Fate/Zero S1E8: “The Mage-Slayer”

Flash forward again to a golden future, when Type Moon is actually somewhat entertaining!

The title is probably a reference to Kirei and/or Gray. I guess it could also mean whoever ends up putting Gilles down, since he's the "caster" and whatnot, but I think he's going to stick around at least a little bit longer than eight episodes. Anyway, we left off at a three-way battle between the Einzberns with Arturia, Archie with Diarmuid, and Gilles who probably has Uwu trotting a few blocks behind him like a duckling or whatever. The other players were doing...something? Last episode was mostly focused on just this bunch, as I recall. Anyway, let's go!


Maya is leading Iri away from the ridiculous castle that the Einzberns set up in the middle of fucking Japan, as per Kirei's instructions. Iri is visibly unhappy at leaving Arturia to fight without her, but her reprieve comes in the form of another ping on the magical sensors. She's detected yet another intruder on the castle grounds, and this one is interposing itself right along her and Maya's course, as if preparing an ambush.

Now, how could anyone know exactly where they were headed? I guess this is just the most likely escape route. Or else, word has just gotten out that Gilles is at the castle, and one of the other players just happened to approach along this route to get there. The ghosthunt for Gilles is still on, and even if several of the contestants are ignoring the truce the others might well just be doing what they're supposed to.

Maya tells Iri that they should take a more circuitous route to escape the grounds without getting in anyone else's way and/or walking into an ambush. Iri mentally accesses some other sensor system, and reports that she's confirmed the new intruder's identity as Kirei. If she can identify specific intruders just by thinking at them, why did she bother with that crystal ball earlier? Eh, maybe Kirei's aura is just super recognizable due to its intense radiation of Urobuchi-land Christian self hatred. Anyway, confirmation of Kirei being out and about when he's supposed to be cloistered in church time-out, after his stand having already been sighted by Gray. Roll intro. After the intro, Iri convinces Maya (who didn't really need much convincing, after her own somewhat baffling encounter with Kirei a few episodes ago) that "swooping in on a running wizard's duel and ganking the combatants while they're distracted" is exactly Kirei's MO as a Vatican mage-hunter. Meaning that if he gets to the castle where Gray and Archie are fighting, he's going to be perfectly in his element and will probably kill both of them. So, change of plans.

Nice to see Iri taking initiative in proposing this, though again Maya didn't seem to take much convincing.

...hmm. You know, with the disconnect between Kirei's relatively sympathetic introduction and how he's been framed in his conflicts with the other belligerents, and the knowledge that this is a prequel that assumes you've already seen F/SN...it feels like the story is adding some level of nuance and humanity to a character I'm supposed to already think of as a monster. I was kind of annoyed by the hypocrisy of the show seeming to demonize Kirei for being an assassin while forgiving Gray for being an (from the reports we're given) even more ruthless assassin. But, in context, Kirei being a major villain later in the timeline and the audience being expected to know this would explain most of it.

Now, sure, some of the characters are still being hypocritical about this, since he hasn't done whatever horrible shit we're supposed to hate him for in the future yet, but that's just par for the course for Fate wizards.

Well, I guess that conversation between Kirei and Gilgamesh earlier was supposed to be the beginning of Kirei's Join The Dark Side arc, then.

Back in the castle, we pick up with Gray shooting Archie with that +3 pistol of shield penetration that he just drew. As I suspected, his initial bullet barrage with that measly +1 assault rifle was just a trick to get Archie overconfident in his magical shields' protection so he'd hold still for the actual deadly shot. It's kind of the same trick that Diarmuid used on Arturia back in the bridge battle, with his two spears. Unfortunately, the mercury construct's shield still obstructs Gray's vision, so the bullet only hits Archie in the shoulder rather than the head or heart. But still, he's seriously injured now, and might have to withdraw.

On a critical note, the music for this fight was way more dramatic than it merited. That chanting and high-octane metal should be saved for climactic battles, not an inconclusive skirmish against a secondary antagonist.

Archie is losing a lot of blood, and doesn't seem to have any particularly good healing magic on hand, so he should probably retreat. However, his pride does not allow him to do so. Being outwitted and outfought by a filthy low-borne with only limited magic at his disposal is not something he can live with. So, at this point it's victory or death for Archie.

...

Archie is starting to give me some real "middle class anxiety" vibes. He's extremely invested in the rigid hierarchy of wizard society, but he also seems really insecure about his own place in it.

His family is supposed to be Old Blood wizard aristocracy. Maybe they've fallen into relatively obscurity recently, for some reason? Or perhaps he's from a lesser cadet branch of the family, or is a bastard son who had to fight and wheedle to get their surname? Or maybe he was just massively exaggerating about his clan's age and importance, as frustrated middle classers often do.

...

Gray, meanwhile, figures that Archie is now going to be concentrating much more of his mana on empowering those shields, which probably means that even the +3 bullets won't be able to get through again. That's fine though. Gray knows he can adapt to that tactic as well.

Outside in the forest, Maya sights Kirei and opens up with a flood of bullets. He collapses straight down onto his knees without any sign of being acted upon by the bullets' momentum and falls to the ground without so much as twitching afterward. And, like a total dumbass, Maya runs right up to his "corpse" to confirm the kill.

Don't Maya and Gray kill wizards for a living? Has she really never seen this trick before?

Well, surprise surprise, the physically impossible corpse is an illusion, and the real Kirei ganks the fool while she's leaning over it. Who could have possibly seen that twist coming? The wounded Maya tells Iri to flee, but Iri does not flee. Instead, she conjures a hawk-shaped construct out of glowing magical thread stuff and sends it swooping at Kirei. Kirei parries it with his seemingly indestructible forearms (he used those to block some of Maya's bullets a minute ago), but that just makes it unravel into a web of equally indestructible threads that tie him to a nearby tree. Apparently, this is a special anti-anti-wizard-assassin trick she learned from Gray.

That's...quite a trick for her to have been keeping in her pocket all this time. But then, from the sound of things, it's only really effective as a counter to a specific build, so that makes sense.

Iri tells the wounded Maya to finish him off while he's restrained. Maya is too wounded to comply. Then, Kirei somehow magically breaks the tree that he's attached to while Iri is stuck maintaining concentration on the threads. After he breaks free, Maya NOW, all of a sudden, is able to draw her pistol, just in time to wave it ineffectually at Kirei before he beats her unconscious.

So, Iri and Maya accomplished nothing, despite producing a lightshow.

Just like Arturia never accomplishes anything, despite producing lightshows.

I'm sensing a pattern here.

Cut back to Arturia and Diarmuid, still tediously fending off wave after wave of Gilles' tentacle monsters. They really need to get that broken bullshit of a tome out of his hands.

Arturia comes up with a plan, and asks Diarmuid if he can "run on the wind." I'm not sure if that's a translation blunder, or some specific magical power that Irish folk heroes are supposed to have, but either way he indicates that he can. So, Arturia summons a big wind blast using Excalibur. Why does she have this wind motif, again? You'd think that if the legend of King Arthur would be associated with any natural element it would be water, right? Well, for whatever reason she can airbend, and Diarmuid "runs on the wind" to dash past the tentacle monsters and land a good hit on the grimoire with his anti-healing spear. That apparently dealt enough damage to the book to disable it, because Gilles' pets disintegrate back into the ether a moment later.

Okay, Arturia actually got to be effective in a meaningful way! Great! A cynical part of me says that this was only allowed to happen because she was teamed up with a male character to enact the plan, but still, it was HER plan that Diarmuid helped carry out, and it worked. So, good for that!

Back to Archie vs. Gray inside the castle. Archie is blasting walls out of his way. Gray seems to be laying low and waiting for the blood loss to tire him out. They eventually come face to face again. Archie blathers about how he's going to capture Gray and slowly torture him to death over the course of years. Gray responds by doing some new trick with his bullets that we don't get to see the details or effects of before the cut back to the hot stand-on-stand action.

Well, not so much "action" as "Gilles summoning a mist cloud and teleporting away." So, post-action.

Cowardly enough to run away when his book gets damaged. Pay attention, Arturia.

Arturia and Diarmuid have the area to themselves now, and start staring at each other. Before the underwear can start flying though, Diarmuid senses that his master is in serious danger. That means that he's probably about to get killed by Arturia's master, so she should go after Diarmuid and try to stop him. However, she chooses not to.

Gray hasn't exactly given her a reason to give a shit about him winning the Grail War, or even surviving it, so I can't really bring myself to blame her. He can burn a command seal if he really wants to not die that much.

Heh, I wonder. If Diarmuid and Arturia can frustrate their masters into using up all their command seals, could they then turn on them, hire some other wizards to keep them imprisoned but alive, and then just spend however many years it takes until the jackasses escape sticking the sword in the stone? It's an idea for sure.

Cut to some lady we've never seen before doing some philosobabble about life and death or whatever. It looks like she's in an abandoned factory or something. And telling someone that she's fashioning magic superbullets out of a pair of rib bones she just removed from them.

She has the same hair color as Maya. A relative of hers, perhaps?

It turns out the person she's talking to is a younger version of Gray. Okay, this is a rather awkwardly inserted explanation for the weapon he's using against Archie now. So, this person who may or may not be a relative of Maya's extracted some of Gray's own bones and used them to make these special bullets that cause a wizard's mana to go haywire when they contact a spell effect. He only has a finite number of these bullets to use throughout his career; presumably, using any more of his body to produce more of them would be crippling rather than just autofellatio-enabling.

Jump back to the present, where Gray has just used one of his few remaining superbullets to shoot Archie's shield while he has his full mana power pouring into it. Archie's magic burns out of control, ravaging his body in a series of hideously ruptured blood vessels and violent seizures. The prick falls in a pool of his own blood, his hydro-golem collapsing into a mass of inert quicksilver around him.

He's still breathing, but probably won't be for long. Not one to take chances, Gray raises one of his guns and is about to double tap him when Diarmuid appears between them. He informs Gray that he could probably kill him right now if he tried, but that he's choosing not to because doing that would mean Arturia's disappearance. So, Gray should really thank his stand for being so honorable and not giving Diarmuid reason to be more pragmatic here.

He takes his barely-alive master and vanishes.

I foresee Gray being really, really mad at Arturia next episode, and her being extremely smug at him. Like, full on "you mad bro?" smugness. I look forward to this.

She also, we find out, has a perfectly good excuse for not chasing Diarmuid. Kirei is manhandling Iri trying to get information out of her. Specifically, he's asking, um...why she's defending the castle, and whose orders she's acting on. Um...that seems like a pair of really dumb questions to be asking? Anyway, he only flees when one of his hashashins appears and warns him that Arturia is inbound, thus providing Arturia with her excuse.

So, after guessing or inferring what Iri is, he's forced to flee and leave her and Maya unconscious with just a few quick stab wounds to keep Iri down. As he retreats though, he's baffled by the fact that Iri and Maya don't seem to be hired or magically compelled. They risked their lives to try to save Gray seemingly of their own volition, for personal rather than mercenary or compulsory reasons. This bothers him.

Okay, this is a type of bad writing that I've seen Gen Urobuchi do before. Where a character needs to learn something or hear something to propel their arc forward, so they ask an inane question that they have no in-character reason to be asking in order to be told it. Kirei doesn't have any reason to care who Iri and Maya are or exactly why they're part of the Einzbern defenses. If he's already inferred that Iri is an Einzbern homunculus, it becomes even more baffling that he'd see reason to ask why she's serving her creators and their appointed champion, even if he doesn't know about the marriage. He'd definitely want to interrogate her about the castle's remaining defenses and so forth, but why would he even THINK to assume any motive on hers and Maya's parts beyond "programmed to serve the Einzberns" and "hired/indebted muscle," respectively?

As it is, he's haunted by the idea of Gray having friends and loved ones who actually care about him, which Kirei himself lacks. But, again. Him asking the questions that lead him to that conclusion, when other answers that perfectly fit his preconceptions are so incredibly easy are seemingly obvious AND he has limited time to be asking more pressing questions in, is absurd.

When Iri comes to, Arturia is kneeling over her. She informs her that Maya is badly hurt, but that Iri's wounds appear to be much worse. She should hold still and wait for Gray to arrive, so she doesn't lose too much blood to those knife-wounds Kirei left her with.

It turns out that that's not an issue, though. Before leaving Europe, the Einzberns surgically implanted Excalibur's scabbard - the artifact that they used to summon Arturia in the first place - into Iri's homunculus physique. It wasn't working at full capacity when Kirei stabbed her, due to Arturia being far away, but as she got closer its anti-hemorrhaging power got stronger and stronger, and by the time Arturia got up close the bleeding had been shut off entirely. Explaining why she woke up right at that moment. So, she's able to heal herself and Maya up, now that Arturia is right next to her and the scabbard (which they refer to as "Avalon," confusingly. Isn't that supposed to be the island Camelot was built on? I've never heard the name associated with the exscabbard before) is at full power.

End episode.


Some clever twists throughout, but plagued by some of the author's distinctive writing gaffs. Explanation flashbacks only occurring after the fact in a way that breaks up the narrative and feels like ad-hoc ass covering. Characters briefly doing or saying batshit things because he forgot to make the plot beats propel their arcs in the intended direction and needing to course correct. A flavor of "pessimism" that always seems to coincidentally end up looking like contempt for femininity (though his handling of female characters is at least better than most of his peers in the industry. That Joss Whedon comparison does have some positives associated with it as well). Etc. Some of the same things that started bugging me about PM3 on rewatch, basically.

So, it's a much weaker episode than the previous, even though I liked the stuff with Arturia and Diarmuid's evolving relationship and Arturia actually getting to determine a battle's outcome for once. I think part of the issue is that Archie and Gilles are both very one-note antagonists, and neither Gray nor Maya have earned my investment. So, I cared about the fight against Gilles because I like Arturia and Diarmuid, but their antagonist's shtick is getting old, and I only cared about the battle between Gray and Archie at all because of Arturia and Diarmuid's reliance on them to keep existing. Kirei, meanwhile, is sort of an enigma to me. I feel like I COULD develop feelings about him one way or the other, but the prequel-villain-framing thing is making it harder for me to take him at face value.

Overall, the ratio of stuff I cared about to stuff I didn't care about was skewed toward the latter in this ep. That's a pretty subjective assessment, but even ignoring those biases of mine I feel like this wasn't as tightly written as some of the previous installments.