Fate/Zero S2E12: "Fate/Zero" (continued)

So, the old man and Waver exchange a wink, and Waver reassures the woman that Alex called him from London this morning; he made it to the airport and then back home no problem. Well, he did return to the place from whence he came, so it's true in spirit if not in fact. The woman babbles a little about how she didn't see any calls in their phone record, but she's sure she must have just missed it somehow. Waver and the husband exchange a conspiratorial smile and wink.

So, the husband is keeping her in the dark? Conspiring with the mind-raping wizard child who he's only had a single earnest conversation with to keep his own wife ignorant of what he did to them? Also, while he may or may not be free of Waver's hypnosis at this point, she definitely isn't.

On one hand, the two of them have been happier since Waver recruited them than they'd been in a long time before that. I could see him not wanting to ruin that for her. But like...at the cost of her agency? And...basically elevating Waver above her in his hierarchy of confidantes? The scene is definitely framed in a way that both makes her the butt of the joke, and puts its sympathies with the other two.

Also, the old man has the cunning and willpower to break free of the brainwashing on his own. The old woman not only lacks that competence, but also doesn't even deserve to learn the truth.

I mean, is anyone surprised at this point? Anyone at all? Even a little?

Waver changes the subject and says that before continuing his studies, he'd like to take some time off and travel around the world a little. I'm not sure if you can just opt out of junior high school and resume at will like that without legal issues, but maybe he's told them that it's a weird private school or something. They're both a little surprised to hear him say that.

Alexander inspired him to forge his own path and engage in lateral problem solving instead of just staying in the mould he's been shoved in. Yay Waver.

In order to travel though, he'll need to save up some money. And...he wants to do it here, with them.

I'm not sure what Waver's own family situation is, but I guess his clan would probably just refuse to let him deviate from the traditional English wizard lifestyle, aka seven years at Terf Academy and then a petty ministry job oppressing goblins or something.

So, while they (her especially) are sort of discombobulated by this, they tell Waver he's welcome to stay with them while he works to build travel funds. The other thing Waver learned from Alexander was that he needs to make sure the people he uses as tools feel like they're getting something back from him, of course. Which has the transformative practical effect of...making Waver less rude to them while he otherwise does exactly the same thing as before. Talk about character development. The man gives Waver another wink as his wife babbles in joy as she looks forward to having Waver over semi-longterm.

...

You know, if Waver is still fine with mind controlling muggles to get what he wants as long as he keeps them happy meanwhile, why does he even need to work? There are a million ways he could steal or grift as much money as he needs without violating this principle in the space of like, three days.

It's not like following Alexander the Great's example is going to make you NOT do some pillaging to finance your next campaign, after all. I'm not even just talking about the historical Alexander, the Fate Zero version of him was explicitly down with this.

...

So, part of this ending for Waver works for me. Him deciding not to go back to the academy where no one respects him due to his low-status family and instead going off on an adventure to improve himself in other ways is good, and I can see how Alexander's influence helped him make that decision. The stuff with the family, and the ethical questions that were (explicitly) raised but then never resolved throughout the series, though...it's incoherent at best, and reprehensible at worst.

After breakfast, Waver goes upstairs to the guestroom he's been staying in. His bed is clean and organized. The other bed, and the rest of the room around it, is a pigsty. Waver mumbles to himself about how a ghost could possibly leave that much of a tangible mess as he starts the slow process of cleaning it up. He eventually finds the history book he bought, and looks at it wistfully for a moment before putting it on the bookshelf. Murmuring to himself about how he really wished Alexander could "take him with him," but he understands that he "just isn't there yet."

Does he mean he wished he could have taken him into the battle with Gilgamesh? That they could have gotten the Grail and gone off to conquer the world together? That they could have died together? Not sure. Could be any. Probably not the last one though; he doesn't seem that shaken up.

As he continues organizing, he finds that videogame that Alexander wanted them to play. He never even got to unpack it, or the T-shirt that came with it.

He fondly chuckles about how Alexander was such a dork in a lot of ways. For a moment he looks sad, but then gazes out the window at the sun, smiles, and sits down to give the single player campaign a try. He refused to play any games at all and called them a stupid waste of time, back in early season one, so this is illustrative.

Overall...I'll give Waver's epilogue a C+. Maybe a B-. Most of it works.

Next up is Tokiomi Tohsaka's funeral. Kirei is officiating. Erm...Tokiomi was Catholic? Or at least, pretending to be Catholic? Weird. What's even weirder is the fact that Kirei is reading a passage from the Book of Job in Japanese-accented English.

Why English?

Kirei is Japanese. Tokiomi is Japanese. Most of those present are at least probably Japanese. Unless Kirei is (contrary to all appearances) Anglican, English has no particular significance to the religion. If you wanted an exotic, archaic-seeming funeral speech, wouldn't it have made more sense for him to give it in Latin? Or, if he's had a broad enough ecclesiastical education, in the Book of Job's original Hebrew?

This might also be a problem with Type Moon as a whole, in which case Kinoko Nasu deserves at least half of the blame. But, as I've said in some earlier Fate/Zero reviews, I know that Gen Urobuchi has fucked Roman Catholicism up this badly and worse before, in this and other works of his. And yet, he KEEPS putting it in his stories, or (as in this case) emphasizing its prominence in works that already contained it. Even after people must have pointed these issues out to him. Just proud, swaggering, wilful ignorance.

Kirei finishes his thickly accented English verse, terminating in Job's determination to one day look upon God with his own eyes. I guess I'm supposed to infer that Kirei has accepted Ahriman as his new god and chose this passage to commemorate his new life's goal? Something like that.

After the funeral, Kirei and Rin step out onto the sidewalk next to the cemetary, where he compliments her on her tragically earlier-than-expected debut, and says he's sure she will be a great matriarch of the Tohsaka clan as soon as it exists again. Rin just glares at him. She never liked Kirei, even from the beginning, as I recall. Either envy about him talking so much of her father's attention, or some kind of "dogs can sniff out evil" thing. The latter would be interesting, because it would mean that Rin is secretly a dog, and that would be a more interesting twist than anything else in this season.

In response to her acid-eyed silence, Kirei asks how much her new Crest is hurting her; the camera angle changes, to show that she's clutching her forearm in pain. This gets her to speak, but only a little bit, and very defensively at that.

Ignoring her hostility, Kirei says that her father prepared the Crest transfer process ahead of time very thoroughly (though he later mentions that there's a later stage of Crest implantation that Kirei will have to perform on her, so I guess it isn't all just stuff that Tokiomi rigged up for her ahead of time). I guess that's kinda like writing your will, for wizards. Anyway, her family's accumulated knowledge and power is funnelling itself into her now. It's apparently a bit of a process, so she hasn't absorbed all of it yet, but it's started, and so have its painful side effects. Rin doesn't speak. So, then Kirei tells her that she should go get her mother now.

...did Kirei turn Wife Tohsaka into a zombie or something? Or maybe it's just Gilgamesh in a really good costume? I can just imagine Gilgamesh asking Kirei where the hell they're supposed to get a perfectly convincing Wife Tohsaka costume, only for Kirei to cackle and soliloquy about how valuable such a costume would be to him, so then a fuming Gilgamesh has to fish it out of his treasury cursing through his clenched teeth.

Granted, I don't know if Gilgamesh can still access his treasury in his current form. If he can though, then this is a possibility.

Well, the actual answer ends up being a hell of a lot more baffling than either of my proposals.

She...survived?

Daisy strangled her for a while, but DIDN'T kill her, and then did his big Revenge of the Sith "nuuuuuuuu" even though she was still breathing?

Did Kirei save her? We know he does have some healing powers, since he used them on Daisy after he lost his duel with Tokiomi. Okay, it's possible then. WHY would he save her, though? Would he have even had time to get her to a hospital and/or preserve her until an ambulance could get there, even if he for some reason wanted to? He and Gilgamesh were running around doing a lot of shit that night, both before and after the le epic prank scene.

Maybe Rin valued her mother enough for a copy of her to appear in Gilgamesh's treasury, and Kirei broke her spine before turning her loose. I can just picture Gilgamesh sulkily talking about how fucking lame this woman is, he can't believe anyone treasures her this much, as he dumps her out of the portal. Kirei says that he didn't think she's lame at all, breaks the copy's spine, and then says "but now I sure do!" and they both go "DOHHHHHHHHOHOHOHOHO." Yes, that is exactly what happened.

Anyway, Rin rolls her over from...somewhere? Had she just left her alone in the graveyard as everyone was leaving, until now?

Or...no, wait. She was apparently sitting in her wheelchair, alone, in the middle of the sidewalk, about twenty feet behind Rin. The blocking makes it look like they just left her there for the entire funeral lmao.

So, Rin wheels Wife over. Wife asks whose funeral this is, and babbles that if someone died she should get Tokiomi's black formal suit ready for him, and also tells Rin to make sure Sakura is getting ready and then mistakes Kirei for Tokiomi. Well, she might be wheelchair bound, but at least mentally she's exactly the same as her original self.

Kirei asks Rin if she needs anything from him before he leaves Japan for half a year. Hmm, wonder where he's going. She insists that she needs nothing from him. After an uncomfortable silence, Kirei pulls out the alkahest dagger and tells Rin that her father gave it to him, and now he'd like to give it to her.

I'm surprised he did that. He's a knife guy, and this is a really, really good knife. I guess Gilgamesh has a bunch more of them in his treasury, eh.

Receiving a token of her father finally breaks through Rin's defenses, and she starts crying. Turning back toward the graveyard and sobbing pitiably. Kirei stares at the back of her head, and grins. Did he actually give up that magical dagger just for the opportunity to see Rin cry at this particular moment? Like, seriously, is that it?

Well, the scene ends on that note. And...fuck, yeah, definitely gonna make this a three parter, because the next scene after this one looks like it's going to be the most painful yet.