Fate/Zero S2E8: "Knight on Two Wheels"

Five episodes left. Fate/Zero might manage to redeem itself in them. This show CAN be good, obviously; I was really enjoying it for at least half of its length so far. It's done a lot to ruin itself since then, but if it makes a surprise turnaround and delivers quality more typical of the first season from this point then it might be able to land a graceful ending. I'm not very optimistic, but I haven't given up entirely just yet.

Anyway, Arturia's gonna go motorbiking after Alexander, it sounds like. The consequences of Alexander removing Iri from that glyph she was laying in are yet to be seen. Is she just going to transform into an avatar of the Grail during the chariot ride? What does the "grail" even look like, since we've established that it's just a figure of speech and not an actual cup? Maybe this episode is where we'll find out.

...hmm. The intro includes a very brief shot of a feminine face, ghostly white, leaking some kind of black tar out the everything. Is that going to be Iri's transformation? I assumed it was going to be something to do with the Matous, but now it seems like that's probably going to be Grailrisviel. Well, like I said, maybe we'll find out now.


Arturia rides her motorcycle recklessly through the streets of Fuyuki tracking her quarry's magical aura, struggling to not let Alexander put too much distance between them. They strangely don't react at all as she shoots between them and slaloms around thick traffic like a hyper-accelerated lunatic. Also, that traffic looks awfully CGI come to think of it.

This looks way too much like a racing game for me to not chuckle at. It honestly acts like a racing game too, what with the CGI background and the oblivious hazard/scenery drivers.

Up in the sky, Waver happens to look down (heh, I'm surprised Alexander even brought him along on this attack) and sees a motorcycle moving with impossible speed and manoeuvrability after them. He points it out to Alexander, and confirms for him that these machines should not be capable of pulling off what this one is pulling off. Can Alexander not feel Arturia's presence from this range, even though she can feel his? Wonder why that might be. Odd. Well, anyway, Alexander is able to figure out who this must be easily enough. He's glad that she was able to catch up to them so quickly, and seems tickled by her having a mount-accelerating power that sort of overlaps with his own "Rider" powerset.

Interestingly, this suggests that Arturia could have just as easily been summoned as a Rider as a Sabre. Her association with Excalibur in particular (and its sheath having been the catalyst for her summoning) was probably the deciding factor there, but it could have gone differently. I wonder what Rider!Arturia would have looked like in terms of noble phantasms and secondary powers?

Arturia has followed them out of the city and onto a highway. At this time of night, there's hardly any intercity traffic. He descends to ground level (over Waver's confused objections) and lands on the highway ahead of Arturia, where he uses the blades on the sides of his chariot to rip up the hillside in front of her and trigger an avalanche. Oh my god this IS a racing game.

Cut briefly to Kiritsugu doing some more crime scene investigation at the trashed safehouse. As he's inspecting one of Maya's spent, flattened bullets, he sees a piece of debris suddenly disintegrate into black ash. He glares at it suspiciously.

Not sure what that was about, tbh. Back to Mario Kart!

Arturia adjusts to Alexander's blue shell technique by summoning some fairly sick-looking barding onto her motorcycle, and then using that invisible wind power of hers that she used to fastball special on Diarmuid that one time.

The wind vortex propels her fast enough to avoid the bigger boulders, while the smaller debris is repelled by the armor. Being invisible also prevents Alexander from placing more targeted obstacles until she can close the distance.

Which she does in style, using the invisibility to covertly climb up the hillside and then ramp herself off to close the rest of the distance and attack from above.

Her being able to out-ride the Rider feels weird, but then again so does Alexander being able to out-army-summon the guy who's whole build is based on summoning an army, so.

Alexander is impressed with this, at least. He even refers to her as "queen of knights" instead of "girl" again. It's progress I guess.

He just barely manages to parry her attack when she descends from above. And even that, seemingly, he only manages because she stupidly breaks invisibility and yells "Rider, prepare yourself!" mid-descent. Which is stupid-honourable to an extent I didn't think possible even coming from her, especially considering that there's a hostage at stake here. Well, anyway, their blades clash, the two end up staring each other down, and...Arturia realizes that Iri isn't in the chariot.

Huh.

It wouldn't be like Alexander to just throw her overboard. I guess he might have forgotten to secure her before descending, but I feel like Waver would have said something in that case.

Cut to Kiritsugu, who has gone...somewhere?...and is beating information out of some minor unnamed member of the Matou family. I don't think we've seen or heard mention of this guy before, but the dialogue makes it clear he's a Matou relative. Kiritsugu demands to know where Iri is, and makes two claims. The first, that Berserkers can change their appearance to impersonate other Servants. I guess that's just a known, shared trait of all Berserker servants? Kinda random. Feels like that should be more like the Assassin's schtick, no? Well, regardless, I can accept that this is true and that Kiritsugu knows it. The second assertion is that Rider couldn't have actually done the abduction, because Alexander and Waver don't have that kind of intel-gathering ability and couldn't possibly have found the safehouse. This part, I'm much less sure of how he could possibly know.

Like, does he even know Alexander's full powerset? How *could* he know it?

Well, after putting a bullet through Nobody Matou's foot, Kiritsugu is told that Nobody has legitimately no idea of any Grail War goings on. However, he does know that Daisy left home again a little while ago, in the company of a priest who he guesses must be the Grail War referee or something. Kiritsugu realizes that Kirei must have broken his promise to stay out of Japan. He probably also suspects that Kirei murdered Tokiyomi after the latter tried to agree to banish him.

I guess that's what was up with the disintegrating debris before. A part of the Berserker's armor or whatever that Maiya shot off, turning back into that black smoke that always accompanies him. Honestly, that detail makes Kiritsugu's whole assumption about Team Rider's bad intel capabilities unnecessary in addition to stupid; finding an obvious Berserker artifact at the sight and knowing that Berserkers can disguise themselves should have been enough.

Cut to a hilltop somewhere, where Kirei, Daisy, and what looks like Alexander are standing, the latter holding an unconscious Iri in his arms. Kirei turns to Daisy and says...

...

......

Ok no this is stupid I do not fucking buy this.

Apparently, Kirei is pleasantly surprised that the real Alexander flew by and got Arturia on his tail instead of the disguised Berserker's.

First of all, are we supposed to infer that they stole another plane or something for the Berserker to fly away in? We specifically saw him carrying Iri over his shoulder when Arturia watched him fly away, so it wasn't just a matter of Berserker slipping away on the ground while the real Team Rider happened to be overhead. He can't fly on his own. Did he steal another plane and disguise it as Alexander's chariot? Can he do that?

Arturia immediately took off almost immediately after the chariot with Iri on it after she saw it. How and when could she have possibly lost track of it and started chasing the real Alexander? Even if both of them just happened to be flying through the same area at the same time, wouldn't they also see each other? Are you trying to tell me that Alexander could have flown right by a doppelganger of himself without so much as making it answer some questions?

This could have maybe worked if Kirei and Daisy had some whacky plan that involved luring the real Alexander into the area and then casting some kind of illusion spell to make it look like he was carrying Iri when he flew passed. We know that Kirei uses illusions sometimes, so that could theoretically be within his ability. But now he's explicitly saying that that ISN'T what happened, and that the real Alexander getting involved was a lucky coincidence. It's implied that he didn't even realize it had happened until after the fact.

How could this sequence of events have happened? I'm really at a loss.

Well. I guess I'll just toss it on the "Arturia isn't allowed to ever succeed at anything unless a man is talking her through it no matter how little sense it makes" pile and move on.

Daisy complains about this plan having required him to burn two whole Command Seals, and not being sure that it was worth it. I guess he had to use one to make the Berserker disguise himself as Alexander, and another to capture Iri; you probably need to use a Seal to make him do anything more complicated than "smash that thing over there." Kirei puts these misgivings to rest by simply giving him two more Seals; he has plenty to spare after taking his late father's, and with Snekgamesh being the one essentially calling the shots it's not like he ever needs to use them himself.

Speaking of our serpentine friend, I kinda like how visibly he's rubbing off on Kirei. Kirei doing the whole tempter/diabolical patron thing, just like his own tempter/diabolical patron. Down to even having adopted a little hint of his body language, albeit still only a little bit.

The Berserker turns back into himself (maybe this is also what caused that piece of armor he left behind to suddenly evaporate, if this was at the same time?) and puts Iri down on the grass at their feet. Kirei says another confusing thing.

I thought Noble Phatasms were tied to the specific hero, not the class as a whole? I get that the manifestation or details might be filtered through the role the hero's been summoned into, but the power itself is the specific Servant's. It was also said that Berserkers - all Berserkers - have the disguise ability. So that's not a noble phantasm, it's some other type of Servant feature. Right?

Well, that's basically just a semantic issue. Hardly the biggest problem I have with this whole subplot, but at this point there's not much about it that I feel comfortable not scrutinizing.

Anyway. Kirei comments on how oddly fixated Daisy's Servant is on Arturia, which Daisy has nothing to say about besides an uncaring shrug. Once again, the Berserker pretty much has to be either Lancelot or Mordred; both due to the rivalry with Arturia, and due to the parallels with the Master. Daisy has the whole jealousy over a woman thing with Tokiomi's wife a la Lancelot, but he also has the whole generational conflict thing with Darth Matou a la Mordred, so either one would fit thematically as well. Daisy then looks at Iri, and asks if she really is the Holy Grail's vessel. Kirei explains that she's actually more like its contents than its container, which...hmm.

Kirei could just be spewing word salad to keep Daisy in the dark, but if he isn't then that suggests that Iri is going to become the Akashic Record itself. Not just be possessed by it, or become a user interface for getting information from it. Wonder how this works.

...then again, the Grail might not actually be the Root itself, but just a device or entity that lets you access it. In which case this could mean anything.

For his own end of the bargain, Kirei promises that he will ensure that Daisy is the winner of the Grail War yet. Additionally, he tells him where he can kill Tokiomi Tohsaka, as promised; come to the church at midnight, and Kirei will deliver Tokiomi to him there.

Is he just going to leave Tokiomi's corpse there? I'm not sure if he still has access to it, or even knows where it is, since he left it in the manor this morning and it's been found by at least one other party since. It's possibly he's just luring Daisy into a trap, but if he wanted to kill him he'd probably just do it right now; Gilgamesh could snipe him right now while his back is turned and his defences are down. Does he have some other use he's planning to get out of him in the next few hours before midnight? It's either that, or he has something even wackier in mind, like a fake Tokiomi or something.

With business taken care of and their next meeting set up, Daisy leaves. Once he's out of earshot, Kirei starts talking again. I thought he was speaking to Gilgamesh at first, but no! He detected an invisible presence during his conversation with Daisy, but decided to ignore it until Daisy was away. He demands to know who this is and what they want.

In response, Darth Matou decloaks, and compliments Kirei on not having let his old Executor skills atrophy since he quit the church. He still has that detect invisibility thing that they're known for down pat.

Anyway, now that they can both see each other, Darth seems like he wants to offer Kirei a deal of his own.

Cut back to Arturia facing down Team Rider. For some reason, Arturia is just standing there by her armored motorcycle, not attacking OR saying anything. Not asking about Iri. Not asking about why it might have looked like they were carrying Iri. What is she trying to accomplish right now? I have no idea.

Alexander, for his part, thinks she's just waiting for him to make the next move. Which I guess she might be, but I don't know *why* she might be doing that instead of asking about Iri. Sure, she's going to have to fight Alexander eventually, but right now her first priority is the rescue, right? Well, after they stare each other down long enough, Alexander tells Waver that he's going to try and charge her. Her Excalibur megablast takes a minute to charge up, and he doesn't think she has anything short of that that can stop his chariot charge head-on (also, I'm not sure if she's going to use that against a single target in this sort of environment), so he might as well try it. Ideally, he's hoping to defeat her without discorporating her, and that she'll finally agree to take part in his world domination plans as one of his generals.

As he puts it "she's truly a star of the battlefield, but only as part of my army can she truly shine." Blegh.

Waver recounts some stuff from his history book about how Alexander was never motivated by wealth or pillage, and that he never demeaned those who he conquered but rather tried to add their strength to his own. That's...maybe half-true? Maybe? Alexander was a magnanimous victor, but he also plundered the hell out of any treasury he could get his hands on in order to keep his nobles onboard lol. So, he charges.

Arturia surprises both him and me by using her Excalaser. She surprises me by using it despite having a bunch of highways and possibly other infrastructure in front of her. She surprises him by doing it in far less time than it took to charge it up against the Gillestopus. Maybe she was just taking an extra moment to aim at the more distant target that time, or else she needed to charge it up a little more to deal with that than she does with this. The blast hits the chariot and its riders head-on, when they're maybe two thirds of the way through the charge.

Okay, is she actually going to take out alexander here? If so, this will actually undo at least some of my resentment over how the story has treated her thus far, and in her interactions with him in particular.


Splitting it here. Almost three thousand words already, and the second half of this episode is going to make me say...well...words. Plural. Very plural words.