velshtein | the end

Last episode! ;;

SABERRRRRR. ;;

AND THEN SUDDENLY A HORROR STORY.

I did laugh a little when all that EVIL GRAIL MUD fell on him.

BUT SERIOUSLY. I'VE HAD NIGHTMARES ABOUT LAVA/MUD KILLING EVERYTHING. ;;

OH GOD.

Oh Illya. ;;

Oh Kiritsugu. ;;

;;

BRB CRYING MY FACE OFF. Poor Kariya. ;;

SUDDENLY ASSHOLE BOYFRIENDS.

LMAO. Okay one of Gilgamesh's scenes, right before this one was cut. About what happened to him after the GRAIL MUD DEVOURED HIM:

-03:11:56

— A vortex started up.

Sin, the evil in this world, circulated and multiplied and chained and changed as it whirled into a vortex.

Gluttony lust greed depression wrath sloth hypocrisy pride envy, over and over again encroaching and sprouting, whirling into the vortex.

The crime of rebellion the crime of intimidation the crime of adultery the crime of destruction the seven cardinal sins the crime of coercion the crime of theft the crime of desertion the crime of slander the crime of arson the crime of insulting the crime of disrespect the crime of sowing discord the crime of abduction the crime of bribery the crime of abortion the crime of assisting suicide the crime of gambling the crime of abandoning a corpse the crime of mobbing the crime of abandonment the crime of bearing false witness the crime of possessing stolen goods the crime of kidnapping the crime of violence, all crimes should be assessed and sentenced to capital punishment or severe punishment refuse and deny all hatred kill kill kill it is absolutely forbidden kill kill kill he will absolutely not agree kill kill kill very good just like that kill kill kill right that’s right kill kill kill promise kill kill kill but no but no what kill kill kill ah it is really boring to have only this one thought——

"——!?"

The vortex of sound that was the curse was circling. There existed something here that should not exist; from within the barrage of denying curses, a voice cried out, ‘yes!”
Impossible. Affirmations and correctness did not exist within this cursed vortex of hatred. Because everything had determined that everything was ugly and hateful so this word could not appear here—

—But that voice announced again clearly, ‘that is right.’

That is right. The world was originally already like this. Since the truth has been put before your eyes, then why do you sigh? Why are you surprised?

"——!?"

The voice of the curse asked.

What was right?

Who was there to acknowledge it? Who was there to permit it? And who was to bear the burden of sin?

Facing the bombshell tossed from the darkness— in reply, a resounding and concrete sneer.

A foolish question. That goes without asking.

The King will acknowledge it; the King will permit it. The King will bear the burden of the entire world.

"——!?"

The mud asked, what is a king?

But at the same time that it asked the question, it realized that it had contradicted itself.

In this place that strictly did not allow the existence of ‘entities’, the mud had admitted that there was someone else within it. Some strange foreign object, that could not exist, had appeared here.

That was — King — a presence that was an absolute controller, as well as one that had no equal.

His name was — King of Heroes, Gilgamesh.

"That is I!”

Along with flying droplets, the black mud cracked and dispersed away. The foreign object that it could not digest even with having mobilized all its hatred appeared from within the black mud.

Within the burning ruins, he once again stood upon the ground.

The perfect, Golden-proportioned body was no longer the spirit form that it had taken during its time as a Servant, but a true flesh body. The black mud that denied all life crystallized the impurity within itself and then abandoned it, but the result had been that a certain Heroic Spirit had realized his wish of obtaining a corporeal body and returning to this world.

Even standing in the exact middle of a burning hell, the majesty emanating from the body of the king made the surrounding flames afraid to come close. Gilgamesh generously bared his naked body that was like a statue, at the same time sneering impatiently.

"—People would actually treat that sort of thing as a wish-granting machine and fight to the death for it. This time, the entertainment has really been frustrating.”

But it was not bad like this either—touching the new flesh body that he had accidentally received, the King of Heroes felt immensely satisfied.

“Is it Heaven’s will that lets me descend like a sovereign upon this time to unite the world again … Humph, the previous tribulations were really silly. But that’s okay too; dissatisfaction is dissatisfaction, I’ll just accept reality.

Even though he felt it to be very troublesome, he could not refuse to meet battle since this was the challenge issued to him by the gods. Gilgamesh began to laugh wryly again at his status as the King of Heroes.

SO THAT'S WHY HE'S NAKED. AND ALIVE. XD

Creepy.

My sister couldn't stop laughing at this convo BECAUSE NAKED. And he's just sitting there and Kirei's all WHY AM I DEAD WUT IS GOING ON and Gil's all HEAVEN TOLD ME TO RULE THE WORLD and lmao I just can't deal with these two.

Hooray for that contract I guess:

"You really are a troublesome man. It took me a lot of effort to dig you out from under the rubble.”

Kirei diligently operated his dazed brain and began to think, intending to understand how the entire event had happened. His last memory was of the Municipal Hall’s large props storage space; he had been kneeling on the ground, and had been shot from behind and killed by Kiritsugu. – No matter how he thought about it, he should have lost his life instantly.

He tore open the vestments at his chest, checking the spot that should have been shot through.

Suddenly, the image of the black mud surfaced before his eyes.

"...?"

An illusion. There was no scar on his chest. He pressed his hand atop his heart to check.

"...Did you perform healing on me? Gilgamesh.”

"That… ah. You did look dead, but you and I are linked by the contract. I got this flesh body because of that mud, so maybe there is also some reason that you are alive again.”

The black mud that in the end had been unable to corrode Archer completely — had followed the path of the prana supply that had formerly linked Archer to his Master, and arrived at Kotomine Kirei’s physical body, becoming the source of a life-force supply that could substitute for a heart. Only thus had Kirei revived.

In other words, now Kirei relied on the prana provided by “Angra Mainyu” in order to live.

ANIME, WHY DID YOU CUT OUT KIREI TEARING HIS SHIRT OPEN??? GIL IS NAKED ALREADY LET KIREI JOIN HIM.

Kirei's hysterics is one of my favorite scenes EVER in the story. The culmination and climax of his story in F/Z and Nakata Jouji's laughter is the greatest thing EVER AAAAAH. <3

The way Gilgamesh always looks at Kirei SLAYS MY SHIPPING SOUL. ♥♥♥

Also a moment for me to appreciate THOSE PRETTY LEGS.

Aww that's kind of sweet of Kirei to get Gil a shitty burned piece of cloth.

I really love these two.

Awww.

THESE TWO. ♥ As horrible as they may be, I do love when people find other people that they can like and love and just find happiness with (of a sort) and idk for shitheads they're cute with each other, especially since neither one gets what they deserve in this series. AND THEY SPENT THOSE TEN YEARS BEFORE FATE/STAY NIGHT TOGETHER AWWWWWWW.

KIRITSUGU. ;;

LOL HE HATES YOU SO MUCH, KIRITSUGU.

OMG SHIROU. You are awfully cute here. Why did you grow up to annoy me so???

Oh Kiritsugu. ♥ ;;

OH COUNTDOWN, I WILL MISS YOU. ;;

AWWW WAVER-CHAN, YOUR NEW GRANDPARENTS ARE SO CUTE.

♥

BRB CRYING AGAIN.

;;

WAVER. I'm so happy that he got a happy ending and is actually BETTER OFF than before the war and UGH HE'S PLUGGING IN THAT GAME SYSTEM THAT RIDER BOUGHT. ♥♥♥♥

NICE ENGLISH, KIREI.

Lmao oh God. Kirei stop that.

THAT'S RIGHT RIN, DON'T TRUST THAT SHITHEAD PRIEST.

Poor Aoi. But I guess if you're brain-damaged, being stuck in a happy world is better than other outcomes. :(

Poor Rin. ;; Mother, father and sister all gone. ;;

And this shitheel probably giggling inside at THE IRONY.

KIREI STOP FINDING JOY AT A LITTLE GIRL'S TEARS.

OH SABER. ;; From the novel about this scene:

The sky at sunset was the color of blood.

The ground before her eyes was also the color of blood.

The corpses slumped on the ground were the people who had once believed in a young girl and supported her as King, offering up to her the songs of victory.

Due to traitors sowing discord, they had divided into two factions; each had seen the other as an enemy and carried out slaughter, and then, they had fallen together on this battlefield. King Arthur’s final resting place, the foot of Camlann Hill.
Waking from a dream of the other side of space and time, kneeling dejectedly once more atop the bloodstained hill, Arturia blankly gazed at the desolate scene.

In order to change this ending, she had entrusted her soul after death to the ‘World’; and started a journey in search of a miracle.

She had initially decided not to return here; she had initially believed that she would never see this scene again. But at this moment, the young girl still knelt on this piece of land.

But this was not the ending. This was only one point on the endlessly cyclic path.
After being released from her contract, the Heroic Spirit named Arturia had not set forth for the ‘Throne of Heroes’, but had been brought back to this place Camlann, because she had not come to the end of her fate’s path; It was necessary that she meets her final end here.

In other words, before she had been summoned to be a Servant, she was not a standard Heroic Spirit who had become one after dying in reality.

At the last moment she had exchanged vows with the ‘World’, hoping to obtain the Grail, and the price was to turn her soul after death into a guardian—this was the truth about the Servant named Arturia.

The contract could only be fulfilled only under the condition that the Grail had been obtained. In other words, if Arturia did not obtain the Grail, then time would forever stop on this land; forever, where even death cannot be achieved. Before obtaining the Grail, she could only continue to participate in the fight for the Grail on the other side of time.

Therefore, Arturia’s time had been frozen in the moment before her death. Unless she obtained the Grail, she could only return again and again to Camlann. Over and over again, this scene would eternally reproach her, torment her.

On the slope of death, she still held the stance with which she had established the contract.

Her face covered with tears, gauntlets stained through with the blood of enemies, the lance in her hand piercing the heart of her own flesh and blood.

The traitor who had also inherited her own bloodline, the child of tragedy, Mordred. The entanglement of love and hate had caused her to lose everything, and the scene to be fixed at the instant when she killed her own flesh and blood with her own hands—

The instant in which the awareness of the ‘World’ had come, summoned by wretched and tormented cries, and established the contract with the hero who searched for a miracle—

This was the prison that forever bound Arturia, who had lost her time.

Within time that had lost its meaning, within an instant that was equivalent to eternity, she gazed upon the battlefield under the light of dusk, and waited for the next summoning.

BRB CRYING MY HEART TO DEATH.

I am glad that they touched a bit on Lancelot's death scene though. Cutting out his past with Saber though did kill a lot of the emotional impact though, with what he meant to Saber and how much his tragedy, and her inability to help him, broke her heart. ;;

SABER. ;;

;;

Poor Illya. Poor Kiritsugu. ;;

Oh Kiritsugu. Anyways, he was cursed by the Grail:

Kiritsugu had repeatedly used the excuse of ‘traveling overseas’ to get Shirō to stay home while he traveled to the Einsberns. He wanted to save his daughter, who had been left all alone within the City of Winter.

However, no matter how obstinately Kiritsugu repeated his visits, Jubstacheit was still unwilling to open the forest’s bounded field. That was understandable. All the efforts the Einsberns put into the fourth Heaven’s Feel came to nothing because of Kiritsugu’s last-minute betrayal. A man such as Kiritsugu would have to remain silent even if he was punished, but Acht did not do that. Did he want to put the traitor to exile like a stray dog and let it struggle on its last legs, and carry that shameful title for the rest of its life? Or did he plan to let Kiritsugu never see his daughter again and use that as the most severe punishment that can be inflicted? No matter what, it was already a fact.

Had he been the Kiritsugu of the past, the infamous “Magus Killer”, then he might have been able to forcibly break through this icy bounded field and rush to his daughter’s side. However, the current Kiritsugu had been touched by “Angra Mainyu” and had already been corroded by this curse. His flesh was getting weaker and weaker. His limbs atrophied, his sight began to fade, and he had completely lost the ability to use magecraft. He was not much different from a terminally ill patient. He couldn’t even find the starting point of the bounded field, and could only wander in the blizzard, waiting till death.

He understood all his attempts had been in vain – recently Kiritsugu had already faintly felt that his time was probably up. In other words, he probably hadn’t had much time left since the moment he became cursed by the black mud.

Therefore he had recently been staying home all the time, drowning in memories as he passed the time in a daze.

;;

;;

Overall I adored this adaptation. Urobuchi Gen's story was fantastic (and I adore his take on the characters that also appear in Fate/Stay Night) and the translation to the anime WAS SO GREAT OMG. Just everything. Art, music, direction, pacing. Pretty awesome.

Characters like Saber, Kirei, and Gilgamesh don't get to the end of their story until F/SN while Rin, Sakura, Illya, Shirou don't really start their story until F/SN but I still think F/Z wrapped up things nicely. It is Kiritsugu's (and Iri's. ....and Kirei's to a large extent) story afterall and I think that was presented well.

ANYWAYS I LOVED IT. LOVED ALL THE CHARACTERS. AND THE STORY. I LOVED EVERYTHING AND I MISS IT ALREADY. ;; ♥♥♥

AND I'M JUST GOING TO HAVE MY OWN HEADCANON FOR WHAT I WANTED IN F/SN. Saber finds a way to get to Lancelot and saves him because goddammit he's her knight and she's his king and HE DOESN'T GET TO ANGST HIMSELF TO DEATH BECAUSE HIS KING LOVES HIM VERY MUCH AND WILL SAVE HIM/KICK HIS ASS A MILLION TIMES IF THAT'S WHAT IT TAKES,Illya and Saber get to talk and bond over Iri and Kiritsugu, Gilgamesh convinces Kirei that the Grail is a piece of shit, they decide to leave Fuyuki, travel the world together and be assholes to everyone they meet, Shirou decides he wants to be a doctor and is a kind sweet boy that respects the wishes of the people around him and helps as much as he can, Shinji falls off a cliff and dies, Rin kicks everyone's ass (especially Kirei's), saves Sakura, and WINS EVERYTHING AND BURNS DOWN KIREI'S CHURCH BECAUSE ANYWHERE HE LIVES IS PROBABLY INFESTED WITH EVIL ANYWAYS.