Fate/Apocrypha and Putting Trust Into Human Nature
I believe that one major overarching theme in Fate/Apocrypha is the ability to put one’s faith into humanity despite its cruel acts. This theme connects to several major characters in Fate/Apocrypha and is an interwoven in the narrative.
Sieg is definitely one of the characters that this idea relates strongly to. Sieg’s perspective on the human condition and how it changes across the show is interesting due to Sieg being only a couple of days old. This theme really starts appearing during the events prior to his encounter with Jack the Ripper. When Sieg and Astolfo are going about the town, it is Sieg’s first encounter with a community and he is amazed by what he sees. However this perspective of humanity is severely affected by Jack the Ripper. In Jack the Ripper’s world, Sieg is abruptly made aware how cruel humans can be and he is severely shaken up by it. He later tries to ask some of servants about their perspectives human nature.
Speaking of servants, let’s move our attention onto Astolfo. Although in part due to Astolfo’s simple mindedness, Astolfo in a geninely good person who does try to save people and believes in them mainly out of his insane level of optimism.
One of the other servants that Sieg asks for their opinion on if human nature is inherently good is Mordred. He asks her if she thinks human ethics are justified. Mordred states that humans are humans and there behaviors are circumstancial but overall human nature is self serving and selfish. Astolfo rejects Mordred’s opinion. Mordred goes onto ask Sieg what he thinks. Sieg states that he was beginning to admire humans until he learned about the past of Jack the Ripper and now he’s unsure. Mordred says she doesn’t know either and doesn’t care, as all they wants to do is to become king. The irony here is that Mordred later realizes that the reason they wanted to become king was to ease the burden placed on Artoria, who after not acknowledge that Mordred was capable, Mordred rebelled against.
Next up is Jeanne d’Arc. Jeanne possesses a love of humanity despite the fact that she is entirely aware of the acts that humans have committed and was guilty of committing them. She forgives even those who burned her at the stake.
Contrasting with Jeanne d’Arc we have Amakusa Shirou Tokisada. Similar to Jeanne, Shirou is fully aware of how cruel human nature can be, with him witnessing many horrific acts in his lifetime. Shirou believed that human nature is inherently destrustive and thus in order to achieve salvation the negative aspects of human nature must be destroyed. Other character see the faults in this solution, as although human nature has many negative aspects, there is inherent value in the progression of humankind
A major theme in Fate/ Apocrypha is putting one’s faith into the goodness of human nature while being aware of the negative aspects of humankind. Fate/Apocrypha explores this aspect of the human condition and shows that putting faith into others is not necessarily a sign of naïveté.
Sources
Fate/Apocrypha
Type Moon Wiki
