Sure, Kiritsugu is someone special, being able to kill his inner representations of his wife and his daughter
Sure, Kiritsugu is someone special, being able to kill his inner representations of his wife and his daughter
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening. And then: Golf.
You're making them sound like "illusions" David, while what they are are representations of the chances of having his wife and daughter back. He literally crushed the last one.Originally Posted by David75
Not necessarily. Gilgamesh admits himself that he owns more treasure than he knows. His conclusion is actually the opposite of yours: If it's a treasure that exists, then it must be mine already. He doesn't care for the grail since it's his, but he does care that other people are taking his property, so he'll defend it.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Kiritsugu and Kirei's fight was certainly one of the most intensive ones in this show. Interesting Kirei survived, but at the very least Kiritsugu made sure Kirei would be without those monster command spells in the next war. That was some sort of an early service for his adopted son.
If Iri's personality really was still present within the grail, it would indicate she didn't really know Kiritsugu that well. Thus I'm more inclined to think it wasn't anymore there, and rather it was Iri's own wish that was speaking. Since she was destined to become a grail and have a short life, her own wish was likely to live longer with her loving family.
It was a good detail to make Saber so deranged and obsessed by the time she reached the grail. Being so out of her mind already Kiritsugu's "betrayal" was all the more intensive. No wonder Saber didn't remember the man too fondly when she meets Shirou in the next war. Maybe if Gil wasn't there to press the issue, Kiritsugu might have explained everything to her, like Shirou managed to do much later. I guess the next war acquitted Kiritsugu just a little bit in Saber's mind.
The grail had to interact with Kiritsugu through a personality. All of its intentions and messages should belong to the grail, however - and with it the knowledge that it possesses. I understood that as the grail reading Kiritsugu's wishes and telling him how it would grant them. It read Kiritsugu's wish accurately, and told him of the only way it can grant it (by performing tasks using a method that Kiritsugu can come up with, but can't execute).
If there was an intention present that didn't belong to Kiritsugu, then it's the grail's desire for Kiritsugu to utilise itself rather than destroy itself.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
At the moment I'm not so willing to think the grail was so fully aware that it would have indepently started to plot by offering Kiritsugu a reunion with his family. Kiritsugu knew all the time he would lose Iri, and in fact he had already accepted her demise, so there was no wish within him to use the grail to revive her. There could have been a regret but he's a cesspool of the regrets of a sinner, so what's one more? It's not like being a happy husband and a loving father would have changed his past, in fact it would have only made him a massmurderer and nothing more if he hadn't been ready to see the road till the very end.
So, I maintain my view that it was the grail using Iri's repressed wish to live longer with her family to combat Kiritsugu. Iri was fully supporting Kiritsugu's wish, but that doesn't mean she couldn't have had her own.
Wasn't there a scene where Kirei had to convince Gilgamesh that the Grail was worth having? Something new finally worth adding to his collection?
It wasn't a matter of making him realize it was already his, Gilgamesh seemed to understand that the Grail was created after he could have possibly ever owned it. He is a few millennia old, while the Grail is only a few hundreds of years old. Kirei had to convince Gilgamesh that it was something he should bother himself with.
The same way Gilgamesh spends time trying to convince Saber to become his wife. He knows she didn't exist when his collection was amassed.
Quite the opposite, actually.
Kirei asked Kiritsugu why he didn't obtain the grail after all the work he's put in, and Kiritsugu said that the cost outweighs the benefit. Kiritsugu saw that there's no point in walking down his road till the end anymore because the end isn't what he had hoped it would be (his miracle). Any further benefits couldn't make up for the cost he'd have to pay, so he just stopped in his tracks.
At this moment in time, Kiritsugu is just a mass murderer because he ended up killing for nothing.
I can't recall the scene, but if it did happen then it could work..
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
No, don't fall for such overly simplistic thought processes. If he had chosen family (to be exactly, Iri and Illya), it means he would have dropped all he had fought for until then for his own happiness. In reality he had discarded his own happiness a long time ago to fight the bloody battle for statistically greater good. So, he couldn't anymore afford to become happy if it had assumed a choice between the fight and the happiness. It's not that different from Shirou's pov, except that Shirou didn't carry the past sins and was thus grossly mistaken.
By destroying the grail he didn't let go of his path. The grail turned out to be another evil to be vanquished instead of the miracle he was hoping to find. Of course we learned from FSN this was also a dead-end of a sort for his path as a hero. However, he did stay true to his idealism and thus he remained an idealist, not a simple mass murderer of no purpose.
Last edited by Kraco; Sun, 06-17-2012 at 07:36 AM. Reason: Typo.
I think Buff was saying he is a mass murderer when looking at the results only.
Peace.
There's no question that he's a mass murderer, but even so a mass murderer can be another man's hero if he was fighting for a bigger cause. But if he was fighting for nothing (that is, drops the cause for his own fortune), he won't be anybody's hero.
Yes, that's what I was saying. And as far as Kiritsugu's concerned, that's all that counts.
Exactly. Right now, Kiritsugu's stopped fighting. He killed all those people for effectively nothing. Had he gone further, he'd be an even BIGGER murderer, but he'd save his wife and child. To them he'd be their hero for doing all this. But now that he's not willing to go further for results, he's turned his prior killings into a sunk cost.
Come to think of it actually.. the Grail was rather contradictory in its presentation of Kiritsugu's wish.
Sure, the grail wasn't the miracle save-all that Kiritsugu had hoped for, but it said it could grant his wish on a large scale right? (That is, elimination of the minority in conflicts on a global scale).. so thinking about it that way it should have been a good choice to keep it even if it wasn't the miracle Kiritsugu was seeking.
Instead, it weirdly made Kiritsugu choose between his wife/daughter and the world.. as if it had to kill 6 billion people on the planet in order to grant it..
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
So, to be a hero you'd need to be a god who knows the future? You are holding far too high standards. Kiritsugu was hoping for a miracle, but when he realised he had found nothing of that sort, quite the contrary, he chose to destroy it. He always destroyed the evil, even if he had to sacrife a little good for it. But this time he was looking for a definite miracle, not the same kind of compromise that had led to his own ruined life. It's not like he'd liked what h'd been doing. But being a real hero who saves everybody would have been too difficult, like he later told Shirou. A miracle should have allowed that.
He failed, but not for lack of trying but for the lack of the system. He was the last master standing but judged the grail more evil than good. That was his prerogative.
I'm not blaming him for not seeing this coming - I can't expect anyone to.
It doesn't change the fact all he's accomplished thus far (as far as achieving the grail's concerned) is mass murder.
The choice he was presented by the grail was to be simply a mass murderer, or a bigger mass murderer who saved his two family. Kiritsugu chose the former.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
I don't understand anymore if you are arguing for something... Kiritsugu is a mass murderer no matter what. The question is whether he fought for something or not. Up until now he fought against greater evil. Since he judged the grail to be greater evil, he had no choice but to destroy it. His family played no part in the equation, it never did, which is what made him such a remorseless magekiller in the first place. The grail made a big mistake by even trying to rely on that.
I was arguing against the representation of the quote below:
I disagreed with that because choosing the grail would have made him a mass murderer but a trying father/husband (as opposed to "nothing more"), while currently he's taken the best possible route out of the mess he got himself into (the grail war) and choosing the path of least carnage.
In other words:
Kiritsugu chose to fight in the grail war (and was willing to expend as many lives of people as necessary) because he thought he could make up for it all in the end. He now learns that he can't make up for it, so is instead choosing to minimise the casualties.
On the other hand, had Kiritsugu chosen his wife and child instead, he would have to kill more people by releasing the grail. He would still be a murderer, but he'd have accomplished something in the end nonetheless (even if it turns out to be an ultimately selfish result of liberating/reviving his wife and child).
The argument was based on our differing views on which outcome was the "murderer and nothing more", and which was the "murderer who fought for something".
I should clarify one more time that I don't really understand the way things played out at the end of the grail's speech. The "Einzburn vs Maiya" scenario should have been one of the "ethical questions" that the grail was testing Kiritsugu with so he'll discover what his wish/method is.. but what exactly did Maiya or the Einzburns represent? The sinking-ship question at least makes sense.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
He did achieve something in the end: He stopped the grail. Sure, it's the complete opposite of what he thought he was going for, but he turned out to have known far too little when the game began. This whole grail war was nothing but a single battle in Kiritsugu's own long war. If he had done anything else than what he did, it would have meant he forgot his whole earlier life with its myriad fights and sacrifices. He was an idealist (mass murderer) because he didn't forget. He would have been only an opportunistic mass murderer if he had forgotten and used the grail to save the family. Besides, I believe he's like Shirou in believing that the past shouldn't be changed.
FSN became a better show.
Peace.
If nothing else, it's moved up the ranks on the "should watch" ladder since it serves as a "recommended prerequisite" for FZ.
You could watch FZ without it, but you'd get a lot of "who is this?" and "why should I care?".
We could say that there was a bit of inconsistency there when Kirei gave Rin the dagger, since in FZN she said that she received it from Kirei when she became a full-fledged mage. One could argue that becoming the head of a magi family is synonymous with that, but not in the strictest sense..
And it looks like according to FZ, a sword-clash between Saber and Gil never happened as the first segments of FSN depicts it.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Ignoring the funeral service in what goes for English in Japan, this was a solid last episode. We saw Sakura's real face, how Rin disliked Kirei, Kiritsugu trying to fetch Ilya but failing, and the last scene between Shirou and Kiritsugu, tying this nicely together with the later events. Maybe there are a couple of slight inconsistencies like Bill mentioned, but nothing too bad. In the end FSN itself is three different stories with somewhat different outcomes (that the anime tried to mix together in a giant blender), so such inconsistencies are inconsequential in the end.
An unexpected detail was Aoi actually surviving, even if badly damaged. I though Rin lost both parents. Although losing both might have been easier in the long run than this. Aoi might be dead already by the time the next war begins, since she was never mentioned, I believe.
A formidable show all in all.
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