Fate/Zero S1E1: Summoning Ancient Heroes (part one)

This review was commissioned by @toxinvictory.

It's been a while, but we're back to the world of Fate...Nasu?...Moon? This franchise has way too many names. Anyway, Fate/Zero is a prequel series to the one I saw a bit of before, and takes place during the previous Grail War a decade earlier. The one that Rin's father died in, presumably.

I very much enjoyed what I saw of Unlimited Blade Works, but I have some trepidation going into Zero. For one thing, while UBW seems to be held in high regard by pretty much all of the Type Nasu fans I've been exposed to, Zero is much more polarizing. Some people say it's their favorite Fate Of The Moon series, while others say it's a total atrocity that undoes everything good and interesting about the other series. For another, this one was headed by a fellow named Gen Urobuchi, whose work I have a somewhat complicated relationship with. I enjoyed the heck out of his most acclaimed work (Madoka) when I saw it, but reading about it since then has led me to conclude that most of the thinks I liked about Madoka were completely accidental, and in some cases the exact opposite of the author's intent. I also saw Rebellion, which...well if Urobuchi can make as simple and self-contained of a story THAT convoluted and impenetrable, I'm sort of afraid to see what he does to an already sprawling and complicated setting.

That said, I had some very strong misgivings about UBW too, and those turned out to be unfounded. So, Fate Zero may likewise make me eat crow.

We start in an extremely large and weirdly empty mansion in Germany, where aristocratic heiress Iri and her Japanese husband Kiritsugu have just had their first baby. Iri is enchanted with their newborn child, but Kiritsugu is melancholy, staring out the window into the snowstorm outside with a grave expression.

Kiritsugu warns Iri that he's going to get her killed, but she's fine with that, and says that that's the purpose that the Einzbern clan created and raised her for in the first place, and that he's done more for her than she could have ever hoped and allowed her to be more than a mere puppet.

I think I'm having translation issues. "This is exactly what I was created for" and "you're helping me be more than just a puppet" are sort of contradictory statements. Anyway, when she talks about her origins and role, she could be speaking figuratively ("my parents only had and raised me for a specific purpose") or literally ("I'm a Servant or some kind of magical construct"). Kiritsugu has command seals on his hand, so that means he's a wizard, so Iri might well be some kind of supernatural entity created or summoned by the Winzberns as Nasoon wizards are wont to do.

They also say that there's a holy grail war coming in 8 years (presumably the one before Stay/Night's), and that she knows he's going to win and bring about a new golden age using the grail's power yadda yadda. Iri then tells him to hold their new baby, Ilyasviel, and stop being so negative at least for now. The music gets extremely dramatic as he turns away from the window to go do that, and we zoom out from the stupidly enormous Castle Einzbern until it's lost in the flurry of white snowflakes. Title.

Well, that intro didn't tell me much of anything. Nor did the dramatic music feel appropriate, given that lack of context. Even moreso than UBW, this series seems to be assuming prior knowledge from the audience.

Flash back to three years before this scene. An Italian priest has summoned two other men to discuss the upcoming grail war. One of those summoned is a much younger priest named Kirei, who has manifested a set of command seals on his hand despite not being a wizard at all, or even knowing that magic exists until now. An extremely rare and potentially highly destabilizing occurrence. The other is not a priest, but Tokiomi Tohsaka; the father of our protagonist from Unlimited Blade Works. In UBW he was said to have died in the previous grail war, so I'm guessing that'll happen during the course of Zero.

Apparently, the priest who was involved with coordinating the grail war in SN/UBW actually was a catholic priest. The upper echelons of the Roman church know, and have been used as neutral arbiters of disputes and conflicts between the mage clans for decades if not centuries. I started to wonder if this meant that the holy grail the wizards are all fighting over actually is THE Holy Grail after all, and - in that typical Nasoon style that so pleased me last time, that question is actually answered almost immediately! For most of this history, the church believed that this was in fact the Cup of Christ, and was therefore seen as a concerned party with an innate vested interest in these wars. It's only recently that they learned that this might have all been a mistake, and that the "grail" of the mage wars probably has nothing to do with Jesus after all. However, the church is still acting as an arbiter, both out of tradition and because there's nobody better to step up to the plate and make sure the wizards stay accountable and don't ruin the world in their petty squabbles, and the wizard community as a whole seems to prefer keeping them in this role as well.

This also answers some of the questions I had from last time. It's an extremely weird answer to those questions, but I wouldn't have expected anything less. Additionally, it feels very convincingly historical, with its combination of grand designs and humiliating follies that people end up just rolling with for want of a better alternative.

Also, Daddy Tohsaka is drinking a giant cup of wine in front of the priests. Catholic priests aren't barred from drinking alcohol outside of communion, but I know that its strongly discouraged, so he's being kind of a jerk here.

And, it turns out that Kirei's manifesting the command seals is an even bigger deal than I thought. It turns out that his father, also a priest (I'm guessing he had him before he joined the clergy? Or else Kirei isn't actually a priest, even though he's dressed like one) referee'd the last grail war as a young man sixty years ago, and he's been asked to reprise that role for this one. The impartiality of the referee is therefore highly suspect, if his own son is a surprise combatant, but they're going through with this anyway. Tohsaka and the elder priest claim that all participants are aware of this situation and are okay with it, but I doubt that. Especially in light of what they tell him next.

In the past, the church has worked to ensure that no one wins the grail wars, for fear of what the winner might use their wish for. This time, they're going to try something else, and use their own surprise combatant to fix the game in favor of the Tohsaka clan. As the Tohsaka's current patriarch, Tokiomi has managed to get himself sufficiently deep in Rome's good graces that they trust him with the power of the grail's wish (he claims to desire to use it to reach "the Root," whatever that means. The church seems to find reaching it to be a desirable outcome I guess). Furthermore, the other two major clans participating in this cyclical feud - the Einzberns and the Matous - have gone in a rather dark direction recently even by occultist standards, and any other opportunistic surprise participants could potentially be even worse.

So, the plan is to have Kirei enter the fray as one of those surprise third parties, and target anyone who's giving the Tohsakas too much trouble while preserving the appearances of being out for himself and just happening to give the Tohsakas an advantage with his actions.

...

Yeah, this guy developing the command marks is NOT a coincidence. Tokiomi did some kind of magic fuckery using Kirei's father's existing involvement in the grail wars to cause it. I'm calling it.

...

On a side note, this scene also establishes that the Servants are actually the spirits of legendary warriors from throughout human history. Which makes the morality of this whole thing a hell of a lot less gray and more just midnight black than I assumed previously. That's not such a surprise, given the general inhumanity of the wizard code of conduct in this setting ("kill any muggle witnesses" as SOP, etc), but it is disheartening.

Anyway, Kirei is going to officially leave the clergy, and spend the next three years until the grail war in Japan where the Tohsakas will covertly provide for his training in magic, and Servant combat in particular. The order for his "retirement" has already been signed.

Kirei takes this better than I'd have expected. He expresses some skepticism over the coincidence of him being randomly getting the command seals, and the other two blabber some internally-inconsistent explanations about the grail having a will of its own and it only picking the people who need it most except only sometimes and...well, I'm pretty sure its all bullshit, so it not making sense isn't an issue.

After he acquiesces, we see the elder priest and Tokiomi off conspiring together. I somehow missed this during the conversation earlier, but the older priest actually IS Kirei's father, and the judge in the previous and upcoming conflicts. And he thinks that his son could use a new calling and a new living place now, since the recent death of Kirei's own wife devastated him and stalled his ecclesiastical career.

Maybe they're supposed to be Orthodox, rather than Catholic? The uniforms and Italian setting both say Catholic, but...priests openly having children and yet remaining priests?

...

You know, it really doesn't help that Urobuchi did this exact same thing in PM3. With the aesthetic and hierarchy of the church Kyouko's father was part of, it was clearly meant to be Catholic, and yet...well...the guy openly had a wife and daughter. Somehow.

While doing this once would be an embarrassing, but somewhat understandable, research failure, doing it TWICE in two different high-budget productions over the course of years when surely it must have been pointed out to him in the meantime is just not giving a shit. Which is sort of uncomfortable, given the history of Japanese Christianity.

...

Two years later, we're in Fuyuki City, Japan, where a guy who looks similar enough and has a similar-sounding-enough name to Kirei that I had to rewatch three times before being sure it's not him is visiting the Tohsakas.

Oh look, here comes babby Rin! Hi babby Rin! You're gonna be a badass one day!

This man, Rin's uncle Kariya, has brought her back a present from his latest extended business trip. He asks her where her sister Sakura is, presumably to give her one too. Wasn't the blue haired girl in UBW named Sakura? She didn't seem to be Rin's sister, just a school acquaintance. It's a pretty common Japanese name, so I guess there could be a couple of Sakuras in the cast. Rin simply answers that Sakura is "gone," and a moment later her mother Aoi explains that she and Tokiomi bartered her off to their "ancient allies" the Matous in exchange for something or other, and that he knows perfectly well why the Matou clan would want "children with mage blood."

He looks horrified at the news. And, considering that the Matous are one of the rival families that Tokiomi and the church have been conspiring against, I'm not sure what their "alliance" is actually worth at this point. The earlier claim that the Matous and Einzberns have been getting increasingly corrupt might have just been propaganda, but based on Kariya's reaction he at least earnestly believes the Matous to be bad news.

God, wizards in this world are an even bigger bunch of assholes than I thought.

Aoi admits that she herself didn't want to do this, but since she's not a mage herself and only married into the family she had no right to express any opinion about what happens to her own daughter. Kariya, who is a born wizard, tells her that even he thinks this is bullshit, and she actually retaliates by calling him a failed wizard who has no right to judge. So, she sold her soul to join this privileged elite, is being treated like absolute shit by it, and is trying to make herself feel better about it by throwing other peripherals under the bus.

The social commentary I could make here are obvious enough that there's no need for me to.

Next thing we know, Kariya is appealing to the Matous' own patriarch, who it turns out actually looks like a pretty reasonable guy without any of the villain coding I was expecHAHAHAHAHAHA HE LOOKS LIKE THIS:

Well, I guess Sansa belongs to the Boltons now.

Also, it appears that Kariya is a prodigal member of the Matou clan himself. So if he fears for Sakura's wellbeing among them, it's more likely due to personal experience than propaganda.

I wonder how exactly Kariya is her and Rin's uncle, in that case, if Aoi isn't a former Matou herself? Maybe "uncle" was just a term of endearment for a family friend and/or honorary Tohsaka.

Anyway, Darth Matou tells Kariya that its his own fault that the Matou's are in such desperate need of heirs with strong magical blood. He was supposed to be their family's continuation as a sorcerous lineage, had he not sworn off magic and rejected the family name. Since it was too late for them to produce another heir on their own, they were forced to buy one instead. Kariya calls bullshit on this; he knows that Darth Matou here has been bringing his own clan into decline in his obsessive pursuit of personal power, and that he's staked everything he has left on an all-or-nothing bid for immortality in next year's grail war. Kariya also calls him a "vampire," which may or may not be literal.

So, he didn't really want an heir, at least primarily. He wanted a child soldier.

...

Why the hell would Tokiomi Tohsaka have agreed to this? He must know at least the generalities of Clan Matou's situation. He really wants to win this grail war himself, if he's essentially bribing the referees. Why wouldn't he want to make his quest easier right off the bat and deny one of the other major contenders the manpower they need? Especially his own daughter. Over his wife's dismay.

Either Darth Matou has some absolutely insane leverage that we don't know about, or Tokiomi is trying some overcomplicated plot that has little to no chances of working on account of its overcomplication. And risking one of his children (of which he only has two, as far as I can tell) on it.

Rin remembered this guy very favorably in UBW. I think that if she'd been old enough to understand what was going on when he disappeared, she would have hated him instead.

...

Kariya tells Darth that if he returns Sakura to her family, he vows to take her place as Darth's champion in the grail war himself. Darth laughs at that, for two reasons. First, he wasn't planning on Clan Matou participating in the upcoming war at all. He has no realistic chance of turning Sakura into a sufficiently effective child soldier in just a year, so he's not even trying to do that. He just wants her to carry on the Matou line, so that there will be solid champions for him in sixty-one years when he can make a proper bid for the grail.

He plans to survive another sixty years, as old and decrepit as he already is? Maybe Kariya actually was being literal when he called him a vampire. How old is he already, I wonder?

The other problem is that Kariya hasn't practiced magic in many years, and he's NEVER trained in magical combat, so the same problem applies when it comes to making him war-ready in just one year's time. Kariya says that he knows Darth can boost him to combat readiness in 12 months if he implants his "crest worms" into him. Kariya knows that that's going to be painful, and will shorten his natural lifespan, but he's willing to do that and to fight for the Matous with the power gained from it in exchange for Kariya's freedom.

Which is when Darth reveals that the worm tank already has a guest.

He's been tossing her in there for a few hours every day so far. She screamed a lot the first three times, but now she's finally gotten to the catatonia stage so it should go much more easily from here. Anyway, she's not what she used to be at this point, so Darth isn't sure if this would be a fair trade.

Um. The fuck?

If he's not in any hurry to boost her power, why would he even...?

If Sakura has powerful mage blood that will let her produce good heirs, why does he need to soup her up with the worms? If the worms can grant magical power and skill to their hosts, why does he need Sakura?

It could just be pure sadism, but um...it's also been established that crest worm implantation can be dangerous, and is pretty much sure to shorten your lifespan at the least. So, if Sakura is actually even slightly valuable to him alive then I have trouble believing he'd do this to her just for sick entertainment either.

"Violated." That's Darth himself choosing that word, not Kariya. Why.

Kariya still wants to do it. Darth agrees that he'll release Sakura if Kariya fights - and WINS - for him in the grail war next year. Just in case he fails though, he's going to keep Sakura and continue doing whatever the hell the worms are doing with her for the entire year until then as his plan B. There's plenty of crest worms to go around, so Kariya can use them alongside her. Or they can take turns. Whatever.

I'm still baffled by him subjecting Sakura to this much physical and mental stress this quickly. He has decades to get her trained or exercised or whatever the worms are supposed to be doing, and getting ahold of her seems to have been a big deal. The way he and Kariya talked about the crest worms made it sound like there's a chance of death even in the short term. Why would he risk his valuable acquisition like this when he has enough time to get the same benefit via conventional means?

We then cut away from this rather baffling piece of grimdark to return to Castle Einzbern. There's a blizzard outside again. Maybe the Einzbern lands were cursed with perpetual snowstorms by an ancient rival or something. The young parents we met in the opening scene have just received intel from a secret informant about the identity of one of this grail war's outside interlopers. He's inbound from a land with a very different sort of occult underground than the clan-based structure shared by Japan and Germany. Where he comes from, wizard society is organized under a complex government, which maintains a world famous boarding school for the magical education of wizard children.

Guess which country it is. Go on. Guess.

The outside interloper is one Professor Kayneth Archibald, a descendant of one of Britain's oldest magical families and a tenured instructor at Type Mogwarts School for Magecraft and Mastery.

Fast forward to just before the war, with Professor Archibald addressing a lecture hall full of students. He informs them - and us - that the reason wizard societies all place great importance on family is because magical power is to some degree inherited, and it accumulates with every generation. Sort of a Lamarkian evolution thing; the more powerful you get, the higher your childrens' inborn aptitudes are likely to be. Thus, the more consecutive generations that a family has been actively practicing magic, the stronger it becomes. This is common knowledge that everyone in the room already knows; he feels that it bears repeating because some idiot in the class nonetheless submitted an essay calling for the democratization of magic. It's not just naive and overly sentimental; it's physically impossible due to the way magic works.

Archibald may or may not have been planning to reveal the identity of the writer for public mockery purposes, but when a thin, dark-haired youth named Waver Velvet stands up in impassioned outrage all by himself at having his essay insulted like that...well, it's sort of out of the professor's hands at that point. That said, the way he shuts Waver down from there does lend credence to Waver's theory maybe not being quite as stupid as he made it seem. Archibald says that the Velvets are only three generations old, and that he therefore has no ability to even propose such sweeping paradigm shifts. Which doesn't make any sense, logically. Having more mana or whatever doesn't make you better able to understand the theory behind magic in the abstract, I don't think. We're talking about the science here, not the engineering. Archibald appealing to the Velvets' muggleborn young status to reject a theoretical proposal out of hand is stronger evidence than Waver could have ever presented on his own that there's bigotry at work in maintaining the status quo.

And, well, even if the Lamarkian mana-accumulation model isn't completely bunk, being good at magic obviously depends at least to a significant extent on training and education. Otherwise, schools like this one wouldn't be able to exist. So, the standard model could be total bullshit like wizard phrenology, or it could be totally correct, but there's so much bias and vested interest built up around it that it's probably very hard to tell how much of it isn't fabricated.

As he storms out of the lecture hall, Waver rants about what just happened in a way that makes me a bit more skeptical of him as well as his rhetorical opponent. He attributes Archibald's rejection of the thesis to jealousy, and assumes that his professor resents him for his obvious genius and superiority. Um. Right. Waver is exactly the kind of egotistical personality who you'd expect to come up with idiotic, poorly-researched ideas and demand that everyone else take them seriously. Maybe that isn't what he did in this case, but he seems like the kind of person who would. Anyway, while stomping his way down the hall, he bumps into a custodian. He lies about having been sent to go get something for Professor Archibald when the custodian asks him why he's not in class, to which the custodian replies "oh, I'll bet he sent you to get this thing I was just on my way to deliver to his office" and hands him a small package. It's book-shaped, just like the box with the grail war paraphernalia that Rin got from her dad in UBW.

Um. Bad call, mister janitor. Bad, bad call.

Waver runs off to open the package, and what he finds in it leads him to the Type Mogwarts library to research this "grail war" thing.

According to his frenzied research, the grail wars started two hundred years ago, when the powerful Tohsaka, Einzbern, and Makiri families worked together to summon a powerful wish-granting device to the world (I guess the Makiris were supplanted by the Matous at some point since). They sought to use it for each of their various interests, but the artifact that may or may not actually be the Holy Grail of christian lore would only answer one wish from one wisher before returning from whence it came. Their alliance turned into a bloody battle, and in the end they lost the window of opportunity and the grail departed the mortal realm again with no wish having been granted. Since then, as an aftereffect of that great summoning spell, the grail has returned again every sixty years, and each time there has been a more formalized battle over it. With each return, the grail places its mark on seven champions - always from different families - who are near its initial summoning site at Fuyoki, Japan in the time leading up to it. These seven then gain the power to summon the spirits of great warriors of the past to fight for them in the way that the grail itself seems to have mandated. In order to enter the contest, these candidates will also need a relic with which to summon their champion. Like Tohsaka's Archer-box, the package that Waver just intercepted contains such a relic.

Winning - or even just performing well - in the grail war would prove that even very young wizard families like the Velvets are as capable as the old dynasties. Prejudice means nothing here; it's going to be a contest of pure ability. So, he steals the relic, runs away from Type Mogwarts, and jumps on a plane to Japan.

I'm a little shy of halfway through this 45 minute extended pilot, and I think this is where I'll stop for today. It's not just (or even mostly) because of the length. So far, "Summoning Ancient Heroes" has been very hard to get into, even compared to my previous Fasutype experience. That Game of Thrones joke I made earlier turned out to be surprisingly fitting; this episode reminds me a lot of the first "Game of Thrones" TV pilot. It just throws a fuckton of names at you, each of them connected to multiple layers of conspiracy, family drama, and politics, and jumps around between them faster than I can keep up. I found "Game of Thrones" a very easy and accessible watch after the pilot, but only because I rewatched said pilot multiple times to make sure I had all my shit straight before continuing.

I think I'm going to have to do that here too. Part two will be up tomorrow.