Best episode yet, and for one simple reason: Saber and Irisviel barely had any screentime. It’s about time. I enjoyed how when they told Kiritsugu to go save the kids from Caster he just told them to shove it. He needs to worry more about Maiya though.
Ain’t no Cure for Love
Now this is the kind of development I can get behind! A demented wife tragically magicked into falling in love with Lancer, and threatening to amputate her husband!
I never thought I would find myself saying this, but I actually felt sorry for Archibald here. I mean, the guy just nearly died and lost all his magical ability. Only to wake up strapped to a bed with his wife threatening to amputate his arm.
Despite how heartless he’s seemed so far, it actually felt to me like the part that hurt him the most was that it was his wife who betrayed him. He even knows that it’s because of Lancer’s mole but doesn’t say anything. Does he love his wife? They certainly don’t seem to have the best relationship. But I think that in his own way he does love her, at least a little bit.
Lancer’s side of the triangle is equally tragic. He doesn’t even want the grail, but only wants to be loyal to his master. But he ends up repeating the past and stealing his master’s wife, through no fault of his own. And he ends up serving the woman who betrayed his master, even while he is partially aware of it.
For once, his knighthood is not pointless and irksome like it was when he was posing and fighting Saber: there’s a weight and a cost to his honor, and it becomes tragic and noble. Now if only Saber and Irisviel could become equally weighty.
Whoo hoo!
And the rest of the episode was Waver and Rider! Yes! I love how Rider won over the old couple that Waver is living with so easily.
And Waver is actually earning some respect from his servant! By barfing. Oh, and by finding Caster’s lair. But Waver looks downright cool here:
Well, at least for a little bit.
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“Now this is the kind of development I can get behind! A demented wife tragically magicked into falling in love with Lancer, and threatening to amputate her husband!”
Actually… No.
Its interesting how leaving out one small detail changes so many peoples perceptions isnt it?
From what i have seen, most people are assuming that sola is only betraying kayneth because she has been charmed by his mole, and thus is not really responsible for her actions, but what the novel mentions, and that the anime has left out entirely is that sola is a trained mage fully capable of resiting charms like Diarmund’s.
She may not be as strong as kayneth, with nothing as strong as his mercury, but she still has ability and has been well trained. The point is, that as a trained mage Sola is fully capable of resisting the effect of Lancers mole. Female mages can resist its power, such as how Irir wasn’t affected when Saber fought Lancer(though in Iri’s case its more that she has resistance because she is a homunculus then a mage, but still). The fact that she is still acting love struck, shows that she willingly choose to give in to the charms power, and is therefore completely responsible for her actions.
So its less a women tragically magicked into turning on her fiance, and more a women betraying he fiance willingly for another man 😛
That’s even better then!
Yeah, especially since Kayneth really does love her, she just doesn’t love him back.
This was by far my personal favorite episode in Fate/Zero and it was definitely because of Rider and Waver’s dynamic. It’s a turning point for both of them, but especially Waver. Up until now, you get the impression that he didn’t really understand the depths that he would have to go in order to win the grail. We had seen him initially as a whiny kid, wanting to show the world that he was better than they thought. Through the past few episodes, we’ve seen a slow paradigm shift in his thought process and this episode caps it off with the murdered children and the sense that he can never return to that innocent child he was at the beginning of this series. I love his characterization here, and Rider is the absolute perfect partner for him. Thanks for the post!
Indeed, Waver is truly coming into his own now. He entered the war as a child, but will leave it a man.
I agree that tragic triangle is interesting, but also Sola’s side too (which the anime didn’t touch ugh, annoyed the hell of me).
Basically, she was treated as a expensive piece of meat by her family as the spare heir, numb and frozen inside, without a say of her future. She never had expectations of love and happiness, nor cared for them, she was resigned to her role, until she fell for Lancer. That makes her feel human for the first time and very fierce to defend that affection (kinda like Caster in FSN). Kayneth was used to have everything on his lap, while Sola had nothing, now the tables are turned.
The three of them are kinda tragic.
Thanks for sharing, that’s good to know. I wonder why they haven’t explained this? Perhaps they’re saving it for later. At the moment Sola is quite ambiguous, so it could be used as a twist down the road.