Quote:
Originally Posted by Kokukirin
Kotomine is never easy to understand, and even harder to connect to the audience. Episode 1 and 6 tried to explain him, but I still fail to understand this man, other than the repeatedly-stated lack of desire and joy. It's still a mystery to me why he is so interested about Emiya.
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Kotomine is quite possibly the most complex character in the Fateverse, so it's only natural that people might not yet have much of a grasp on his character as of episode 6, but I felt the reason for his interest in Kiritsugu was made fairly clear in episode 1. Specifically, in the beginning of its second half, in what was easily one of my favourite scenes so far. I'll try and summarise the gist of it here.
The first thing to note is that both Kiritsugu and Kotomine followed similar paths in the earlier portions of their lives; they were both executors/heretic hunters/magus killers. Both surrounded themselves with battle and conflict in a rather obsessive manner which would appear to be devoid of self-interest to most. But the difference between them is that Kiritsugu stopped following that path and seemingly had a change of heart, once he met the Einzberns. Kotomine, who still follows said path diligently despite it providing him with no sense of fulfilment whatsoever, presumes thus that that was when Kiritsugu found his "answer". Basically, that upon joining the Einzberns Kiritsugu found his place in the world, or, as Gilgamesh put it in this episode, the form of his soul, which Kotomine has yet to discover for himself. You could say that, in a sense, Kiritsugu gives Kotomine a shred of hope that he too might be able to find something that gives him a sense of joy and purpose and fills his otherwise utterly empty and passionless soul.
And that emptiness of Kotomine is also the reason why Kiritsugu fears him in turn. As Kiritsugu remarked in the aforementioned scene, Kotomine frantically immersed himself in the mastery of many different types of magic, which, upon learning them, he then proceeds to discard like trash. He's clearly desperately searching for something, but can't seem to find it anywhere. Everything that generally gives human beings pleasure, passion and fulfilment does absolutely nothing for him and no matter what he does he remains hopelessly empty. Kiritsugu realises how dangerous a man like that can be, and thus fears him the most out of all the other Masters. But what he doesn't yet realise is that, due to their relatively similar paths in life, Kotomine also singles Kiritsugu out from the rest of the Masters, but out of interest rather than fear. Because Kotomine believes Kiritsugu found something of a value (an answer or a purpose) amidst the endless string of battles, which Kotomine himself has yet to find in his similarly chaotic life, whose path has been defined by a rigid religious upbringing and has left him with no direction or desires.
And it's due to that vested interest in Kiritsugu that Kotomine took the time to leave the Church and personally investigate and get involved in the aftermath of the Archibald building explosion, thus disobeying Tokiomi's instructions, just because he felt there was a good chance Kiritsugu would be involved. Seeking out Kiritsugu is the only thing in this Holy Grail War that Kotomine does out of actual self-interest and not just because that's what's expected of him.
That's the gist of it so far. But F/SN also goes a lot into why his is such a tortured existence, particularly, as sento said, in the one route that was never animated. Anyone looking to get the full of picture of Kotomine's in-depth character study should definitely read it if they haven't yet.
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