Fate/Zero S2E6: "Where Justice Is Found"

And back to Fate/Zero. Seven episodes to go, including this one. I'd say that this is unlikely to be worse than the previous one, but I don't want to jinx it, so I guess I'll just leave it at "wait and see" until it's showtime. Relatedly, it's showtime!


The teaser is an expanded version of the scene we saw back when Kiritsugu crippled Archie, with Natalya the bounty hunter having just made those special bullets out of his rib. From the look of things, she probably could have conducted the surgery in a more sanitary environment, though. This place is all rusty, bloodstained, and has moths all over the lights. As he comes to after his surgery, Kiritsugu sees Natalya leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette in the same tryhard pose that he'll adopt himself later in life. She tells him that the pain he's feeling now is something he needs to get used to, because what he's feeling is his new Mage's Crest, and a wizard has to bear that for their entire life.

I don't think she's being literal there. We've met child, teenaged, and young adult wizards before, and none of them seemed to be struggling to deal with new pains. Well...except for Sakura and Daisy, but the Matou family crest is hardly typical, and the pain there seems to be more from the implantation method than the crest itself heh. But, given the manifold stresses, dangers, and general awfulness that comes with being a mage in Type Moon, I don't think that her statement needs to be literal in order to be correct.

...

Granted, being a wizard is still less awful than living near a wizard when you aren't one.

And...at least half of the unpleasantness of the mage's path seems to be self-inflicted. Not by the individual in question, but by the culture they've made for themselves over the centuries. Seriously, things would be so much better for all of them if they just...stopped...being like that.

Which I imagine is probably the point. They all talk about the perils and hardships of what they do, but none of them seem willing to accept partial responsibility for how bad things are. And like, that describes our own world too, more or less? Just with countries and corporations most often playing the roles that individual magi do here.

Type Moon hasn't exactly wowed me with its social commentary in general, but this underlying theme seems to be both pretty consistent and pretty compelling. I'll definitely give it points there.

...

Anyway, while doing rib surgery (and/or crest implantation? maybe?) on Kiritsugu, she's also determined his Origin. From what I've sort of inferred, your Origin in Type Moon is kind of like a zodiac thing that actually works, but with a hell of a lot more signs to choose from. Granted, it's also possible that they already knew his Origin, and this is just more "as you know" exposition being shoehorned into a rather hilariously unlikely moment; after the previous episode, I unfortunately can't discount that possibility. In any case, Kiritsugu's name is very apropos, so his parents likely knew it when they named him.

His Origin is the concept of "cutting and tying." Breaking and rebuilding, but with a connotation that suggests permanent loss and scarring. If you cut a string and then tie the halves back together, you'll have a shorter, less supple string. So, his powers - and possibly some aspects of his personality or destiny or whatever - relate to breaking and then imperfectly fixing things.

That's when she pulls out the bullets she just made from his bone. Hit a magus with one of these while they're casting, and it'll deal damage to their "magic circuits" that will never properly heal. Total de-powering in the short term, with only partial recovery being possible in the longterm (assuming they survive the intiial trauma). Handy trick, in their line of work. So, that's how his antiwizard bullets work.

As for what this says about his personality and destiny or whatever...not sure. The effect he has on the people around him doesn't reflect terribly well on him, but so far that's really comes across as the writer's fault rather than the character's, and Kiritsugu hasn't been more toxic in this regard than most of the other Grail Warriors. In terms of his destiny, though...

Hmm. Well, I've picked up that Gilgamesh and Kirei are the big bads (or at least, some of the big bads) of the original Fate story. Maybe the "takeaway" of this prequel will be showing how their defeat by the next generation was made possible by Kiritsugu inflicting permanent damage on one or both of the duo? Either directly through application of his Origin-derived powers, or in a more traditionally astrological way of being destined to be in the right place at the right time with the right skillset to hobble them. That could make sense. And would make F/Z more justified in its existence than prequels usually are, assuming this information wasn't already revealed in the original.

Just a prediction for now. It could be totally wrong.

Flash forward to Kiritsugu and Natalya on a manhunt, pursuing their target through a city at night. They corner and kill the target, and then...flashback to him as a kid having just been adopted by her. Dawwww, lookitim trying to load a pistol.~

So, nonlinear growing up montage, with scenes from his childhood with Natalya in her house intercut with scenes from his young adulthood with Natalya on missions. In a voiceover, Kiritsugu explains that with the Mage's Association and the Vatican's supernatural ops division in a state of barely restrained hostility and a million smaller actors taking advantage of this cold war to try and get away with shit, there's no shortage of work for people like Natalya who are willing to take bounties from either organization. She's just in it for the money, no ideological or organizational loyalties.

Kiritsugu spent the rest of his childhood and early teens studying the Way of the Gun Wizard. When she was at home, she taught him weapons, magic, and how to mix the two. While she was away on mission, he obsessively cleaned and maintained the equipment she didn't bring, familiarizing himself with all of it. When she started bringing him with her on bounty hunts, he saw more horrors wrought by the irresponsible use of magic. Things like what happened on Alimango Island happen all the time, on various scales. Kiritsugu takes a great satisfaction in finding the right combination of sorcery and ballistics to bring each perpetrator of these atrocities to a richly deserved end.

...

It's not like the Mages' Association that issues half of these bounties is any better, ethically speaking, but it's at least in their selfish interest to keep the atrocities minimized outside of their own blacksites or whatever. So, working with them is still effective harm reduction, at least as far as either my or Kiritsugu's understanding of the world goes.

There's no telling if the Church is any better or not. They at least have to make a pretence of caring about people, but that might not amount to much of anything in practice (they've certainly been flexible enough about that in real life). I'd have to see more of them to make any further judgements.

...

One night, Kiritsugu and Natalya find themselves pinned down by enemy gunwizards in a ruined city somewhere. For whatever reason, there are a pair of civilians - a father and young son - taking cover beside them. Abruptly, the civilians try to make a run for it, even though the enemy is ready to start shooting again as soon as they see someone break cover. Kiritsugu tries to stop them, but Natalya grabs and pulls him back. The two dummies run out into the open and get instantly cut down in a hail of automatic gunfire.

I don't like that the show's example of attempted "heroism" here involved using physical force to save a couple of no-names from their own stupidity. Especially after the shitbomb that was the previous episode, particularly because of the changes that the studio made to its story. There's a theme emerging here that...well, you all know at this point that I'm not one to stick my neck out for Urobuchi, but I feel like it's considerably worse than what he intended.

After he and Natalya win the battle, Kiritsugu stands sadly over the bodies of the two civilians. Wondering what the point of killing all these bad guys even is if he isn't able to save innocents from them.

Um. Kiritsugu. While I don't know who this particular target is or what they're guilty of, I figure that at least in most cases taking these troublemakers out prevents them from victimizing more innocent people in the future. So, you're not going to *see* most of the people you save doing this, because your actions will prevent them from ever being endangered.

Also, the existence of bounty hunters who target occult troublemakers and are good at their job acts as a disincentive for occult troublemaking. The more likely these rogue magi are to get caught, the less likely other magi are going to want to fuck around and find out. Fewer rogue magi, fewer fucked up experiments, more innocent people saved.

Is he really so incapable of abstract thought that he can't think beyond the people who are currently in front of his eyes at this moment?

...

Given the unscrupulous nature of the Mages' Association (and also the Church org, more likely than not), it seems like the story had a much better approach it could have taken to Kiritsugu's moral discontent.

Instead of him despairing at not having managed to save this one pair of too-dumb-to-live randos out of the many, many people at risk, Kiritsugu could realize that the bounties just don't usually correlate to the amount of harm done, with the Church and Association prioritizing targets who threaten their secrecy or stand in the way of their political aims over ones who hurt more people. Or maybe he just finds out about the stuff the Association does behind its magically secured closed doors, and determines that cooperating with these monsters against other monsters is still a net neutral for the amount of monstrosity in the world. Etc. This disillusionment with the powers that be would then provide a sensible motive for him to seek the Grail so he can flip the table they're playing on.

Having it be "he isn't always able to get at the bad guys in time to protect their current victims" that pushes him in this direction just makes Kiritsugu look stupid. If he's SUPPOSED to look stupid here, then that's more than fine. KarySuegu definitely needs to be taken down a few pegs. But, the story needs to be AWARE of what it's doing here for that to work, and I'm not at all sure that the narrative is any smarter than the character. Hopefully it'll prove me wrong.

...

Kiritsugu wonders aloud how he could have saved all innocent victims everywhere. Natalya chuckles and tells him that maybe if he could press a button and kill all the victimizers in the world in one go that would be a start.

She's obviously joking, but Kiritsugu looks thoughtful. Gazing skyward as he cradles the dead boy.

Oh my god is that seriously what he's planning to wish for? "I wish all the bad guys were dead?"

Well. If so, I sure as hell hope the story won't be expecting me to take it, or him, at all seriously.

Then we flash back to the night she adopted him, and see her giving him the absolute worst piece of advice to ever give to someone who you're planning to eventually bring into battle with you.

Right. That's the kind of attitude that gives you a reliable squad who can count on each other.

If she were prepping him for virtually any line of work besides combat, this might not be bad advice. For search and rescue agents, I know, this is pretty much exactly how they're trained to think; you're no use to anyone else if you're dead, so make sure that you're secure before you attempt the rescue. But that's not what soldiers are taught, and for good reason.

I don't think that the audience is necessarily supposed to think much of Natalya, so her giving terrible advice doesn't reflect too poorly on the story. The fact that adult Kiritsugu seems to have copied some of her mannerisms and body language might also suggest that her negative influence may have weighed him down. But in that case, I find it very weird that the story would frame him as being in the right in his argument with Arturia.

This dialogue bit ends with Babby Kiritsugu telling her that he knows he can't save everyone, but he's still going to save as many as he can. She sighs, and accepts that this is an okay start. Dang, how did he end up becoming *less* mature as a young adult than he was as a preteen?

Anyway, jump back ahead to Kiritsugu's late teens or early twenties or whatever, well after he's had the bone-bullets made. They're at the home he and Natalya share, and they've just gotten a new mission from the Association. It's a rough one. Their target is a powerful wizard turned Dead Apostle, by the Arakian name of Odd Vorzak. This guy's gimmick is that he has a swarm of bee familiars that he's managed to turn into a vector for vampirism: ie, he can zombify entire crowds of people at range by having his swarm sting them.

Pretty much all the major players in the occult underworld have been wanting Vorzak staked and garlic-roasted in the sun for a long time, but he's as slippery and cunning as he is powerful. In fact, this isn't even the first time Natalya's tried to collect a bounty on him; he's one of the very few targets who have managed to thwart her. The difference this time is that they have reason to think Vorzak will be taking an intercontinental flight shortly, which makes him a much easier target than he normally is.

Oh, I guess this is going to be Kiritsugu's infamous plane incident. This does recontextualize his actions pretty significantly. Obviously, it's going to turn out that Kiritsugu only brought the plane down because everyone on it was either already a vampire or about to become one, which means that it wasn't a hard men making hard decisions event at all. It was the obvious right choice that any reasonable person would have made.

Hmm. Maybe it won't end up being quite that simple. If it's just a red herring to make us think Kiritsugu was more ruthless than he actually is, then I feel like the story hasn't done enough with it yet to do this reveal. He hasn't, eg, been put in a situation where we expect him to do something ruthless and casualty-insensitive only to be surprised when he doesn't. So yeah, maybe it'll end up being a bit more morally complicated than that after all.

In any case, he's going to have to spend some time after the mission cleaning Natalya out of his refrigerator. Obviously. That was clear from the previous episode, simply by virtue of her being a woman and this being a male character's backstory in an Urobuchi story. I didn't even need to point this out again just now, you all already know.

Natalya lights up a cigarette. Kiritsugu asks if he can have one, and she's reluctant but eventually relents.

Admires his idealism even though she considers it foolish, knows her own cynicism is self destructive, cycle repeats itself later with Kiritsugu and Arturia, cigarette is a symbol, yay English teacher gave me an A.

...you know, I'd probably be taking this arc much more positively if the "End of Honor" argument hadn't gone the way it did. Like, the show is pretty clearly telegraphing that it knows Kiritsugu's way is wrong now. Why couldn't it have let Arturia point out why he was wrong, when she should have been more than capable of laying it out?

Also, if this thing with the vampire on the plane is going the way I think it is, then the episode will ALSO be showing that Kiritsugu isn't as cold and hard man-y than we thought. So...deconstructing him, while also revealing him to not actually be the thing it's deconstructing?

The story is definitely trying to make a thematic statement here, but I don't know what it is. There's a lot of good stuff, but it all seems to be flying just passed each other instead of coming together.

Also, it's the same brand of cigarettes that Touko smokes in KnK, just to annoy me.

Mission time now! Vorzak will be taking a flight from Paris to New York City. Natalya will take it with him, and try and assassinate him on the plane. To make sure they can make a clean getaway, she's sending Kiritsugu to New York ahead of time to assassinate Vorzak's local minions during the time of the flight. That way they won't have a small army of lesser vampires chasing them through JFK when the boss arrives staked to his backrest. So, Kiritsugu goes to America, identifies the secondary targets, and waits. Natalya goes to France and confirms Vorzak's identity at the gate while keeping out of his sight. He's pretty easy to ID. Sephiroth looking fucker with a creepy, motionless stare.

Also, he's sitting in the sunlight without suffering any ill effects. Hmm. Well, Shirley notably wasn't harmed by the sun either; it just delayed her transformation. It's looking like Dead Apostles work on Dracula rules, give or take. Sunlight suppresses their powers and makes them easier to kill, but it doesn't harm them directly. Noted.

Plane takes off. Kiritsugu waltzes around New York sniping people in their apartments. They don't die like normal people, though; when struck, each target thrashes around in place and gets all wrinkly looking before crumpling as if from exhaustion. Looks like he's using some special anti-vampire bullets. Unsurprising, as his MO is basically to have specialized ammo and scopes for every type of supernatural being he knows about. On the plane, Natalya makes sure she's sitting behind Vorzak, and then starts casting some sort of vampire killing spell on the back of his chair.

And, it seems to work!

Vorzak wrinkles up and collapses, just like the ones that Kiritsugu shot in New York. The stewardesses assume he just fell asleep; Natalya may or may not have put some illusions down to make him look asleep instead of freeze-dried.

She uses her +1 walkie-talkie of infinite range to inform Kiritsugu that the target is down. She'll just sneak into the baggage compartment and make sure the vampire bee colony that he's known to travel with is also accounted for. She wants Kiritsugu to have a phony ambulance and medical team set up in New York when she arrives, so they can smuggle the body away and bring it to the Mages' Association to get their bounty. I'm kind of surprised they don't have a magic trick for surreptitiously moving bodies, but maybe that's the sacrifice you make by putting all your points in Oplomancy.

She goes into the baggage compartment, and yup, she finds his box of bees.

Either the cold has them pacified, or she cast invisibility to bees on herself, because they don't react to her opening the suitcase. She incinerates the lot of them, updates Kiritsugu, and then turns around to see a freshly turned vampire stewardess accompanied by several additional, much more active, vampire bees.

Those bees look like wasps. This breaks my suspension of disbelief and ruins the entire series.​

Ruh roh Raggy.

So, it turns out that Vorzak had a new trick that Natalya didn't get a chance to learn about. Most of the bees were in his suitcase, but he had a small personal defence swarm concealed inside his own body. He didn't get a chance to release them during Natalya's surprise attack, but they've now emerged from his carcass and infected half the plane.

I figured that either familiars or vampire spawn would suffer a mother-daughter effect and stop working when their creator dies, but apparently not! Or at least, not quickly enough to prevent them from spreading the curse to some nearby humans. I'm guessing that the people in the window seats were protected from transformation, and thus ended up food for the people in the shaded parts. Explaining why there are bloodless corpses laying around instead of just a lot of newborn vamps.


Splitting it here.