Fate/Zero Rewatch Analysis: Redemption of a Tragedy
What took Fate/Zero from being a good anime to being one of my favorites? Well it was one of the first anime I ever watched and the first Fate series I watched so it had a lot of groundwork to set before I could even start thinking about the deeper meaning of the story. It stuck with me as a show with rich philosophy, but ultimately flawed in a few core areas. Coming away from it now, its one of my top 5 anime of all time.
From what I remember to now, three core areas of the show improved on rewatch, the arcs of Kirei, Kiritsugu and Arthuria.
Let's start with Saber. First watch through I did not like this part of the story at all. I thought she was hated way more than she should have been and punished by the narrative for no reason. Coming into it now I can see how her lacking crucial pieces of information caused her to spiral into internal turmoil, which I could deeply relate to as someone with anxiety. This spiraling not only sets up a redemption arc in the following series, but it also plays out like a classic tragedy in the literature sense.
Saber has no idea that Berserker was infused with the aspect of madness at summoning. The narrative barely draws any attention to it, but Saber is assuming this is Lancelot's true form when in fact its the shadow of all his doubts. Yes these doubts are real but they are blown completely out proportion and Saber has no idea. After Kariya dies and Lancelot has been dealt a fatal blow, we get a brief bit of lucidness return to Berserker and his final words affirm that everyone at the roundtable did in fact look up to Arthuria. Maybe it wasn't the same type of leadership that Rider has, but they certainly didn't hate her. Without knowing the specifics, and trying to take Rider's words to heart she ends up doubting herself much more than warranted.
Her relationship to Kiritusugu is also an aspect of her character that is tragic. As said in the banquet of kings attended by Rider and Archer, Saber is a woman of ideals and she shoulders the entire world. I don't know how I didn't realize this on my first watch, but she is identical to Kiritusugu in this way! The tragedy is that they were so similar yet their ideals differed too drastically and thus they couldn't get along.
Finally, lets talk about her destroying the grail, a moment that confused me in my first watch because I didn't understand how dangerous it really was. Of course neither did she when she was ordered to destroy it and thus classic tragedy strikes again. I'll talk more about the grail when we get to Kiritusugu, but as you can see Saber's entire character is built around tragedy created by misunderstandings and lack of knowledge. It is dark, but its not badly written.
Before moving on, let's talk about Iskandar and Gigamesh, two characters who I loved my first watch and have an even greater appreciation of now. To break down their kingly traits per the banquet:
Iskandar: Leadership
Gigamesh: Ownership
Arthuria: Ideals
Rider vs Archer is one of my top anime moments of all time with this understanding. Not only is it devastating and heroic, but its also a clash of ideals. Iskandar inspired his legion with dreams while Gigamesh presents the harsh reality. Gigamesh claims to own the entire world and Iskandar wants the entire world. Gigamesh dominates and claims ownership of things whereas Iskandar inspires and doesn't subjugate. Its something we can see reflected in real life: defeating a king who *owns* seemingly everything around you is almost impossible. Its another tragedy that dreams cannot conquer the physical reality of some people simply owning more than you. These two are in the forefront of my mind in an age where everyone in power is a Gigamesh not an Iskandar.
I had no idea what was happening the first time Kiritusugu entered the grail and now I see the problem facing him completely. The grail tells him "I can only use methods you know in order to create world peace" and then shows him that his methods always involve killing, just killing the smaller number of people. Its quite obviously telling Kiritusugu that if he uses it to get world piece its going to kill a lot of people. Kiritusugu is pissed because his whole thing is that he wanted to break the cycle of violence, but doesn't know how and so had to resort to a miracle.
He rejects the grail but also subsequently rejects his previous way of life to raise Shirou. The unspoken part here is that, yes, he could save people by going out and killing bad guys like he's been doing forever, but that isn't a real solution. The grail giving him the option to enact this solution on a wide scale made him realize that its a solution that doesn't work at scale.
By raising Shirou he hasn't given up on his larger aspirations he's simply passing them on to future generations. His unstated goal is to inspire Shirou to be someone who could have actually ended world conflict with the grail. Someone who knows a solution that doesn't involve violence because of how well he was raised. Not to say he actually intends Shirou to participate in a grail war, he just wants Shirou to be a good person. This is similar to how Iskandar passes on his dreams to Waiver at the end.
Indeed I think a core takeaway from Fate/Zero is meant to be that inspirational stories of heroes will help the next generation build a world we can't. A fitting theme for a prequel!
I also want to point out that Kiritusugu's father is a perversion of this idea. He was researching ways to preserve his own life so that he could continue researching the Root. I think its implied that he actually wasn't thrilled about the idea of passing on his legacy to his son considering he wasn't even training him in magic while secretly researching a way to keep himself alive. Of course this ends of leading to his downfall and the destruction of the entire island, punishment for betraying the natural means of progression.
This segways into Kirei because his ominous position at the end of the story is as Rin's substitute father. We end the show with him passing on the family crests to Rin. As the audience we know he's an evil bastard and this act is framed as culmination of this evil. Him giving Rin the same dagger that he killed her father with is fucked up in the most classic tragedy sense.
Kirei also wanted to kill his father and reveled in the idea that his father fucked up so badly that he became a demon. Of course, Kiritusugu killed his father and his surrogate mother, but there are 2 key differences: in the case of his mother he was actually sad about it and that both those kills were part of the old Kiritusugu's decision calculus. Whether they were right or wrong or saved people at the time, he's abandoned that way of life to live in a way the narrative sees more fondly: raising the next generation.
Kirei is a character whose arc I didn't understand on first watch, but I think that is simply because his arc is very unconventional in an already complicated story. Normally, an arc about finding how who you truly are is framed as a good thing, but in Kirei's case it just turns out that he's a despicable monster inside. I think if the entire show was focused on Kirei it would have absolutely dragged in the beginning when he was just a blank character, but thankfully the extended cast and the fact that he's part of a team distract from that long enough for him to start developing.
On second watch I also better understand *how* he comes to realization that he's a monster. Gigamesh notes that Kirei explained more about Kariya's situation and thus was interested in him. I think this moment works on multiple levels, because I fully expected the person he'd be most interested in to be Kiritusugu. Only later did I realize the reason Kariya excited him was because he loved watching him suffer (The Matou family head says it plainly later). Then, after he finds his father dead we get a tipping point as he realizes that his hate for his father was strong and that makes him a monster. It doesn't help that this entire time Gigamesh is whispering in his ear. He claims to be a passive observer but he knows ahead of time what type of person Kirei is and that's the reason he gives him the push he needs. If Kirei was just a guy who liked baseball, Gigamesh wouldn't have actually asked him to research the other masters.
The entire time is interest in Kiritusugu has just been a confusion on how Kiritusugu can have such strong ideals. Even after he figures out he's a monster, Kirei still doesn't have any ideals, any master plan of villainy. He just wants to see people suffer and drinks it up like wine. Its not a "I want to take over the world" type of evil, its relishing in the sensation of evil. I think this makes him an excellent foil to Kiritusugu and his arc from uncaring to evil is interesting for how rare it is.
Welp there's my analysis of what I got wrong in my first watch of Fate/Zero and how it redeemed itself. I do think its go some flaws, like the Rin episode that's completely disconnected from the plot and only exists to show off a fan favorite character (its still a good episode just not 10/10 like the rest of the show). I do also find Kiritusugu's total rejection of the grail confusing. By his understanding he could still wish for his family back. The grail even suggests this but he rejects that suggestion saying "3 million lives are worth more than you 2" and then proceeds not to actually make his original wish. I assume he didn't wish for his family because he was getting a sense that the grail was sus af but if so why not say that instead of the other line?
Anyway 10/10 anime in my opinion. At this point any complaint I have is a minor nitpick and not something that reduces the quality of the show by meaningful amount.