Fate/Zero S1E12: “The Grail Beckons”

I won't say that it can't be worse. It could always be a 25 minute pedo snuff film following the exploits of Gilles and Uwu in luxuriating detail. But, this episode will most likely be better than the one that came before it. Anyway, the Grail beckons, so let's go get it!


Open on the Tohsaka manor. Goatee asks Kirei by phonograph how he thinks Alexander's brand new out-of-nowhere noble phantasm compares to Gilgamesh's. Kirei replies that the two are equal in strength, ie both far beyond the usual metrics for Servant abilities. I'll take that to mean that either Gilgamesh keeps more than just blades and booze in his dimensional storehouse, or that he also has a second bullshit power that he's been holding back. Maybe something more related to his actual legend lol.

Goatee is unperturbed by their loss, though. Either Hassan actually escaped that fight and can replenish his army over time, or Goatee was starting to get mistrustful of Kirei's loyalty and wanted him out of the game sooner rather than later. He declares that they've now gained enough intel about their opponents, and it's time to start having Gilgamesh pick them off.

So, has the whole truce to go catch Gilles just been forgotten about by everyone? Including the referee? We haven't heard from that priest in several episodes now, and it seems like we should have given recent events.

Anyway, since Alexander seems to be the most powerful opponent, Goatee will try to take out all the others first and try to come up with a better trick in the meantime. Honestly, it really seems like his best bet is to just go straight for Waver, he often makes himself an easy target. Hell, having Kirei do it with a gun would make more sense than sending Gilgamesh. Not sure. But anyway, for now, Goatee thanks Kirei for his loyal service as a Master in the grail war, marking the end of his role as such. Okay, so he did actually make him sacrifice Hassan there.

...well, "make" him. If Kirei is scheming against Goatee as it's been foreshadowed, he might well have secretly kept Hassan himself back when he sent the assassins. In which case, Goatee only thinks Kirei is out of the game.

Jump to the hotel where Gray is staying. Over the phone, Maiya informs him that she may have found a new secondary safehouse for Iri and Arturia to relocate to, and also that she believes - but isn't completely sure - that the Assassin has been eliminated. He thanks her for the update, and then consults the lovably cheesy mass of notes and pictures he's pinned to the wall with the classic red strings connecting everything. Musing about the current status of the Grail War, and the remaining(?) opponents.

Professor Archie should be dead, but his Lancer is still around. That means either he survived somehow, or - more likely - Diarmuid has found a new Master. Is that a thing that normally happens? Not sure, but if so it calls a lot of things into question.

He's right in this case, of course, but the circumstances surrounding Diarmuid's change of wizards were fairly unique I think? There's been no mention of anyone else doing a mana sharing deal like that.

Waver and his Rider are highly mobile, due to the Gordian Chariot, so their status is pretty much impossible to track. He'll have to deal with them opportunistically, whenever he happens to catch their whereabouts in time. Gilles and his "master" are still at large, killing children and seeming to have no interest in the Grail War. Daisy and his unknown Berserker seem like the easiest targets, but given their apparent grudge against the Tohsakas it might be better to let them distract each other for now.

For his own part, Goatee Tohsaka hasn't set foot outside his house since the war began, and his Archer has been...strangely unaggressive...aside from the first big free-for-all encounter. Gray's working hypothesis so far was that Kirei is having his Assassin lure people into vulnerable positions, spy on them, and gather intel on their weaknesses for Goatee, but that fell apart when Kirei attempted - twice - to personally move against Gray or his companions. He hasn't attacked anyone else, as far as Gray can tell. Just Einzburn family members and retainers. What is even going on with that?

As I recall from the first couple episodes, Kirei sees Gray - as another mage-hunting assassin with a reputation for playing outside the rules, who uses similar tactics to himself - as the biggest threat. But there might be more to it than just that. Kirei has certainly shown indications of there being something personal, though neither Gray nor the audience knows what.

Cut to Kirei, who exits his phonograph room to find Gilgamesh waiting for him. The latter is out of his armor now, wearing an outfit that could almost pass for some weird modern fashion statement. He asks how Kirei is doing, and Kirei just says he's glad he's done being Goatee's Assassin-bitch, that was seriously getting annoying. Gilgamesh goes off on a speech about how the arrogance of others amuses him because bla bla bla, you've heard one Gilgamesh speech you've heard them all. Kirei does provide some (overdue for people who aren't already familiar with Fate, but better than never) exposition about how the Grail War works, though.

If a Servant is killed, then that's it, their Master is out of the game and any Command Seals they might still possess are redistributed by the Grail. If a Master is killed without any remaining Command Seals, then the Servant is banished, effectively killed as well. However, if a Master is killed while still having some Command Seals, the Grail will choose a NEW Master to give those seals to, and the Servant will go seek them out and continue the war. In most cases, the new Master will be someone who participated in a previous Grail War or who has already been defeated in this one. The latter is part of the reason why the Church protects defeated Masters; to prevent people from preemptively killing them in case they're tagged back in. Because that's something they've agreed they don't want, I guess.

Okay, that explains some things (most especially why people aren't just sniping Waver; letting Alexander go to a more canny Master is likely to make things worse instead of better from their perspective), and ties into what Gray was just musing about. On the other hand though, what exactly is Gray's whole deal in that case? His strategy so far seems to have been to target the Masters, even very early on when they almost certainly still had Seals (and it also provoked Archie into retaliating in the same way, making things worse for Gray in general without making any progress in the Grail War). What's the logic behind that?

...Gilgamesh points out that this explains why it's best to kill enemy Masters as well as Servants, which kind of explains what Gray did. But on the other hand, killing the Master *without* killing the Servant as well seems like it's guaranteed to not help, so...I still don't really understand this.

Next, Gilgamesh asks Kirei if there's a chance that he himself might be tagged back in, if one of the remaining Masters who still has Command Seals dies. Kirei says that that's unlikely, he was never a serious contender in the first place, but Gilgamesh thinks that that's just the opinion of people who don't understand the Grail very well.

Ah. So, Kirei is going to murder Goatee, freeing both himself and Gilgamesh from a master they've come to dislike, and most likely inherit his Command Seals so that the two of them can be official. Gotcha.

Finally, Gilgamesh asks Kirei if Hassan managed to determine each of the Masters' motives before his banishment. Kirei says that yes, he did, and begins to tell Gilgamesh about everyone's planned wishes; Gilgamesh notably wants to hear not only what everyone wants, but also what Kirei personally thinks of their desires.

Before we can hear them though, the camera cuts away to a pair of cars driving down the highway into Fuyuki City from the suburbs. Iri and Arturia driving in front, while Maiya watches over them from her own vehicle behind theirs. Suprisingly, Arturia is the one behind the wheel of the first car; she noticed how much Iri seemed to enjoy driving, so Iri decided to let her try it herself.

Arturia muses about how strange it feels, gaining the knowledge to navigate the modern world as a Servant. She has almost no idea what a car is, what the history behind the technology is, or how it works, and she has no memories of learning to drive one. It's like the Grail has implanted her with a complicated series of muscle memories that let her do it. Unsettling, I'm sure.

The topic then turns to their change of locations from the battle-ravaged Einzburn castle on the outskirts to a new, more secret, safehouse near the city center. Iri thinks that they should be safer here anyway; the castle might be more heavily warded, but secrecy is usually a more reliable protector than brute force magical defenses. Which raises the question of why that castle even exists, but I can chalk that up to a folly of hubris by one of the previous Einzburn patriarchs. Anyway, they soon reach their new temporary residence. It's a large house, but one in a fairly bad state of disrepair. Still, that shoddy condition might be an asset as well as an inconvenience, as it does make the place less conspicuous.

Iri has always wanted to see a traditional Japanese mansion house from the inside, so she's excited about this. And also is squeeing over the fact that this particular house has a local reputation for being haunted. Several minutes of Iri and Arturia being cute ensue, as they inspect the territory and consider how to use it. Gray and Maiya have put up impromptu defensive wards on the walls of the main building, and the stone construction of the storage shed out back makes it a good elemental chasis to convert into a workshop for the traditional Einzburn alchemy. As they start setting up their own preparations though, Arturia notices that Iri has been avoiding handling or carrying anything this morning. In addition to letting Arturia drive, she also had Arturia take the keys to open the door, and now she's asking her to get the mercury to write out her transmutation glyphs. Is everything okay?

Iri is silent for a moment, before telling Arturia that no, everything is not okay. She instructs Arturia to shake her head, and the latter discovers that Iri is unable to really squeeze or shake in return.

The limitations of Einzburn biomancy have been increasingly catching up with her, in her time away from the family's infrastructure and exposing herself to danger and stress. Her physical discomfort has reached such a level that she's chosen to shut down her own sense of touch (a homunculus ability in this setting, apparently) in order to keep her mind clear enough for spellcasting. And no, a doctor wouldn't be able to help her with this. Even her own creators probably can't do that much anymore. Which is probably why she's here in the first place; they aren't expecting her to live much longer anyway.

Well. If they get the Grail, their wish might be able to create a world where this won't be an issue. Maybe. Depending on what they're actually planning to wish for. Probably not just peppermint flavored semen for Gray, unless that stuff is what Fateverse homunculi survive on. Speaking of exchanging bodily fluids:

She follows that up with clarifications about practical day to day and magical tasks, but come on, the creators aren't even pretending that that wasn't innuendo.

While Arturia mounts her noble steed for one of the last times in her life, we return to Gilgamesh and Kirei. Kirei reports that, as best he and Hassan could discern, Waver and Archie both just want to win the Grail War for bragging rights and don't have any particular wish in mind. Goatee, of course, is seeking union with the Root in traditional wizardly fashion. Gray is just a mercenary for the Einzburns, and determining what their patriarch over in Germany plans to wish for is beyond the scope of Kirei's operations. I don't know that Kirei is correct about Gray and Iri, but it's a reasonable inference based on what he's seen. Uwu doesn't even know what the Holy Grail is and is letting Gilles lead him in pursuit of his own murderous moon logic objective. Daisy is also a mercenary fighting to claim the Grail for someone else, but in his case it's not about payment but rather absolution, as he feels like his own abandonment of the Matou heirship is what put Sakura in her situation. Daisy also, from what Kirei can tell, has some sort of prior history with Mrs. Tohsaka.

Huh.

Well then.

If Goatee suspected the same thing that I'm now suspecting, that would explain why he sold Sakura to an obvious adrenochrome junky.

Okay. That makes a lot more sense now. And also reflects differently on his wife's reaction when Daisy confronted her about this. "We both knew the risks."

...

I kind of hope that one day Rin resurrects both her parents so that she can kill them again.

...

When Kirei finishes, Gilgamesh...does another Gilgamesh speech.

Really, his monologues are all the same.

However, when Kirei indignantly asks why Gilgamesh even cared to hear any of this then, Gilgamesh reminds him that he didn't want to hear their motives; he wanted to hear what Kirei thinks of their motives. And, the amount of detail he put into Daisy's motivations relative to the others was quite illustrative.

Kirei tries to convince himself and Gilgamesh both that he just made an error in judgement by prying too deep into Daisy at the expense of the others, but Gilgamesh sees right through that. It's not just the amount of detail; it's also the way he phrased it, clearly putting himself in Daisy's shoes as he told the story, something he notably did not do with any of the others.

Okay, Gilgamesh is still an irritating, one-note manchild, but he's at least a little bit smarter than he lets on. Still only about a tenth as smart as he thinks he is, but even that's much better than I thought.

Gilgamesh then asks Kirei to imagine what would happen if Daisy won this Grail War, and Kirei is unable to do it, which Gilgamesh claims is proof of...something? This is really not easy for me to understand. Then he talks about how the futility and suffering of Daisy's life has a kind of beauty in it, and that studying it brings a kind of joy. Kirei finally loses it at that, and tells Gilgamesh that only a sickminded little petty sadist like himself would find pleasure in such tragedy and misery; it is the pronouncement of a sinful mind that Kirei should never have let himself get so close to. Then Gilgamesh asks him if he really considers pleasure itself to be a sin, and Kirei breaks down, wordless, unable to answer.

...

Okay, I owe Gen Urobuchi a partial apology. While he definitely has some issues with how he writes women, that was only a secondary factor in what went wrong in the Banquet of Kings scene. I inferred a lot more sexism than was actually present.

What IS to blame is that Gen Urobuchi is - or at least was, at the time of writing Fate/Zero - a total fucking moron.

When Gilgamesh and Kirei had their last cringey exchange, it just seemed like the usual anime-writer-thinks-he-understands-Catholicism-but-doesn't garbage. In light of the previous episode though, it clearly ISN'T just that. The author literally doesn't seem able to come up with an answer to "but what if being evil is fun tho?" He's had two situations in which characters who most definitely SHOULD be able to refute this incredibly fragile and vapid flavor of cynicism - Arturia with her political experience, Kirei with his ecclesiastical education - inexplicably failed to do so. And not just failed, but failed so badly that they were reduced to "n-n-nani???" levels just by being posed with the question.

I wouldn't even expect Kirei's answer to be a good one, necessarily. I'm not really a fan of most religious moral philosophies, in case you couldn't guess. But he still should have had an answer. The bare bones 0Roman Catholic party line, if nothing else.

In fact, he didn't even have to go THAT far. Gilgamesh's assertion here is even dumber and more obviously confused than Alexander's. Kirei never said that all joy was sinful, just that joy taken in the suffering of others was. Like, that's such a basic, surface-level distinction that I don't even know if an elementary schooler would have let Gilgamesh get away with blurring the two.

I didn't think it was possible for a person who can apparently write coherent sentences and arrange them into a story to be this cripplingly inept when it comes to even basic, common-sense philosophy, but Gen has taught me the error of my ways. So, like I said, my apologies to the author. He wasn't being misogynistic earlier, he was just being an imbecile.

...

Anyway, Gilgamesh asks Kirei what he would wish for if he had the Grail. Kirei doesn't know. Then some Command Seals appear on his hand for some reason.

Erm...who just died? Did Uwu step on a rake and crack his skull open just now? That's probably it.

Gilgamesh says that it looks like the Grail thinks he has a wish to make after all, so he'd better go get it and find out what to use it for. Also, um...he needs to kill one of the other Masters to take their Servant.

...wait, WHAT?

I thought he only gets those Command Seals because somebody died and left them unused? Shouldn't there already be an unclaimed Servant that came with those?

I have no idea how anything works anymore.

Gilgamesh not-so-subtly hints that he and Kirei would make a great team, and that he'd rather have Gilgamesh as an ally than as an enemy.

End episode.


I mean...it WAS better than the previous episode. The scene at the end was arguably just as bad, but it was a much smaller percent of the runtime, and everything before that was pretty fun.

While Nasu and Urobuchi have their own strengths and weaknesses as writers, I've seen enough Type Moon media by both of them at this point to see the common threads inherent to the franchise itself. And, while this might not be exciting news, it pretty much just reinforces one of my previous judgements.

Type Moon is very good at being popcorn entertainment, but every time it tries to directly engage with big ideas or philosophical themes it faceplants hard. It might faceplant in different WAYS depending on who the writer attempting to steer it that way is, but in terms of quality it really barely matters how it ended up with its face in a mud puddle, just that it did.