May 14th, 2012 
AstroNerdBoy フェイト/ゼロ Episode 19
Fate/Zero – 19
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Natalia takes Kiritsugu with him and raises him as a son, teaching him her trade as a mage hunter, since she freelances for both the Mage Association and the Church. She’s strict with him, but when he’s older, she starts taking him on missions, where he’s a skilled assassin. Further to that, she has a Crest installed in him and makes 66 special bullets from one of his ribs, as his Mystic Code against other mages. Natalia gets a mission to take on Odd Vorak, a Mage who creates Dead Apostles via his Ghoul Bees. As Kiritsugu assassinates someone in New York, Natalia insures Vorak’s assassination. However, his body is filled with Ghoul Bees, and everyone but Natalia is turned into a Ghoul, forcing Kiritsugu to shoot down the plane to prevent a Dead Apostle plague.
Thoughts/Review:
Questions. I can understand how magic is used so that Kiritsugu can assassinate Vorak, but who did he kill in New York? I assume it was one of Vorak’s companions, but that wasn’t too clear to me. Heck, the episode made it seem that Kiritsugu assassinated two people in two spots with one bullet, but I’m not sure that’s what happened.
How’d Natalia safely get to the cockpit, especially with not only a plane full of Ghouls, but a plane full of Ghoul Bees? How come the cockpit doors were secure for her, but not so for the cockpit crew?
Shooting down the plane over the ocean is fine to make sure the Ghouls don’t make it out, but what about the Ghoul Bees? Seriously, insects can travel quite a ways, and the odds of all of them being killed in an explosion is quite low. As I see it, it seems that landing the plane, letting Natalia escape out of the cockpit window, then performing an extermination would be the best solution. After all, Natalia exterminated the “bees” (that look like yellow jackets) in the case with no problem.
As to Natalia, I liked the character. Being a foster mother was apparently a good thing for her. I’m guessing the final smile on her face as the plane exploded was her approval of what Kiritsugu ended up doing. I liked that she and Kiritsugu had a final, long conversation before he killed her.
While the knowledgeable among you have already informed me of this, the episode does not specify how Kiritsugu received his Crest. Hopefully, that’s in the BD release.
Regardless, I am glad to see this back history for Kiritsugu, not to justify his actions, but to see how he became such a good assassin to earn the title Mage Killer.
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To me the bees look more like wasps than bees. Yet again I’m not an expert in bees and wasps or any other insect and I have hard time distinguishing one from the other.
Also, a couple days before I heard that bees didn’t like water and if they chase you and if you manage to run safely to a river, lake, or other body of water, they’ll give up on you. Well there’s one exception to that – the killer bees, which could fly over the lake and wait for you to resurface (if you dived; if not – you’re a goner!). Well, if you can hold your breath for a couple of hours they’ll give up too and you’ll be safe, but I cannot do that without proper equipment (such as gear for scuba-diving).
Yeah, “yellow jackets” came to my mind.
As to your remark about bees and water, I’ve heard that too. However, bees/wasps/hornets/etc. fly over water. I’m not sure what their range is, but I’m guessing they can fly a ways.
Another boring episode. wheres the action? I was beginning to like this series.
Wrong genre and expectations, dude. I said it a few times already, but Type-Moon works, and that includes the Fate-franchise too, are always more about conversations and the psychologic of the characters, than action and fights.
As Farray said, Nasu works and stuff based off of them often have a lot of talking in them between action scenes. It’s what happens when your original medium was a Visual Novel, after all. Also, these two episodes were really important to understanding just how broken as a human being Kiritsugu is, and how very wrong his ideal is. You basically need this since it factors into the last couple of episodes.
If you’re just watching this series for the fights, which are awesome, don’t get me wrong, you’re going to be disappointed and miss a lot if you skip over the really important talky bits.
Im only watching this because i never drop a series, i always see it through to the bitter end. the anime im referring too is FSN which i hated. but because there was a prequel i had to watch it. rules are rules. its the same reason i watched carnival phantasm, which was great BTW. FZ is OK, its been awesome in some ways and not in others. On the whole anime is awesome and you cant really ever go wrong, and thats why i never drop anything i start watching.
I usually do the same, but there were cases where I dropped the anime at some point. “Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere” comes to mind (dropped it in the middle of the second episode – it was torture to watch it! Just like “Negima!?”! Don’t watch it, dammit!). “Sket Dance” as well (around 50th episode – no time for it and I’m even surprised I watched it for so long). Other dropped were “Fairy Tails”, “Legend of the Galactic Heroes” (this is more like stalled indefinitely after the first episode (and waiting for a little better translation))… probably few/several more.
But usually I try to finish the ones I started. And especially liked. “Tenchi Muyo” guarantees it!
Maybe it is because I’m getting old, but I like the character work being done here.
So now we know the real story of why Kiritsugu took down an entire airplane full of people to kill one target, as rumors had it. It’s been much too long for me to remember the episode or even the series, but I do remember that being said about him.
I got curious enough about the “bees” to listen carefully and then look it up… if I heard correctly, the word used was “hachi”, which according to Rikaichan could be either bee or wasp. (I was half-expecting the word used to have been “suzumebachi”, the dreaded Japanese hornet. Those things are effing scary all by themselves.)
Last but not least, wrt the questions raised… I’d agree on almost every point. But it seems like the reason Natalia could easily kill the ones in the case was that they were sitting ducks (for what I’m guessing was a spritz of liquid nitrogen, followed by getting it poured on them). The ones flying around the cabin would have been a lot more of a challenge.
In my mind, the plane could have been fumigated to kill them (or whatever Mage/Church method might be used to accomplish this). Shooting the plane down takes care of the Dead Apostles, but the “bees” are another issue.
If those were bees then after they’ve stung all the passengers they’d be dead. The only danger would be the ghouls themselves since they actively chase after people to bite and replicate (like Shirley).
Either way, the explosion was a very Hollywood style fireball that looked like it incinerated everything.
Everything else, it’s literally a wizard did it. Natalie is a mage, getting to the cockpit and then sealing it shouldn’t be beyond her abilities.
As for what Kiritsugu was doing, the episode said he was killing a couple of the henchmen associated with the prime target. Seems like that’s enough of an excuse to keep Kiritsugu off the plane.
I’m sure the novel has more insight about this but this is what I can draw from the episode itself
It’s actually the opposite. The novel doesn’t give much more insight, since the interlude(aka the two flashback episodes) was really short. The flashback episodes were extended a lot campared to the novel.
More background information is probably available in the Fate/Zero Material book.
About the bees again: I assume Vorak made them in a way they wouldn’t die after stinging a victim. He was a magus and he already made them into absolutely dangerous tools, so I think he wouldn’t have forgotten such a crucial detail.
who did he kill in New York? I assume it was one of Vorak’s companions, but that wasn’t too clear to me.
As Natalia said, Kiritsugu was supposed to kill Vorak’s allies in New York. So you are right.
Heck, the episode made it seem that Kiritsugu assassinated two people in two spots with one bullet, but I’m not sure that’s what happened
Did it? I think it was pretty clear Kiritsugu killed only one person. It looked like this at the least.
How’d Natalia safely get to the cockpit, especially with not only a plane full of Ghouls, but a plane full of Ghoul Bees? How come the cockpit doors were secure for her, but not so for the cockpit crew?
Natalia has an unbreakable will to survive, she is an experienced and skilled assassin and she is partially not human. I guess she was just too awesome to get infected by bees or ghouls. Btw, Vorak sounded awfilly dangerous if he actually was able to make ghouls with his bees and didn’t follow the “1 out of 100” rule for making ghouls. Or maybe I’m misinterpreting this.
About the doors… I assume the cockpit crew did not lock the door and/or went to see what is going on and got a nice surprise.
As I see it, it seems that landing the plane, letting Natalia escape out of the cockpit window, then performing an extermination would be the best solution.
Maybe the best solution for Natalia, but she already involved civilians by asking the control tower for assistance to land the plane safely. Imagine how many people would have been infected in a city like New York if the bees and ghouls had come out. And this time there aren’t conveniently so many Enforcers and Executors ready to “clean up”.
Shooting down the plane is rationally seen the best solution because Natalia is someone who wouldn’t have taken any other plans other than to land the plane in the airport because she definitely wanted to survive. At least that is what I think.
And hey, if there is no logical explanation, we can just say his rocket launcher was his Mystic Code. We are in the Nasuverse. There is always the wildcard excuse called magic. ;D
After all, Natalia exterminated the “bees” (that look like yellow jackets) in the case with no problem.
The bees she killed looked inactive to me. The other ones however…
Being a foster mother was apparently a good thing for her.
She actually felt more for Kiritsugu other than having parental feelings. Seems like Kiritsugu, even though they are not blood-related, was just a chick magnet like Shirou in FSN. Like father, like son, I guess. 😛
I’m guessing the final smile on her face as the plane exploded was her approval of what Kiritsugu ended up doing.
That imo is a nice change compared to the LN. Though I still think Natalia was prepared to die in the novel too because Kiritsugu noticed that she was a lot more talkative than normally. Or it could have been possibly just a way for her to kill time.
For Kiritsugu “Justice” > personal feelings. I was wondering why ufotable cut Kiritsugu’s answer to Shirley’s question. Maybe they’ll animate it only once to give that sentence “I want to be an Ally of Justice!” a deeper meaning at the end, since it is also Shirou’s wish that drives him in FSN.
I don’t know if that was intended or just a coincidence, but the episode aired on Mother’s Day. This is quite sad.
Farray’s quote:
How’d Natalia safely get to the cockpit, especially with not only a plane full of Ghouls, but a plane full of Ghoul Bees? How come the cockpit doors were secure for her, but not so for the cockpit crew?
Natalia has an unbreakable will to survive, she is an experienced and skilled assassin and she is partially not human. I guess she was just too awesome to get infected by bees or ghouls. Btw, Vorak sounded awfilly dangerous if he actually was able to make ghouls with his bees and didn’t follow the “1 out of 100” rule for making ghouls. Or maybe I’m misinterpreting this.
End of Farray’s quote.
The rule of awesomeness, huh?
>Heck, the episode made it seem that Kiritsugu assassinated two people in two spots with one bullet, but I’m not sure that’s what happened
>Did it? I think it was pretty clear Kiritsugu killed only one person. It looked like this at the least.
The way the scene played out, Natalia did her magic symbol on the back of the chair, Kiritsugu fired, killing his target while at the same time, Vorak look like he’d been shot in the back.
I’m probably allowing the influence of a Star Trek: Deep Space 9 episode to weigh on me. There was an episode where a killer used a rifle that had been modified so that it had a micro-transporter at the end of it. Thus, he used a scanner to see through the bulkheads into rooms, chose a victim, fired, the micro-transporter beamed the bullet to the target, where it continued on, killing the target as if at close range. To me, it seemed that Kiritsugu’s bullet was transplaced via magic.
Natalia knew she wasn’t going to be able to land that plane in New York, especially since she hasn’t flown anything larger and more complicated than a Cessna before. Actually landing that wide-bodied jumbo jet safely was out of the question. She just doesn’t have the skills to do so. Even if she did, New York would be fucked afterwards because now there’s an infestation of Ghouls and Dead Apostle making bees running around JFK infecting people. Sure, you could call in the Mages Association or the Church there, but they’ll just burn NYC to the ground to prevent the breakout from spreading and to cover up the existence of magic to the mundanes. Natalia knew she was dead the moment she started talking to Kiritsugu about growing old and rusty and stuff like that. The two of them were having a last chat before she knew that he was going to do what needed to be done.
And yes, this episode basically establishes how broken of a human being Kiritsugu is, and how very wrong that ideal of his is too. This is going to be important when it comes to the end of the series. Complaints about lack of action these last two episodes are very much misplaced here, especially since Nasu works have an awful lot of very important talking in them between the requisite awesome action scenes.
Also, apparently Gen Urobuchi says that it was just coincidence that the episode where Kiritsugu kills his mother figure aired on Mother’s Day, but everyone else on the internet knows better. HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, everyone!
If I remember the novel correctly, the conversation between them starts pretty much from the cockpit, where she says “everyone is a ghoul now”. The liberties ufotable took with the anime kinda left some plotholes, like how she survived her way to the cockpit. The age old excuse of “magic” always work in the Nasuverse though…
Like Farray said, the whole ordeal isn’t described as much in the book. It basically boiled down to two things: 1. As Natalia mentions early in the episode, she’d do anything she to survive, which meant she would try to land the plane regardless of risks and costs. 2. Kiritsugu knew this, but also knew that if she landed the plane safely, a single one of the 300 ghouls escaping would risk the whole city with an uncontrollable disaster. So, “justice” would be to shoot down the plane. They both knew that, so there’s this implicit understanding between the two – Natalia will not say anything, but he would shoot her down anyway.
I imagine the reason ufotable is holding back the “I want to be a hero of justice” punchline is so it’ll have more impact in some better fitting scene later on, so it doesn’t sound too cheesy when it’s finally said with Kiritsugu’s voice.