Fate/Zero S2E4: “the Eighth Contract” (continued)

So, Iri and Maiya are in the car. Arturia is motorcycling on ahead of them to scout for shenanigans in their path. Iri is still struggling to stay conscious, in visible pain. Maiya asks her if Grey knows how bad her condition has gotten, and she replies that yes, he does. Then, Iri tells Maiya to swear she's never going to tell Arturia what she's about to disclose to her; she has a couple of difficult battles ahead of her, and she can't afford to be preoccupied.

Maiya doesn't say anything, but gives her a bit of an encouraging headnod as she drives. So, Iri continues.

First, Iri asks if Grey told her that Iri's an artificial life form. Maiya says that yes, he did. Arturia also already knows that of course, so this couldn't be the thing that Iri wants kept secret from her. The real big secret she's been sitting on this whole time is that she isn't just a basic "artificial human with some minor differences for better and worse" homunculus. Apparently, the Holy Grail needs a "vessel" in order to manifest, and the reason she's losing body functionality is because it's starting to do so.

The reason she was given sentience was to ensure that the vessel would have a survival instinct and a desire to safeguard itself until the time for it to be filled arrives.

O...kay. So um. Questions. So many fucking questions raised by this.

...

1. If the Einzburns didn't create a homunculus for this purpose, would the Grail War just not happen? Or would the Grail just pick some random person in the area to possess, just like what happens with the unclaimed Master slots?

2. Is it always the Einzburns who do this? Like, is this just part of their job in the war? Doesn't that give them an unfair advantage, knowing exactly where the Grail will manifest ahead of time? Do the three houses take turns preparing vessels for the Grail? Or...did the Einzburns just make this secret preparation to prevent the Grail from going to a random person without telling the Tohsakas and Matous? What would have happened if two or three clans tried to do that same thing at once? Why hasn't that happened until now?

3. What happens if Iri gets killed before she turns into the Holy Grail? Does the Grail just pick someone else, even if it's already started to get into her?

4. Related to the above: if Iri's purpose is to let the Einzburns know where the Grail will appear, why the hell are they sending her into battle where she might get killed (or worse, captured) and deprive them of that advantage?

5. Related to the above: why the actual fuck are they also using their Grail Vessel homunculus to marry Grey and produce their heir? Is it too much trouble to create one to be the Vessel, and a more human one to marry Grey and act as mother to their heir and extra support caster for his role in the War? Isn't that putting a LOT of extra stress, risk, etc on their Vessel? I remember it being said that homunculi are an Einzburn specialty; is having two of them at once still beyond their ability?

...

Iri then compounds the issue by revealing that the reason she's lasted in humanoid form for as long as she has is because of the scabbard. In addition to preventing blood loss, the scabbard also helps with other degenerative conditions; this is why she's been wearing it instead of letting Arturia keep it or giving it to Grey. However, it works much better when Arturia is nearby, since without her Heroic Spirit's presence the ancient artifact's magic is less potent.

...which is why the worst incidents Iri has suffered so far all happened when Arturia was in the same room as her?

...and why she just sent Arturia to scout out ahead of them while she's still recovering from one?

...

Did the localization team just roll a nat 1 here and completely flip the meaning of what Iri is saying? If she's supposed to be saying that Arturia's presence makes the scabbard NOT work for her as well (say, because it feels its true mistress nearby and wants to be worn by her instead or whatever), then everything we've seen makes sense. And also would add another layer of tragedy to their relationship, if Iri enjoys her time with Arturia so much and is so acutely aware of how little time she has left that she's willing to physically hurt herself to spend it with her.

Yeah, that makes so much sense that it's hard for me to believe that it ISN'T what Iri's meant to be saying here. So...maybe this really is just a translation flop? Or...no, I just watched the English dub version of this scene. Last time I had localization concerns (with the contract scene), doing this suggested that something was indeed being lost in translation. This time though, while the wording is slightly different, the meaning is the same.

IE, the exact fucking opposite of what we've seen repeatedly onscreen.

-____-

Either Iri doesn't know what she's talking about, or...well, no, what I was about to say would have been too harsh of me. To be fair, Iri's condition did visibly worsen a minute after Arturia left in THIS scene, at least, even if it worked the opposite of that in many previous ones. It's compromised by the fact that this is still framed as an aftereffect of her collapse last episode, which happened while Arturia was two feet away from her, but still, there is at least one degree of separation between the irreconcilable assertions.

So, this still isn't quite RWBY tier goldfish-brain by the writer. It's kind of veering close, but it's not that bad yet.

...

Maiya asks why Iri is telling her this, and Iri explains that Maiya is the one friend she has right now who she knows won't just pity her. Maiya acknowledges this, thanks Iri for confiding in her, and assures her that she will see Iri through to the end even if it costs her her own life. Then...

...

.........

Okay, this next part is the most bizarre bit of dialogue in the entirety of Fate/Zero up until now. Surpassed only by insane Gilles and Uwu ramblings.

Maiya tells Iri to please,

, just as she herself intends to do. All while sensitive piano music plays and they share a sort-of embrace. Iri then says "thank you," and they drive on to their safehouse.

If she'd said "die for the world we're trying to create," or "die for the cause," I could get this. But that's not what she said.

...

Is Grey supposed to come across like some kind of fucked up cult leader? The reason I ask is because Grey is coming across like some kind of fucked up cult leader.

Until now, I had the impression that the three of them (or at least, Grey and Maiya; Iri's motives might be down to programmed Einzbern loyalty than anything else) were driven by their mysterious plans for the Grail Wish. Now though, it's some quality of Grey in particular that makes them want HIM to get the wish. It's HIS vision that they're all fighting for, and dying for, and reminding each other to stay loyal to.

And we still haven't been told what that wish even is.

Also, he's fucking both of them.

Iri at least has a personality of her own. Maiya though? Well, it's kinda funny that this episode already reminded me of RWBY at least once, because Maiya is just full-on Titninja Classic. I got those vibes previously, but I cut her a lot of slack because she a) isn't really visually sexualized for the audience, and b) gets to do cool stuff while Grey isn't onscreen with her. But at this point it's clear that she has nothing in her life outside of him, no motivations that aren't subordinate to his, and also that none of the cool stuff she's done was her own idea but rather his plans that she's been obediently carrying out. And, while she at least isn't being stripperized in typical animu fashion, her supporting role just happening to include "concubine" as well as "support sniper," despite that not really contributing anything to the relationship drama or factional politics or stakes is...suspect.

It's even more suspect when you consider the following data points:

1. Grey was - from what I've absorbed through osmosis - a posthumous character in the original Fate. A morally complicated father figure whose legacy the protagonist grapples with before eventually understanding, accepting, and surpassing (I suspect that this is also where we're supposed to know what his wish was going to be from).

2. Kirei was - based mostly on the vibes I've picked up on from his framing in Zero up until now - a fairly major villain in the original Fate.

3. Zero's repeated stomping on Arturia's ideals and competence (which I've been told are massively twisted from how the original work portrayed them) takes part largely in the context of her friction with Grey. Not entirely, of course. The Banquet of Kings shitstorm didn't involve him. But most often yes. Also, for some reason she forgets about her most powerful abilities unless he reminds her to use them.

So. Important and interesting, but largely mysterious, background character from the original story. A new writer makes him the center of his own installment, makes him super edgy and juvenilely "cool" and also always right, gives him a harem of hot girlfriends who are obsessed with how great he is, has him shit all over other major characters who the author didn't like, and also makes the villain inexplicably obsessed with him as an opponent. With absolutely no apparent self awareness by said author.

Feel like you might have seen this before? Maybe once, or twice, or a million times, give or take? Say, on AO3, FF.net, someplace like that?

I'm going to generously assume that Urobuchi at least wasn't thinking about the whacky flavors of 19-20th century Christian occultism that interpret the Grail as being a feminine complement to the spirit of christ. Because if so, then framing these elements the way that Zero is framing them would also be saying "my mary sue version of Kiritsugu Emiya is also Jesus."

Like I said. I don't think he intended that part. But frankly, this whole thing is embarrassing enough even without that possible aggravating factor that it barely makes a difference.

...

So. The titninjamobile drives away. Back at the Tohsaka manor, Toto asks Kirei what all this about him having a history of bad blood with the Einzburns is supposed to be about, and why he didn't tell him. I guess he didn't know about that attempt Kirei made on Iri and Maiya during the battle of Castle Einzburn Japan Franchise, then? I'd assumed that Toto sent him on that mission, or at least okayed it, since he was all aboard the "truce shmuce" train himself, but apparently not. Kirei doesn't answer. Um...okay then? Toto tells him that given the circumstances, he has no choice but to accept Iri's terms and send Kirei away until this is over.

This would have been a great time for Kirei to say "I told you that dragging me to the negotiations and confirming for the Einzburns that we're in cahoots was a terrible fucking idea you knuckle-dragging imbecile," and maybe he actually does say that, but it cuts away before we can hear his reply. Eh, it's canon.

Jump ahead a little to Kirei in his guestroom, packing his suitcase to leave the city. Complaining to himself about how he'll have to abandon the Grail War without ever having gotten to suck Grey's dick. I mean, without getting a chance to understand Grey's motivations and get to know him as an opponent and as a person.

While staring longingly at a candlelit photo of him.

Snek teleports into the room and asks him why he still hasn't done the thing to enter the War.

...wait, CAN you even leave the War if he have a Command Seal on you? He does still have that Command Seal that he mysteriously got while chatting with Snek in the season one finale, right? Obviously he'd have kept this a secret from Toto, but he himself must know. And yet, he seemingly was planning on leaving anyway, as if the war wouldn't just follow him almost immediately?

For reasons that I am not able to understand, Kirei says that for his entire life, for as long as he can remember, he's been searching for something. What that thing is, he doesn't know. Why he wants it, he also doesn't know. Is the implication supposed to be that Gilgamesh is encouraging him to win the War, get the Grail, and then use it to wish for the Mystery Something? I guess that makes more sense than anything else. Otherwise, this is a non-sequitur.

In response, Snek teleports into a chair so that he can give Kirei a creepy devilish sideways grin from a more languid position, and tells him to just do it already seriously.

Kirei tells him that while he has been searching for answers to his mystery question, he's also come to fear that learning those answers will destroy him. Um. Okay. Just then, the phone rings. Apparently someone has learned the location of the Einzburn backup safehouse and reported it to him. I wonder who this source is supposed to be? I guess we're just meant to assume that all of the major players have muggle informants who are spying on each other and otherwise being kept in the dark.

Snek teleports onto his customary couch with a laugh, telling Kirei that for a minute there he really thought he was going to obey Toto and just up and leave. Kirei explains that for a minute there he actually was going to do it, but it wasn't a long minute. In the end, he just had to get his answers, and the Grail seemed like the best route to obtaining them.

He then shows Snek his forearm, on which the Command Seal appears to have multiplied several times over. Snek asks him how that might have happened, and Kirei explains that it was a final gift from his late father; he never got to kill Priestypants like he'd long wanted to, but he at least got to profit from his death by removing the Command Seals from the corpse and adding them to his own reservoir.

...

That...but...

Okay. If that's something you can do, why didn't Archie do it when he killed the guy?

Is it just that Archie couldn't use his own magic at that point, and thus wasn't able to? Okay. So why didn't he shoot up his arm a bunch to ruin the Seals, just like Maiya was simultaneously doing to Sola-Ui? Or tossed some lighter fluid on it and dropped a match?

Did Archie not know that extracting the Seals like that was possible? Like, maybe it's a secret spell that the Church has kept to itself? If so, then how did Grey and/or Maiya know to destroy Sola-Ui's (at least I assume that that's what Maiya was doing in that scene; not sure what else it might have been for).

For a minute, I thought maybe it was going to reveal that Archie in his wheelchair was actually an illusion, and Kirei was using it to reveal the full extent of his father's cynicism and duplicity by baiting him with a wheeling-and-dealing Archie before killing him. We've seen Kirei use illusory puppets before, so it would fit his powerset. But no; even before I remembered that Archie really did get a Command Seal from the pre-murder interaction they had, Kirei explicitly tells Snek that he did *not* get a chance to kill Priesty. So...I have no idea how to make sense of this.

...

So yeah, Kirei just took the Seals from his father (how many does the Grail War ref have to begin with, anyway?) and used the blood from the bullet wound Archie left to write a bible verse warning against hypocrisy on the floor by the body.

Wooden floor. Archie could have just set fire to the building itself then. Why didn't he?

Back to the present, Snek points out that if Kirei really is going to enter the Grail War as his own agent, then that means he and Toto are enemies now, so being alone in a room with Toto's Servant isn't really a safe proposition. He doesn't seem all that serious about making a threat here, though, and Kirei seems to know it. However, just in case Snek does feel compelled to kill him now, Kirei tells him that there's something he doesn't know about the way the Grail War really works. Something that not all of the remaining Masters even know. Snek tells him to continue, and Kirei continues. The "Holy Grail" is...okay, let me try to parse this.

The vernacular term "holy grail" means "ultimate, thus far unobtained, goal." The holy grail of physics is to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics. The holy grail of medicine is biological immortality. Etc. In this case, Arthurian elements of the story aside, the "Holy Grail" seems to not be in any way a cup, or even "holy" per se, but rather the vernacular holy grail of magecraft. Somehow those wires must have gotten crossed at some point in the past, since back in the pilot Priestypants specified that the church had investigated a possible connection between the holy grail of magecraft and the literal Cup of Christ before determining that there wasn't one. But regardless. The holy grail of wizardry, according to multiple characters in both this series and in Kara no Kyoukai, is access to the Akashic Record, the Root of reality. The purpose of the Grail War is to cause a manifestation of the Root to appear in the material world so that a wizard can claim it. And, if there's one thing that Fullmetal Alchemist taught us, it's that you need to sacrifice a bunch of people to make the Root appear in a tangible form.

The heroic spirits are sacrifices. All seven of their souls must be fed into the ritual in order to open the gate. The winner of the Grail War is the mage who gets to make the final sacrifice by ordering their Servant to kill themselves and cause the Root to appear to them.

...I just realized that Irisviel is Gluttony. Homunculus created to act as a living gateway to the All-In-One.

I'm sort of amused that these two Japanese authors had such similar and yet such different takes on the same piece of European occultism.

Anyway, that's the reason why no one wants to use up all their Command Seals. They'll need one left in the event of a victory in order to make their Servant sacrifice themselves.

...which raises a whole bunch of questions that I asked earlier all over again.

The Servants respond to the summons because they have a wish they want to use their access to the source code of reality to grant. But they know that their Masters also have wishes, and - even if they don't know about the sacrifice thing - they DO know that the Masters could use their command seals to force the Servants to yield the gate to them. What do the Servants think is going to prevent their Masters from doing that?

And, by extension, why aren't the Servants all doing everything they can - first and foremost, before letting the war even get off the ground - to force their Masters to use up their command seals?

Is there some big lie that the Servants are told, about how they'll have a shot at getting the gate that can grant their wishes despite the Masters with their irresistible commands? Is that big lie part of the automatic "knowledge" that Servants are summoned into being with, along with how to navigate the modern world?

Am I supposed to know the answers to all this from other Fate?

If so, I'm starting to resent having been given this prequel series before any of the others. How am I even suppose to review this if I can't understand what's going on?

Anyway, Snek takes this in stride. To a degree that makes me think he already suspected something like this, even if he didn't know. At the very least, he's forced to give a bit more grudging respect to Toto for being able to string him along as well as he did.

Anyway, I'm not sure how sharing this information is supposed to help Kirei, unless he's just counting on Snek's sense of gratitude. Which doesn't seem like a very safe thing to count on. If anything, now that he's disclosed all of that, Snek has less reason to care about Kirei's continued survival than he did before. But that's not where the conversation goes with this.

Snek says that he'd much more urgently like to be rid of Toto now, but he does need a wizard to provide him with mana on account of not being Gilles. It would be best if he could find such a wizard with an interest in providing him with that.

This sideways flirtation continues for a little while longer, with Kirei eventually coming out and saying that he thinks he knows such a wizard, if only he met the King of Heroes' exacting standards. Snek says that the candidate in question has a lot of annoying habits to unlearn, but with a little encouragement and guidance he might be worthy. Certainly better than Toto, if nothing else.

Snek tells him that all Kirei has to do now is free Snek from his current obligations, and then they can immediately sign a pact before he can bleed too much mana. Best to do it right now, before Toto has any reason to suspect Kirei and gives Snek orders to prevent any such betrayals.


It's been a while since I've had to do this, but this review will have to be a three parter. There isn't too much episode left, but it's still a good five minutes of screentime, and I already know I'm going to need a thousand+ word conclusion for this one.

For the time being, I'll just reiterate what I said before about Fate/Zero epitomizing both the best and the worst aspects of Gen Urobuchi's writing.