History Headscratchers / FateZero

** Well, yes. If you didn't know, I assume you're not familiar with Heaven's Feel. I'll elaborate a bit, then. Basically, what we see of Zouken isn't really him, it's a puppet (if you've seen ''LightNovel/TheGardenOfSinners'' or read ''VisualNovel/{{Tsukihime}}'', that might ring a bell. It's something some powerful magi and vampires can do, create an artificial body and control it from distances via magic and willpower). The puppet appears to be made out of worms grafted together with biomass and prana. As long as Zouken can cannibalize people, he can restore that shape as often as he wants. Kotomine completely crushes his body at a point, but he doesn't suffer any personal damage from it. That's because the real Zouken is a Crest Worm (well, to be more precise, he's probably just a disembodied spirit possessing one of his Worms). Choosing Sakura's heart as his nest made sure she could never really be twisted from his control, even if she were to flee home, like she does in HF. The Worm has such a position and setup that it can't be removed or killed without destroying Sakura's heart as well, even with Kotomine's magical surgery abilities. Once Sakura is able to tap into the powers of Angra Manyu though, she can survive without a heart, so she just rips him out of her chest and crushes him.

* I'm confused as to how come the ending of LightNovel/FateZero did not match with the first or two or three minutes of VisualNovel/FateStayNight where there was an explosion, a burning portion of town and a fight between Saber and Gilgamesh in the open space. Like how can that be when in LightNovel/FateZero, the events happen to be that Saber was erased from the battlefield after the explosion, so therefore there was no fighting that ever occurred during or within that scene between the two and Gilgamesh was darn naked? Can somebody please explain to me the discrepancy around here? My head really, really, really hurts trying to fit the two together.

** Because Arutoria and Altria are two bad cases of {{Engrish}} and Arturia makes more sense as the feminine version of Arthur, whatever the origin of King Arthur's name is (some say it comes from Brythonic words for "[[AwesomeMcCoolname Son of the Bear King]]", others from the Irish name Artur (Bear-like) or its Brythonic equivalent, and a few scholars from the star Arcturus).

** What good is one unhealable wound the length of your arm, max, when you still have to deal with hundred of tonnes of putrid flesh and tentacles? Even if the wound itself doesn't heal, there's still a lot of flesh to go through from the surface to where Caster is. The monster also moves and actively retaliates. It would be like trying to scoop up a swamp with a teaspoon.

** Gilgamesh is blond, beardless, and has an Indian nuclear spaceship, Arthur is a woman, Lancelot [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair has purple hair]], Alexander is about four feet too tall, three feet too wide, and has the undying loyalty of men who historically could not follow him to the ends of the earth and dragged him onto the route home, and Gilles de Rais can summon creatures that were invented in the early 20th century. It is safe to say that, in the Nasuverse, either history books and legends are radically different or the Magus association is better than it should be at keeping actual historical documentation out of mundane hands. Types of weapon and armor used are the ''least'' of the problems.

** I think it's something long the lines of, "serve the people, but also serve yourself" -- as a king and a legend, you're not an ordinary politician but an exemplar of humanity, and that means also having human foibles. Arturia gave up so much to seem perfect without enjoying any of the perks of being king, and the country fell to pieces anyway (taking with it her son, her best friends, and her wife) in part because Arthur was so "perfect" people thought he was inhuman. To Iskander, who people loved so much he essentially still commands them in death, that's a pretty big problem.

** Well, yes. If you didn't know, I assume you're not familiar with Heaven's Feel. I'll elaborate a bit, then. Basically, what we see of Zouken isn't really him, it's a puppet (if you've seen ''LightNovel/KaraNoKyoukai'' or read ''VisualNovel/{{Tsukihime}}'', that might ring a bell. It's something some powerful magi and vampires can do, create an artificial body and control it from distances via magic and willpower). The puppet appears to be made out of worms grafted together with biomass and prana. As long as Zouken can cannibalize people, he can restore that shape as often as he wants. Kotomine completely crushes his body at a point, but he doesn't suffer any personal damage from it. That's because the real Zouken is a Crest Worm (well, to be more precise, he's probably just a disembodied spirit possessing one of his Worms). Choosing Sakura's heart as his nest made sure she could never really be twisted from his control, even if she were to flee home, like she does in HF. The Worm has such a position and setup that it can't be removed or killed without destroying Sakura's heart as well, even with Kotomine's magical surgery abilities. Once Sakura is able to tap into the powers of Angra Manyu though, she can survive without a heart, so she just rips him out of her chest and crushes him.

*** Kariya spent several months learning up on the Matou family magic even before sticking worms inside his own body. Even if he doesn’t know the specifics, he probably realized that Zouken’s body isn’t real and has the worm containing his soul somewhere else. He definitely doesn’t trust Zouken, but he’s desperate; at the very least, he figures if he gets the Grail, Zouken won’t need Sakura anymore (why worry about heirs and descendants if you’re immortal after all?) and would let Sakura return to her family. He’s banking on that; even if it’s low odds, it’s still better than not doing anything (in his mind at least). As an aside, it makes sense that Zouken pushed Kariya to summon a Berserker. If Kariya decided to sic his Servant on dear old dad, a Berserker w/o access to activation-type NPs would be the worst Servant to use. They’d only destroy some easily replacable worms, then Zouken has his worms eat Kariya. The most dangerous Servant (to Zouken) would be a Caster, or maybe an Assassin. Zouken really has nothing to fear from a Berserker.

*** You know how Africanized Killer Bees became a thing because the people who bred failed to keep them contained. The risk of letting that plane land is kind of like that except the bees not only kill you but start a [[DeadRising zombie apocalypse]]. If they had access to remote runway within the plane's fuel range, then there might have been a way to save Natalia. Or if she had packed a goddamn parachute...

*** I thought BangZoomEntertainment handled both dubs of FSN and FZ?

[[folder: Crest Worms, the zero-calorie torture]]

[[folder: How dare you want me to be happy!?]]

[[folder: Was Kirei adopted?]]

* Just what exactly was Sola's issue with Kayneth's strategy? Even if Masters usually show up alongside their Servants, that's clearly not a rule; ''zero'' has Assassin roaming freerange as Kotomine scrys, and Servants in ''Fate/Stay'' show up alone so often that part of the plot is figuring out who their Masters are. If Kayneth had actually been present like Iri and Waver, he'd probably have been sniped; at the very least, he'd have been Magic Bullet'd to death a good deal prior to his actually biting it. If Kiritsugu had played by Magus rules Kayneth would have been a serious contender for the Grail, particularly if the Fourth Heaven's Feel hadn't been a ForegoneConclusion. Or was she just interfering because Kayneth was reading Lancer the riot act and everyone knows that Sola's hot for Lancer's pretty, pretty face?

** Ionian Hetaroi is manifested by the combined power of Alexander ''and all of his Servants'', Alexander himself isn't even a magus and thus can't manifest it on his own. When Gilgamesh swung Ea, the other Servants were "slain" (as much as Servants can be) and thus the Reality Marble collapsed (stopping Ea's erosion in the process, since Enuma Elish only affects the world it's unleashed in). Ionian Hetaroi, as the Noble Phantasm of Servant Rider, was destroyed, but the Servants themselves would still exist since they exist beyond time and space and Enuma Elish (for all it's absurdity) doesn't retroactively erases people. So if Alexander ever appears under another identity, be it as another Rider or as himself, he'll be able to call to them again and they'll answer. In addition, even if we assume that this incarnation of the Noble Phantasm still existed after Enuma Elish, it's unlikely that Alexander and his Servants had the prana capacity to recreate the Reality Marble, given that they could only hold Caster's monster for a few minutes.

* Tokiomi's will that gave Kotomine custody of Rin, and made him administrator of the Tohsaka estate, until Rin came of age. Aoi was alive and well at that point, so even if Tokiomi died, Rin would still have one parent left. I can understand him making a will, just in case, and leaving the magic aspects to his senior apprentice since Aoi doesn't seem to have been trained as a magus, but why sign custody of Rin and the estate over to Kotomine instead of his wife?

*** Well, Tokiomi is an old-fashioned magus. To him, the thought of having his daughter taken care of by someone who is not trained in magic, even if it's his own wife, is probably highly distressing.
*** The above is correct. Tokiomi is specifically someone who values being a Magus above anything else. Kirei was his apprentice, having recently finished his training, and someone he trusted more than anyone else. It's quite likely that he never even considered leaving Rin with Aoi instead of Kotomine. (Keep in mind that even when he died, Tokiomi couldn't understand that Kirei had betrayed him. That's how much he trusted him.)

** Gilgamesh is blond, beardless, and has an Indian nuclear spaceship, Arthur is a woman, Lancelot [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair has purple hair]], Alexander is about four feet too tall, three feet too wide, and has the undying loyalty of men who historically could not follow him to the ends of the earth and dragged him onto the route home, and Gilles de Rais can summon creatures that were invented in the early 20th century. It is safe to say that, in the Nasuverse, either history books and legends are radically different or the magus association is better than it should be at keeping actual historical documentation out of mundane hands. Types of weapon and armor used are the ''least'' of the problems.

** For starters, Sakura was modified by them over years and years, as opposed to Kariya being a hastily done patch-job. Secondly, the point of the worms are different; Kariya's are to compensate for his lack of training as a magus while Sakura's are to make her an acceptable host for Zouken. Finally, Sakura just plain has more potential as a magus than Kariya does, which means that the worms don't need to eat her up nearly as much.

** It's unclear if he did or not. On the one hand, he's an old school magus who genuinely believes Sakura having magic is the best thing that can happen to her, but on the other hand he wanted her to improve and prosper, and being turned into Zouken's puppet is the opposite of that. There's no proof he knows the secrets of the Matou magics, but also nothing that says he doesn't know. Personally, I feel he didn't know, and if he did he would have done something about it immediately. Mainly because it makes Kariya and his fights all the more tragic.

*** Tokiomi didn't know about the crest worms, but Kariya ''assumes'' he knew, which is why every time they meet Kariya just flies into a rage and tries to murder Tokiomi. This is at least partially due to Kariya's long-running resentment of Tokiomi, who "stole" everything Kariya wanted for himself: By the time the adoption was going to happen Kariya is clearly willing to believe the worst of Tokiomi, including the idea that he'd willingly condemn his daughter to a living Hell just for his "honor as a magus."

*** Tokiomi is also an incredibly traditional magus who is, in large part, honoring the old alliance despite the fact that the Matou have been in decline; this is the basis of Sakura's fostering, since the Matou no longer have a capable heir. Mages are notoriously secretive about their magecraft so it wouldn't be too unusual if Tokiomi had no idea what form the Matou magecraft took, or at least the specifics of what Sakura would undergo. It's also possible that this specific use/method is unknown to outsiders because it's relatively recent, since it's implied that these worms were made to empower weak mages (like the last few generations of Matou) and/or to allow a non-Matou like Sakura to inherit the Matou magecraft; note that the Crest Worms aren't the original form of the Matou/Makiri magic, it's an adaptation Zouken developed after the creation of the original Grail.

** That's a funny question to answer, because the Assassin were there to kill Waver. Kirei ordered them with a Command Seal to "kill Rider's master with all your strength" (the last part is why they didn't leave a body behind). Tokiomi was actually willing to sacrifice the Assassin to discover if Rider had a secret Noble Phantasm. With every single Assassin attacking at once, Rider wouldn't be able to save Waver even with Saber's help unless he had a trump card stronger than Gordius Wheel. If he did, well, sucks for the Assassin, but in Tokiomi's mind they had already done their job. Thanks to them, he already knew that Saber was cursed, that Kayneth had to give his Command Seals to a weaker Magus, and that Berserker's master was a weakling who almost died summoning his own Servant. Add this to how he ensured Caster would be targeted by everyone in the war, and the only one who could be a problem for Gilgamesh was Rider, if he indeed had a trump card.

* Kirei is Risei's actual son, and they specifically mention that Kirei's Sorcery Trait (that lets him do spiritual surgery) is something he inherited from Risei despite the latter not being a magus. Since the Church of the Nasuverse isn't the same as the real-world Catholic Church it's possible that they let their clergy marry; Kirei himself marries Claudia and they have Caren, presumably after Kirei is officially ordained, and while Kirei is morally inverted he's nonetheless observant of Church law.

* Waver, whose costume is otherwise completely ordinary-looking, has this random brown strap that appears to be attached to his belt. It looks a bit incongruous with the rest of his outfit, which otherwise just conveys "I wish my school had a uniform because I'm just that fashion-challenged". What is that for? Is it a strap for picking him up? No one tell Rider!