya is a grown man and it takes him a few days, at most, to have them visibly crawling around inside him, Sakura is less than half his size and has been continually infested for weeks. Even if you assume that Sakura's worms were designed specifically to not alter her appearance beyond making her cute and docile, that doesn't change the fact that they're physically present in her body. Where is that mass going?
    • Perhaps she doesn't have such a large number permanently residing in her between time spent in the worm pit, and/or they're remaining toward the center of the abdominal cavity.
    • Then what's the point of infesting her at all? If Zouken is altering her body with the worms to make her a more powerful mage, and this is done by letting the worms consume the host while their bodies are used as a booster magic circuit, then those worms have to stay inside her to work. There's only so much room inside a little girl, abdominal cavity or no.
    • They mostly reside in her abdominal cavity, secreting fluid and doing small genetic manipulation while she sleeps, and while she's in the big worm pit. It's mostly small-scale genetic changes.

How dare you want me to be happy!?

• How is Berserker so pissed off at Saber for wanting him to be happy with Guinevere? To the best of my understanding, she didn't love Guinevere and mainly married her because of the expectation that the king should have a queen, and in any case, being women, it's not like the marriage itself would've been legit (according to the values of the time, anyway). How do you become consumed with rage and hatred for someone for not raking you over the coals for not doing anything wrong?
  • Lancelot's issue is explained more in a short story (it's in Garden of Avalon) about him shortly after he saves Guinevere from execution. Essentially, he hates Saber because she acts as an ideal would, not how a person would. He still feels loyal to her and expects her to punish him for the affair and for killing his fellow knights, but she forgives him where no normal person would. He knows that what he did was wrong, that stealing the king's wife is wrong, that killing his comrades is wrong, and yet Saber sends him a letter of pardon saying that she's sure he's got good cause. He feels that he deserves punishment for his crimes and can't believe that she could forgive him, at which point he concludes she must be inhuman to act in such a manner despite the terrible things he's done. He also loathes himself for his actions and what they do to the kingdom, to the point he goes mad after hearing of Saber's death (which is why he can be summoned as Berserker).
    • I think that's a clearer statement of what I don't understand about the situation. He feels guilty because he failed to live up to the ideal standards of his knighthood, but he's angry with Saber for succeeding at upholding her ideals as a king? He really couldn't find some way to punish himself for what he did, or realize Saber's forgiveness was a punishment in and of itself? The whole thing just makes no sense to me. Although I guess it makes sense in that way, he's Berserker. The whole point is that he's nuts, so his actions probably shouldn't be expected to be rational.
    • To start with, he didn't know "Arthur" was a woman-and being crazy, probably never figured it out in the war either. He would see the relationship as legitimate and loving-and thus despise himself for breaking it. Second, as a knight, he lived by his ideal of "honor". Part of that ideal is that "injustice should be punished". He stole the wife of his king and murdered his friends, certainly committing "injustice" himself. Thus, to repair his broken ideals, he would have to face punishment-from someone who was "just" and who was harmed the most by his actions (his king). He can't punish himself-the unjust punishing the unjust is just hypocrisy. You can't force yourself to see something that is explicitly the opposite of a punishment as a punishment.

Was Kirei adopted?

Perhaps I wan't paying attention but how can Risei have a son when priests aren't allowed to have children? I can see Kirei not caring since he became an apostate but Risei is described to be very pious.

• Kirei is Risei's actual son, and they specifically mention that Kirei's Sorcery Trait (that lets him do spiritual surgery) is something he inherited from Risei despite the latter not being a mage. Since the Church of the Nasuverse isn't the same as the real-world Catholic Church it's possible that they let their clergy marry; Kirei himself marries Claudia and they have Caren, presumably after Kirei is officially ordained, and while Kirei is morally inverted he's nonetheless observant of Church law.

Waver's belt strap

• Waver, whose costume is otherwise completely ordinary-looking, has this random brown strap that appears to be attached to his belt. It looks a bit incongruous with the rest of his outfit, which otherwise just conveys "I wish my school had a uniform because I'm just that fashion-challenged". What is that for? Is it a handle for picking him up? No one tell Rider!
  • I'm pretty sure I've seen those straps used in other settings to hold magic books or alchemy pouches

A King without greed is worse than a figurehead?

• I kinda confused about Rider's analysis about Saber. What's exactly wrong about serving the people since most leaders nowadays have a duty to serve the people?
  • I think it's something long the lines of, "serve the people, but also serve yourself" — as a king and a legend, you're not an ordinary politician but an exemplar of humanity, and that means also having human desires. Arturia gave up so much to become the perfect king without enjoying any of the perks of being king, and the country fell to pieces anyway (taking with it her son, her best friends, and her wife) in part because Arthur was so "perfect" people thought he was inhuman. To Iskander, who people loved so much he essentially still commands them in death, that's a pretty big problem.

---