Fate/Zero - Episode 18 Discussion / Poll

[kk2extreme]

Characters named Shirley don't have good end

[rxrx]

I think Kiritsugu killed everyone in the village after he offed his father.

[Archer]

Originally Posted by rxrx

I think Kiritsugu killed everyone in the village after he offed his father.

Kiritsugu only killed one person that night. He went out with Natalia afterwards.

[Vicious108]

So the first Magus the Magus Killer murdered was his own father, huh? Somehow, that makes way too much sense.

Really great work from Kajiura this week, perfectly contributing to the whole tropical island atmosphere, as well as the foreboding sense of an ensuing tragedy. And the special Kalafina ED was quite fitting, even the lyrics, especially this line, which aptly describes what "Kerry" went through in this episode: "A beautiful dream is enough to tear you to pieces."

Being confronted with the fact that he could've prevented the tragedy had he been able to sacrifice just one person (who happened to be the person he loved most), Kiritsugu wasn't going to let it happen a second time. As fate would have it, the one person needed to sacrifice this time was his own father. But his father wasn't the only thing he killed on that day. His core, his dream of becoming a hero that could save everyone, was also shot to pieces, leaving him with, as he himself put it, "Nothing at all". Thus we witness the death of the innocent and idealistic boy, and the birth of the cynical and pragmatic Magus Killer who will kill hundreds to save hundreds more. Did Kiritsugu's childish dream and ideal fade away completely though? Or can traces of it still be found in the man we see partake in the 4th Holy Grail War? We shall see, I suppose.

One thing is certain, the moment his transformation into the aforementioned man took place carried as much weight as I was hoping it would, and capped off the episode perfectly. I must admit though, I didn't expect it would still take another episode to cover this backstory. In retrospect, I believe these episodes might have been more adequately placed after episode 16 rather than episode 17. It would tie in quite well with Kiritsugu's speech on his current philosophy and Saber's accurate reading of him having once wanted to be a hero, before being slapped in the face by reality, and it wouldn't make the wait for the final phase of the war, with the now known impending threat of Kirei and Gilgamesh's alliance, as painful as it is now.

Still a very powerful and effective backstory though, which doesn't detract from the overall quality of the series at all, and which I'm sure will make the pathos of the end of Kiritsugu's spiritual journey all the more heartfelt.

[FlareKnight]

A pretty good episode in giving Kiritsugu some background and delving into what molded him into what he is now. I really was wondering about everything that was driving Kiritsugu when he decided to kill his father. In part can believe it was trying not to make the same mistake of not being able to sacrifice something no matter how important. Though to be fair it doesn't seem like he liked his father that much in the first place...Part of it might have been simple revenge. His experiments and research killed Shirley, even if he didn't hand the stuff to her. On top of that his father had an "well things happen" kind of response which probably only fueled Kiritisugu's decision to finish him off. Also maybe part of it was Kiritsugu trying to atone for his mistake. If he had been able to kill Shirley as she asked this situation wouldn't have turned into such a nightmare. Regardless he got the job done and the impact of killing his father and what he saw was clear. There really wasn't anything for him to take. The girl he loved was gone and his dreams at the very least hit hard by reality.

Really is terrible to see how everything went down. Though in this series I'm guessing at almost no happy tales to be told. One day a simple village and then the next a total disaster zone. Sad that the Church was in part right. Sadly Shirley knew enough to have a peak at the possibilities, but not enough to realize what the research was capable of. Sad to see how she ended up and the disaster that was brought. Do wonder about Shirley's fate. Easy enough to suspect she was just killed offscreen by one of the dozens of people wiping out the island. Of course would have thought her 'death' would be more prominent. But maybe all that was needed was seeing Kiritsugu unable to kill her.

Well sorry to see you go out like that Shirley. But was reckless to take that medicine. No matter how much you respect the research don't touch it. Of course entirely possible that Kirtsugu's father would have asked her to take it down the road anyways as a test. So maybe she had little hope of surviving.

[king12354]

Heh, seems like Kiritsugu's life is nothing but a tragedy except for the way he dies, how ironic. As for the episode, I didn't exactly expect zombies after the first half, what an abrupt switch.

On another note, Shirley is one of the cuter-drawn girls I've seen in anime.

[ReddyRedWolf]

Well if anything this just shows Magus parents obsessed over Akasha suck on morality.

Wait... If the Church and Mage Association were this fast on vampire wannabees how come Zouken is still walking?

[Panzerklein]

Gil's face + short blue hair = Natalia. Oh my.

[mAc Chaos]

She probably just got finished off screen. At that point she was already dead, as far as the Shirley that Kiritsugu knew goes.

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by mAc Chaos

She probably just got finished off screen. At that point she was already dead, as far as the Shirley that Kiritsugu knew goes.

if she did manage to survive for a few years, she would actually get her sanity back. at least once she got her blood craving under control.

[Arabesque]

Originally Posted by Thess

I said poor adaptation.

Yes, I realize I am unable to spell -_-

Originally Posted by Thess

Since season 2 began (after the first episode), there has nothing but rushing and glossing over scenes. They should have made this series longer if they wanted to focus on unimportant stuff.

Secondly, the flashback was a lot longer than the novel which was a one chapter interlude (basically showing Shirley speaking to Kiritsugu then all going to hell. That was it). They crammed 4 and a half chapters in one episode (last one) while they stretched a single chapter in another? Who taught this people pacing?.

Okay, I can now understand where you are coming from.

I'm not a novel reader, and my knowledge comes from the events the anime had already covered (I am reading the translated portions, but I haven't gotten to this part yet) so I didn't know exactly what was the ratio between chapter-to-episode was.

When you list it as that, I can see now why you might call the second part of the series as being poor for an adaptation.

However, I would say that there are two things to consider here

1)This anime is directed towards not only Type-Moon fans, but also non fans as well. Director Aoki Ei explained that he made the anime with the mind set of ''If I (someone who doesn't really the setting that well) can get it, the audience should be able to as well''. At the end of the day, this show should feel good as a stand alone anime that anyone without any prior knowledge of Type-Moon could pick up and watch first, and events flowing naturally during the episodes second. Being a faithful adaptation, IMO, isn't as important as being a good adaptation that works without the watcher having to go back to the novels to fill in the holes.

2)While the chapter count in the past episode might be higher than this one, or this one elaborating on a single chapter, I think what matters here is to see exactly what is the events they adapted, and how well of a job did they do rather than how many chapters they got into the episode. Last episode was 4 chapters, but these 4 chapters might have been better to be compressed into a single episode rather than have them being dragged down over more episodes, to make the impact of the finale scene in the past episode stronger.

Furthermore, there are going to be extended scenes in the BD releases that fill in the stuff that were cut out do to the time constraints and the nature of the TV episodes, so it's not like they wont include everything in anycase.

I think where I'm coming from is that I felt that this episode did a lot of good for the show, and that what matters here is that things don't feel out of place, not how much content is being covered.

Originally Posted by Thess

Eh, which could have been explained without stretching it and without continuing another irrelevant episode next week? Yes. Irrelevant. Because Hearts of Freaks isn't part of F/Z which is, oh geez, maybe about the Fourth Heaven's Feel?

Nasu says what F/Z is really about in the talks:

“Speaking of, what is the fourth war about?”

“Hum – Saber getting bullied by Gilgamesh and Alexander!”

Well, the NicoNico summery back in the first part said that Kotomine Kirei was the Hero fo this story. Now I'm not syaing one is right and one is wrong, but let's just say one of those had been more of the focus of this show so far.

Originally Posted by kk2extreme

Characters named Shirley don't have good end

Tell me about it. And I really like the name too ...

Damn it, why does it have to be the cute one

Originally Posted by rxrx

I think Kiritsugu killed everyone in the village after he offed his father.

Eh, was there anyone alive in the villiage in the first place after he killed his father?

Originally Posted by Endless Twilight

Really great work from Kajiura this week, perfectly contributing to the whole tropical island atmosphere,

This so much. I found out that Kajiura did a lot better with this show when ever there is a more lowkey or very tense, subdued moments, where her music really shines.

[ApathyEcstasy]

I'm going to ponder that perhaps she escaped and survived. The fact that they didn't kill her on-screen, leaving it to the imagination, implies that the possibility is there.

[rpgman1]

So Kiritsugu was actually called Kerry in the past? He was just a regular kid back then, but the villagers didn't like his father one bit. Of course, they turned into Dead Apostles (reminds me too much of HotD and Biohazard). Then we got the Church and Mage's Association killing all Dead Apostles. Finally, we got Natalia who is just hired to kill them. Kiritsugu knew his father would've continued his research anyway and chose to kill him. His personality seems to drift slowly towards that of Natalia anyway.

[jeroz]

A decision from the basis of wanting to made up for the past mistake, which leads to a bigger mistake. It's a downward spiral for Kiritsugu, let's see if what happens in the next episode fuels or stops that spiral.

[Doria]

This was a surprisingly good rendition of one of my least favorite parts of the novels.

Honestly, I always felt that this interlude was sort of half-hearted as it was written; it just didn't seem to have much passion to it, and as a result, felt a bit by the numbers.

The staging of the adaptation (along with the extra material) really tied this episode into the themes of the rest of the series. I particularly liked the editing with Shirley asking him (in flashback) what kind of man he wants to grow up to be, as he's chambering the bullet in the gun. It feels obvious to write it, but it was effective as animated.

Additionally, I liked the parallels to Kirei's place in the last eps. Now, both have killed their own fathers...

I don't really like Kiritsugu any more than I did in the first place, but I thought this episode was a surprisingly strong adaptation of a relatively weak part of the books. I'll be interested if they'll use the entire next episode to finish off the novel's Interlude, or just half of it. It could certainly fit a whole episode, but that does seem kind of a long time to spend in an extended flashback, even though I really love Natalia.

[blue_sora]

Originally Posted by ApathyEcstasy

I'm going to ponder that perhaps she escaped and survived. The fact that they didn't kill her on-screen, leaving it to the imagination, implies that the possibility is there.

You have one group that kills every vampire in sight and another that burns everything in sight. Shirley as good as dead. It isn't easy to escape the island either, moreover if you're a vampire blinded by bloodlust.

[Aqua Knight]

I understand Kerry's motives - kill 1 to save 100, but he just killed his father in cold blood with nearly no hesitation.

His mindset had to be completely changed within few hours make such decision - not very believable.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Arabesque

1)This anime is directed towards not only Type-Moon fans, but also non fans as well. Director Aoki Ei explained that he made the anime with the mind set of ''If I (someone who doesn't really the setting that well) can get it, the audience should be able to as well''. At the end of the day, this show should feel good as a stand alone anime that anyone without any prior knowledge of Type-Moon could pick up and watch first, and events flowing naturally during the episodes second. Being a faithful adaptation, IMO, isn't as important as being a good adaptation that works without the watcher having to go back to the novels to fill in the holes.
.

This, one thousand times this. I feel this is one of the many reasons why adaptations like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings meet such success. Not only they looks good, but the public did not have to resort to flip through the original source to fill the blanks. Of course there will be unhappy fans who will scream and cry about betrayal of the original work because x or y get left out and that a or b should have happened, but in the end, a director in charge of an adaptation should have the interest of the bigger audience in mind, while not betraying what made the adaptated work tick for the fans.

[Klashikari]

I personally have no problem with this adaptation: frankly, this is again the very same situation than Rin's little adventure episode (albeit, except ep18 is far more important.
Basically speaking, there is no way for them to cram kiritsugu's past in a single episode (be it content and pacing), so expanding it to put more emphasis on Kiritsugu's downfall is actually relevant and important considering one of the major conflict in F/Z is regarding Saber and Kiritsugu's perspective.

Likewise, Epsiode 17 "rush" style was exactly similar to the kings' banquet episode: they could potentially strech it, but in the TV format, it is not a good idea: they add to encompass every major events that surround Kotomine so that we have the turning point in the series (aka the unholy contract between him and gilgamesh), and splitting their talk and Tokiomi's death + the contract would be a huge break of momentum (the same could be said for the kings' banquet, then splitting it from Rider's ionioi hetairoi, confirmed with an interview).
It is exactly the same problem: if they shrunk Rin's portion, the banquet and Iskandar showtime would be in a very awkward setup. Likewise, if episode 17 events were stretched, not only we would have Tokiomi's death rolling in the plain start of ep18, but pulling Kiritsugu's past right afterwards wouldn't make any sense, -and- displayed as incomplete and not flowing well, storywise.

They have to be mindful regarding the format of a TV series: surely, they have to make the screenplay fitting 26 episodes, but each tidbits must have a certain flow and pacing -within- each episode. You just can't make a continuous animation and cut it into 26 parts each 22 minutes, that would be terrible, especially those who didn't read the original material.
Therefore, each episode has to fulfill a certain content and narrative in order to appeal and satisfy the public -each week-.
The parts they've cut in S1 and reintroduced in the BD version are a testimony of that: they did prepare the adaptation as faithful as possible, but they had to make sure episodes flow well on their own, and thus had to make sure all of them can stand on their own, and not simply shuffling the order of events whatsoever.

Originally Posted by Aqua Knight

I understand Kerry's motives - kill 1 to save 100, but he just killed his father in cold blood with nearly no hesitation.

His mindset had to be completely changed within few hours make such decision - not very believable.

Actually, there were largely enough to make him take this decision already:
-A completely hellish scenery that was originally due to his father research
-The whole island turning into ghouls because he didn't kill Shirley when he had the chance to
-His crush transformed in a Dead Apostle right before his eyes, displaying a very blunt anguish
-His father, to the very end, giving absolutely no consideration to humans and what aftermath his research lead to.
-His father missing completely the meaning of Kiritsugu's question: his negative answer was regarding that "being a rogue dead apostle" is a flat out no, despite what you would expect from a parent is they would never toy with their own child life (which means that if he had confidence with a new theory, he wouldn't hesitate to test it on Kiritsugu, should he can have a controllable Dead Apostle this way). That portion is the turning point between Kiritsugu and his father.
-The research were solely in order to reach the root, hardly anything that Kiritsugu and Shirley were thinking of.

Generally speaking, this kind of revelations are traumatic enough to lead to drastic change of personality or even post traumatic stress disorder (such like those that are characteristic to guerilla children and the likes). Hell, the last point definitely drew the abyssmal gap between Noritaka and Kiritsugu.
It is also why I liked the little change Ufotable made here: Kiritsugu stabbing his father with Shriley's knife, putting more emphasis to what he should have done, but didn't in the first place, "correcting" his mistake in this end.

[Aqua Knight]

Okay agreed. PTSD leading to a drastic change in personality is a viable explanation.