Characters / Fate/stay night: Kirei Kotomine

Fate/stay night Main Character Index | Humans (Shirou Emiya, Rin Tohsaka, Sakura Matou, Kirei Kotomine) | Servants (Saber, Archer, Archer 2)

Kirei Kotomine

Voiced by: Joji Nakata (JP), Jamieson Price (EN 2006 Anime), Crispin Freeman (EN 2015 Anime, 2018 Movie)

"There is nothing that brings me happiness. It does not matter, let it be believing in people or having people believe in me. What other people called happiness did not bring me any joy."

"People cannot change the past. All we can do, is accept our own actions. If you still wish to be burdened by your sins, let it show in your future actions. It is your choice how to perceive something that has already happened."

Kotomine Kirei is the overseer of the Holy Grail War and resides at the church on top of the hill. He is callous and sarcastic, but also quite knowledgeable. As the supervisor of the Grail War, it is his duty to uphold the rules of the Holy Grail War, cover up any incidents that might expose the War to the public, and give sanctuary to any Masters who drop out. Both Rin and Shirou appear to detest him, though in truth they don't seem to dislike him too much. Despite the enmity between the Mage's Association and the Church, Kotomine is a member of both organizations, which is presumably the reason he was chosen to be be the overseer.

Kotomine plays an important role in the unfolding events in all three routes, but the route that features him most heavily is the final one, Heaven's Feel where he takes an active role early on.

For his appearances in other works, see here, here (as "Father Kotomine"), here, and here (as "Ramen Shop Owner").

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Tropes A-I

• '80s Hair: His Magic Mullet is often joked about to be an aftereffect of his hereditary Sorcery Trait, as his late father shared the same kind of hair.
• Adaptational Wimp: The final fight between him and Shirou in Heaven's Feel is a complete curb-stomp, with Shirou barely able to defend and being beaten badly, only managing to briefly take the offense due to a bout of emotion which was swiftly reversed. In the movie version, Shirou can actually keep up with him, landing several decent hits and even making Kotomine visibly struggle.
• Affably Evil: He's gracious and well mannered in his own way, though sarcastic. He even seems to genuinely like Rin and Shirou and even prefers them winning the Holy Grail War over himself. Doesn't stop him from sacrificing orphans to feed his Servant, trying to rip out Tohsaka's heart or any number of other charming things.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Has a habit of dropping these that completely flabbergast the person who's asked. "Is killing someone always a sin, no matter what?" being the prime example, at the end of Heaven's Feel.
• Attack on the Heart: In every single route, Kirei dies via the destruction of his heart. In the Fate Route, he is stabbed in the heart with the Azoth Dagger. In Unlimited Blade Works, he is stabbed in the heart by Lancer's weapon. In the Heavens Feel Route, he gets his heart crushed by Dark Sakura although it takes a while for him to die from it. Which makes sense, since it's actually a curse-filled replacement created from Grail mud and it's the thing that's been keeping him alive ever since the last Grail War.
• Back from the Dead: It can appear that way — at the climax of Zero, he should have died from being shot through the heart by Kiritsugu. However, the Grail (or specifically, Aŋra Mainiiu) used its power to prevent him from dying by keeping his body alive — although this means he still doesn't actually have a functioning heart. Kotomine himself rather thinks the trope applies. It is worth noting, though, that he was not truly resurrected from the dead; there are very, very specific and special rules about how such a thing can happen in the Nasuverse, and this isn't a case of it. The Grail simply prevented him from dying due to him getting drenched in Grail mud just in time.
• Badass Longcoat: His priest garments are like a combo between this and Badass Longrobe. They are also bulletproof to boot.
• Badass Preacher: He's a member of the Catholic Church's Executor Squad and overseer of the Grail Wars.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: In Fate, after his true colors as a murderous Manipulative Bastard are revealed, he's shown to be quite proficient in manipulating the flow of the Holy Grail's curse during the final battle. He even goes as far as to directly implant the curse of Aŋra Mainiiu into Shirou which temporarily leaves him severely incapacitated. Heaven's Feel explains that his affinity for the Grail stems from the fact that his very life was saved by it, giving him a cursed body in return.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: Primarily utilizes various Chinese martial arts, particularly Baji Quan. It's noted that unlike his father who practiced it for meditative purposes, he has no actual interest in the philosophy behind it or the spiritual side of things and that he just uses them because they're great tools for combat.
• Batman Gambit: He pulls off several of these in Heaven's Feel.
  • In order to thwart Zouken Matou's plan to take over Aŋra Mainiiu via Sakura, Kirei secretly works behind the scenes to make sure Sakura Matou embraces her long-suppressed malice and becomes Aŋra Mainiiu's avatar of her own volition. When Sakura is in danger of having her mind destroyed by the Crest Worm on Day 9, Kirei uses his Command Seals to prolong her life. After she regains consciousness, Kirei suggests that she listen in on his conversation with Shirou and her older sister, Rin, who are waiting outside. To Sakura's horror, Kirei proceeds to convince Rin that her sister's continued existence is a danger to the lives of everyone in Fuyuki. Upon having the last surviving member of her family turn against her, Sakura's hatred towards the world grows exponentially thereby significantly increasing her susceptibility to Aŋra Mainiiu's corrupting influence.
  • Additionally, by exploiting Shirou Emiya's guilt for Sakura's condition on Day 9, Kirei manipulates him into giving her the will to stay alive long enough to voluntarily give in to All the World's Evil (i.e. Aŋra Mainiiu). Before operating on Sakura to mitigate the effects of the Crest Worm, he admonishes Shirou for remaining oblivious to her pain throughout all the time she was by his side. Feeling responsible for Sakura's suffering, Shirou subsequently resolves to devote himself to her despite knowing of the danger she poses. When Sakura flees the Church after the operation, Shirou tracks her down in the rain and promises to become her "superhero". Later the two share a night of passion and become lovers. Due to this development, Sakura finds a new reason to live but also grows murderously possessive of Shirou as she increasingly views everyone else as a threat to her newfound happiness. As the buildup of these negative emotions fuels her development as a "black grail", she begins devouring hundreds of people in Fuyuki for the mana to complete her transformation (thereby compounding her susceptibility to Aŋra Mainiiu). When combined with Zouken's sustained effort to drive her to despair, this chain of events drives Sakura to accept All the World's Evil as a part of her and set in motion the world's destruction.
• Being Good Sucks: He explains in Fate that he's the villain because doing 'good' doesn't make him happy. Only the suffering of others does that. However, Being Evil Sucks too: He has a strong moral compass BECAUSE of what he was taught before his Start of Darkness. He's stuck in the middle, between 'wanting to be a good person' and 'being inclined towards being a terrible one' and frustrated that there's no place for him and no one that understands.
• Big Bad: In all 3 routes to varying degrees given that he is most responsible for organizing the current Holy Grail War to supply Aŋra Mainiiu with enough energy to destroy humanity.
  • Despite introducing himself as a neutral overseer in Fate, he emerges as part of a Big Bad Duumvirate with Gilgamesh, upon revealing he has been manipulating the Masters throughout the entire Grail War into gathering mana for a world-ending apocalypse. However, despite being the mastermind behind the plot's driving source of conflict and having Gilgamesh face Shirou and Saber directly, he doesn't take center stage until the final act. Once all but one of the Masters are defeated, he unleashes both his Servants on Shirou and Saber before brutally assaulting Rin and abducting Ilya to unleash the Grail's cursed contents on the world.
  • Subverted in Unlimited Blade Works where he is initially set up once again as the mastermind behind the Grail War but is ultimately overshadowed by his Servant, Gilgamesh after being killed off well before the story's climax.
  • In Heaven's Feel, he is forced to share this position with his Arch-Enemy, Zouken Matou, who supplants him as the primary source of conflict early on in the story. However, by pressuring Sakura to embrace her darkest impulses and briefly joining forces with Shirou, Kirei ultimately out-gambits Zouken to become the Final Boss of the story's climax.
• Breakout Villain: He is consistently one of the most popular villains in the Nasuverse, and manages to have a role in almost every work in the Fate franchise — even in the ones where he doesn't directly appear.
• Character Filibuster: He is physically incapable of entering and exiting a scene without at least a few dozen pages' worth of exposition, philosophical contemplation or cruel mind games in between. Usually, all three at the same time, or at least two out of them at the same time, depending on the length of the scene.
• Charles Atlas Superpower:
  • Due to immense training as an Executor and his mastery of Baji Quan, Kotomine is able to stand up to True Assassin and a body-transmuted-into-swords Shirou in Heaven's Feel.
  • He can even run at 50 kilometers per hour while carrying someone, and jump out of a building 80 feet high without having to break his fall. For reference, world-class runners can barely maintain 37 km/h for a 100 meter sprint.

• Chewing the Scenery: He can sometimes drift into this territory, although this is partly just how Joji Nakata acts. He's generally fairly calm.
• Child Prodigy: Started his training as an Executor at age 10.
• Church Militant: A former Executor and member of the Assembly of the Eight Sacrament, and now a semi-retired priest.
• Classic Villain: Ambition and Wrath. In Heaven's Feel Kotomine's parallels to Shirou become quite obvious with the classic climactic conclusion being resolved by Kotomine's lack of purpose outside the emptiness that is at both Shirou's and his own core. Shirou's nature lies in defining himself through others, which is the same as Kotomine. The reason it is a virtue for Shirou and a vice for Kotomine is that Shirou's self definition lies in aiding others while Kotomine's is in harming them.
• The Coats Are Off: At the end of Heaven's Feel.
• Cold Ham: He never raises his voice, yet most of his long-winded speeches are delivered with such gravitas that it effortlessly dominates every scene he's in.
• Combat Referee: His job during the Fifth War is to be the overseer and to make sure that the rules are maintained and that no muggles are aware of the conflict. Of course, he's anything BUT neutral given his role as a Big Bad.
• The Corrupter: Ultimately serves as this towards Sakura Matou in Heaven's Feel (See Batman Gambit above).
• Create Your Own Hero: Both his and Gilgamesh's role in the fire that killed Shirou's parents and his desire to relive his battle against his former archenemy results in him both provoking and inspiring the young man to become their most persistent enemy in the franchise.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Delivers the greatest human-to-human curbstomp in the entire game when he fights Shirou at the end of Heaven's Feel. Shirou gets to land a few token but utterly ineffectual hits, otherwise spending the entire fight getting completely and totally pummeled by Kirei, who is both far stronger and more skilled than he is. He only makes it out on top by Kirei finally giving in to having lost his heart hours before.
• David Versus Goliath: Against True Assassin in Heaven's Feel. While True Assassin was Overshadowed by Awesome with regards to the other Servants, he was still far more powerful than Kotomine and had him on the ropes for most of the fight, until he tried to kill Kotomine with his Noble Phantasm, which Kotomine was immune to, and it gave Kotomine the chance to pin the Servant to a tree before using an Exorcism on Zouken. True Assassin could have still killed Kotomine after the fight, but with his Master destroyed, there was no point in continuing.
• Death by Irony: In all three routes no less.
  • In Fate, Shirou kills Kotomine with the Azoth dagger that he gave to Rin Tohsaka, and it becomes even more ironic when he used that very dagger to quite literally backstab and kill the person who gave it to him in Fate/Zero, Rin's father Tokiomi Tohsaka. In fact, the very reason he stabbed him using that dagger is the irony of it.
  • In Unlimited Blade Works, dispatched by Lancer, the original Servant of Bazett whose Command Seals he stole to obtain him, in a successful attempt to kill him off as well.
  • In Heaven's Feel, he dies not because Shirou overpowers him, but because hours ago his black heart was stopped by Sakura, who was overtaken by Aŋra Mainiiu. It was the corrupted Grail which saved him in Fate/Zero by giving him a new heart.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Played with in Heaven's Feel. He comes to mutual understanding over their afflictions with Shirou (including Shirou saying he liked Kirei), and dies with little regret, admitting that Shirou was the one who was the most determined.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: When he was younger: Mage? Not fulfilling. Church? Ditto. Devoted husband? Empty. Evil? Bingo! And he's still not happy with that specifically because it makes him happy.
• Determinator: In Heaven's Feel, he survives for about a day without his artificial heart of curses after Sakura destroys it, yet he still has the energy to maul Shirou.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Kotomine is the only human in the entire game who, without the use of ridiculously powerful magic or other incredible magic weaponry gets the better of a Servant, despite being severely outclassed. True Assassin wasn't beaten, but Kotomine did manage to pin him long enough to get a hit on Zouken, after which True Assassin found there to be no reason to continue fighting.
• Died Standing Up: In Heaven's Feel. It takes him a good thirty seconds before he finally topples over.
• Dirty Old Man: In the 2014 Unlimited Blade Works anime, he runs his fingers between Rin's breasts when about to tear out her heart. His doing so — coupled with his smug attitude — makes her even more pissed-off than she already was.
• Disappeared Dad: He's Caren's father, but he left her with his in-laws due to having no interest in caring for a child, especially after Claudia's suicide.
• Dissonant Serenity: In the Fate route, during the scene where Shirou discovers the little secret Kotomine keeps underneath the church and Kotomine more or less psychologically tortures him about it while they stand there surrounded by living corpses undergoing Body Horror, he is described in the narration as speaking in his most genuinely cheerful tone of voice possible, smiling pleasantly, and generally treating him as a friend who came over for dinner. In the voiced version he even chuckles in between speaking as though at some kind of exceptionally funny joke he's listening to.
• Driving Question: Kirei has been motivated for the past ten years to answering this one question: Is it alright to live true to one's nature, even if they were born evil?
• Dying Moment of Awesome: His epic showdown with Shirou at the end of Heaven's Feel.
• Empty Eyes: Just like Sakura, the first sign that he's more than he appears to be.
• Enemy Mine: In Heaven's Feel, Kirei teams up with Shirou once Zouken and Sakura kill off Lancer and Gilgamesh which allows him to be the final villain standing at the end.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Maybe? It's... complicated.
  • In Heaven's Feel, we learn that he had a terminally ill wife, Claudia, who he got with because as a born sadist who didn't want to be a sadist, he wanted to see if he could love. When he realized he couldn't, he went to bid her goodbye before leaving to kill himself. Instead, she killed herself first to prove to him that with him mourning her death, it proves he really did love her. In truth, while he did mourn over her, he's not sure if it was because he was upset that he never got to satisfy his schadenfreude by killing her for loving him or if he felt guilty that he wanted to kill her despite that she loved him and he might have loved her back. Kirei notes to himself that he tries to not think about this, because he's not sure he likes the answer to it.
  • It is also mentioned in the same revelation about his wife that he also had a child with her that he ended up abandoning... and that child is Caren. It's stated that he left her because he had no interest in raising a kid, although it's also possible he did this to protect her from himself considering how he reacted to Claudia's death. If anything, he does still seem to think about her, judging by the fact that his taste in clothes for Rin is what he imagines he'd give to his own daughter. On the other hand, the non-canonical Fate/tiger colosseum game seems to show that they wouldn't get along very well (unless you think this is evidence supporting the contrary, at least from Kirei's side in that side game).
• Even Evil Has Standards: Whatever else might be said about Kirei, he holds Zouken Matou in utter contempt.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Averted with a vengeance.
  Kotomine: I knew it was a possibility, but at last I realize it. I envy you people.
• Evil Duo: With Gilgamesh, who he formed a contract with during the Fourth Grail War.
• Evil Feels Good: Kirei's entire raison d'être. He's lived his entire life being unable to find joy in anything other than the suffering of other people and what was the opposite of 'good'. Believing something to be wrong with himself, he tried out several vocations, including studying under the magic association, turning around and switching to the Church, an organization that loosely opposes the Association and even loving an ill girl who eventually bore him a child. When said girl died, the fact that he felt sorrow only for being unable to kill her himself caused his true Start of Darkness, which in turn causes him to attempt to release the Artifact of Doom behind the Grail War upon the world out of a mixture of entertaining himself, wanting answers from God, a defense of his being and sheer frustration.
  • If anything, he's actually a deconstruction of this trope, since while evil does feel very, very good to him, he still has a moral compass that tells him what he's doing is wrong. Ultimately Kirei can't be truly happy doing anything, which drives him mad.
• Expy: He's based on Souren Araya from The Garden of Sinners. Both are involved in a religious group, have similar fighting and healing abilities, are Manipulative Bastards later revealed to be Tragic Villains, have identical appearances and even have the same voice actor. The only thing missing is Araya's immortality of transferring his soul to different bodies, which is given to Zouken Matou instead.
• Fallen Hero: He once dedicated his life to defending humanity from various supernatural evils as an Executioner. He didn't find it fulfilling, but he did it. In the modern day, he's fallen pretty hard and become a supernatural evil.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The main source of his dilemma. He is only capable of feeling happy when he does evil things. However, he has enough of a moral compass to know that being evil is wrong. No matter what he does, he'll still feel unfulfilled.
• Fights Like a Normal: Technically, he is a magus, but all he seems capable of doing in regards to magecraft is healing others and some holy powers derived from the Church. Instead, he fights using the superhuman strength and speed he earned from being an Executor.
• Final Speech: At the end of Heaven's Feel, Kirei gives a speech that even Shirou has to accept as right, asking such questions as to whether or not killing is always a sin and how everything deserves to be born into the world, regardless of their actions before and after.
• Foil: Is portrayed as quite an explicit one to Kiritsugu Emiya, Shirou's father. Whereas Kiritsugu is a just, moral man who makes of himself a monster to protect the innocent from supernatural evil and to preserve the world, Kirei is a sociopath who was raised to be selfless and to serve goodness, but finds no pleasure in anything except doing evil, and wants to destroy the world which created him. Shirou finds himself also as a foil to Kirei, once his motivations are revealed.
• Foreshadowing: In Heaven's Feel, he mentions while explaining his Healing Magic that he's seen someone die in front of him before. He then later warns Shirou during Illya's retrieval that if he loves a woman, he should save her and not let her die as he knows this personal experience, with Shirou noting that he sounds like he's self-deprecating himself for something. We later learn that he had a wife who killed herself for him.
• For the Evulz: After a long life filled with various experiences, he has reached the conclusion that only the suffering of others makes him happy. Which kind of pisses him off because he has a perfectly functional moral compass. His true objective is to know just why he was born to only enjoy evil, yet was also born with a normal conscience, which is why he seeks the Grail.
• Friendly Enemy: The only way to describe his relationship with Shirou in the Heaven's Feel route.
  Shirou: I see. I'm sorry I troubled you... um, I'm glad you were awake.
  Kirei: You're thanking me? Are you sick? I will listen if something is worrying you.
  Shirou: ...I am worried about many things, and you are the cause of most of them. I'll pass on another long talk with you.
  • Also one to True Assassin in the same route.
• Generation Xerox: He shares the same hairstyle as his father, Risei Kotomine, and his instructor Tokimoi Tohsaka.
• Genius Bruiser: While not excelling at magic, he's very savvy on the subject and many others. He's also stronger and faster than Kuzuki to boot.
• Good Powers, Bad People: What is his magical skill set? Magical surgery and performing exorcisms on evil spirits. That's it. He still nearly destroys the world.
• Good Shepherd: A truly weird case. He's a priest with genuine faith in God whose specialty is magical surgery and exorcism. He's supposed to keep the peace in the war and provide shelter to masters. He even claims that no one loves humanity more than him. As for morality he's a card carrying evil bastard.
• Go Out with a Smile: After conceding defeat in Heaven's Feel, Kotomine dies with a faint smile on his face.
• Graceful Loser: In Heaven's Feel, as he finally runs out of juice, he gives a short admittance of defeat and accepts Shirou as the superior man, before he falls over a good 30 seconds after he finally bites the bullet.
• Hidden Depths: You don't really get to know Kotomine until the Heaven's Feel route. He's not as simple as he looks.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Turns out Rin is wrong to call him a "Fake Priest", as he baptizes Zouken to death with prayers, reducing him into a tiny worm.
• I Am a Monster: He's envious that he can't be a good person like normal people and hates that he feels good when killing people, especially people he loves.
• Inept Mage: Not obvious at first because anyone looks magically talented in comparison to Shirou, but the only reason Kotomine doesn't mess up his magecraft at any point in the story is because he is using the ten Command Spells he inherited from his dear old dad in the last war as a power source. When you have ten things that are explicitly compared to "a miracle" to power your spells, it's hard to mess up.
• Interrupted Suicide: After concluding that his existence was a mistake, Kirei went to say goodbye to his wife. However, she took her own life to prove that Kirei loved her. She was mistaken, but Kirei didn't want her death to be a worthless one, so he kept on living. Arguably, he is still self-destructive considering that he wants to set Aŋra Mainiiu free.
• Ironic Name: While his father meant it to be a Meaningful Name, Kirei means pure, and he is anything but. Also a reference to "Kyrie Eleison."

Tropes K-Z

• Kick the Dog: In the Unlimited Blade Works route, Kirei uses a Command Spell to order Lancer to kill himself after Lancer refuses his order to kill Rin. But Lancer holds out just long enough to kill him, free Rin, and set the Einzbern Castle on fire.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: Averted. His magical prowess is actually pretty subpar besides healing, spiritual surgery and holy magic. The kung fu part sticks however because he is badass enough to beat the shit out of someone whose body is literally made of swords with his bare hands while he is dying and without magic.
• Large Ham: "In short our fight is NOT A FIGHT AGAINST SOMEONE BUT ONE WITH YOUR OWN BODY AT STAKE!."
• Laser-Guided Karma: In Unlimited Blade Works, he uses a Command Spell on Lancer to make him kill himself after he refuses to kill Rin. Lancer turned out to be tougher than he expected and Kirei gets a spear through his heart for his trouble.
• Leitmotif: "The Church on the Hill".
• A Lighter Shade of Black:
  • In Heaven's Feel, Kotomine comes off as WAY better than Zouken, despite being technically worse for the world. Unlike Zouken, he stays true and consequent to his motives and beliefs and helps the heroes out in an Enemy Mine.
  • Is also one to Gilgamesh. Both want to unleash Aŋra Mainiiu, but whereas Kirei, for all the horrible things he does, has the sympathetic desire to want to know why he was born evil with a moral compass, Gilgamesh simply feels most of humanity deserves to die and wants to rule over the survivors, and if there aren't any he feels that all of them deserved to die.
• Light Is Not Good: He's a priest, an Executor and wields genuine holy powers. He's also quite obviously up to no good.
• Lightning Bruiser: Among the human characters, he's very fast, stupidly strong and tough as nails. In their final battle in Heaven's Feel Shirou doesn't even try using Projection against him because Kirei would kill him faster than he'd be able to finish. The ensuing battle could be called a fistfight, but that would imply that it was actually a fight and not Kirei one-sidedly smashing Shirou to a pulp, even with his swords-reinforced body significantly upping his toughness.
• Limited Wardrobe: Viewers may notice that besides the sassy longcoat, Kirei wears the exact same outfit as he did in Fate/Zero. After a ten-year timeskip, during which he grew 8 centimeters. Justified in that it's the apparently the garments of the Church.
• Loose Lips: His plans come apart in Heaven's Feel because he explained to Shirou the exact nature of the relationship between Sakura and "what's inside of the Grail" while they were on their way to the Einzbern Castle in the next-to-last day of the route. Kinda Justified because Kirei knew that Shirou wasn't going to give up on her no matter what, and because the priest had no way to know Shirou had the means (namely Rule Breaker) to sever Dark Sakura's connection to Aŋra Mainiiu without killing her. Ultimately this aligns with Kirei's Fatal Flaw: he just couldn't help but twist the knife a little bit more and tell Shirou exactly why it was impossible to save Sakura after she yielded to All The World's Evil.
• Love Makes You Evil: In a weird, twisted way. Kirei married a terminally ill woman by the name of Claudia Hortensia. He wanted to be able to love someone and to an extent he succeeded, but this only made him more upset because it didn't make him happy. On her deathbed he told her that he couldn't truly love her. She then killed herself on the spot to reignite the compassion in his heart, smiling even in death with her last words being "No, you do love me". Yet all he felt was that he would have liked to have killed her himself, which horrifies him.
• Made of Iron: Whatever Caster did to him midway into Unlimited Blade Works was apparently very painful and involved a lot of blood, yet he's back and kicking not even 3 days later. In Heaven's Feel he survives without a heart for 24 hours, seemingly held together by his sheer badassery.
• Manipulative Bastard: It becomes obvious pretty quickly that he's more than just an overseer for the war.
• Meaningful Echo: In Fate, he tells Shirou that, to have a chance of winning against him, he has to put his life on the line. He applies what he said on himself in Heaven's Feel upon finding his knuckles pulverized by punching Shirou's body which had been turning to swords.
• Moral Sociopathy: He genuinely likes Rin and Shirou, but wouldn't hesitate a second to kill them. Quite the opposite: while even he thinks it's twisted, he regrets it when he can't kill people he likes. He also believes in conventional morality, but it doesn't temper his actions. He gave up on that a decade ago.
• Mr. Exposition: Primarily in Fate, he explains the rules of the war, and later narrates the story behind the three families that started the ritual.
• Mr. Fanservice: Kotomine is a very handsome man with a buttery voice, and the tofu shop scene in the Heaven's Feel movies emphasizes this by focusing on his mouth as he eats, and by having him unzip his robe as his body gives off steam.
• Nerves of Steel: Even while fighting off True Assassin and insulting Dark Sakura to her face, he never loses his cool. The only times he loses the magic are when Shirou deflects the Grail's attacks by projecting Saber's sheath in Fate, when Shirou kills him in Fate, when Lancer kills him in Unlimited Blade Works and during his final showdown with Shirou in Heaven's Feel, though he still faces death with dignity in that last one.
• Noble Demon: In Heaven's Feel, Kotomine saves Rin, Shirou and Sakura several times, helps Shirou save Ilya and puts not one, but two antagonists (True Assassin and Zouken) in positions where they cannot possibly be a threat anymore.
• No Cure for Evil: Inverted. The only kind of magic he shows any aptitude for is magical surgery, at which he is quite adept. The irony is not lost on him.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: His final showdown with Shirou in Heaven's Feel boils down to this, largely because both of them have no Prana to use, and because their bodies are completely broken. Kirei loses only because he died of the classic 'not having a heart for several hours' disease slightly before he could land the last few blows.
• "Not So Different" Remark: By the end of Heaven's Feel, when the two meet for the final battle of the entire visual novel, Shirou is finally able to admit to himself that not only is he similar to Kotomine, but he actually likes the guy.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • A subdued one in the Fate route, where Shirou informs him that an eighth Servant has appeared, so Kirei is a bit pissed that Gilgamesh has blown his cover.
  • Also in the same scene, when he learns who Shirou's servant is, because they both participated in the Fourth Holy Grail War and Saber apparently still remembers it.
  • In Unlimited Blade Works, when he realizes that Lancer has stood up from his command spell enforced suicide order. It last just barely lasts a second or two before Gae Bolg has run his heart through and he's pinned against the wall.
• Once an Episode: Kirei dies from having his heart destroyed in all 3 routes.
• One Curse Limit: He only wins against True Assassin specifically because of Assassin's Noble Phantasm, which targets the heart with a curse. Sadly, you cannot curse a living mass of curses with another curse. This gets Assassin nailed to a tree for his trouble.
• Parental Substitute: He's Rin's legal guardian after Tokiomi, and later, Aoi, died in the aftermath of the 4th Holy Grail War (both events of which he secretly had a hand in, albeit indirectly in her mother Aoi's case), much to her displeasure. That saying, while he did teach Rin how to fight and looked after her from time to time, he was mostly hands-off with her as he was away for the most part as she grew up before the start of the 5th War.
• Power Tattoo: That Magic Crest he's talking about sometimes? It's actually the Command Spells from the last war, which he inherited from his father. He has eight left and uses the magic from them to heal Sakura in Heaven's Feel.
• Psychotic Smirk: In his final showdown with Shirou◊ .
• Reluctant Psycho: He's incapable of deriving pleasure from doing good, and he can only be happy from doing evil. And he hates it, because he still knows that what he's doing is wrong.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: After the deaths of her parents, Kirei Kotomine, as Rin's legal guardian, became the caretaker of their vast family fortune. By the time of the game, he's managed to squander it all through naive honesty and crude management. In light of what's revealed about his character later on in the story (as well as in Fate/Zero), it's strongly implied such mismanagement was actually a deliberate act of sadism on his part designed to make Rin's life miserable. Ultimately, however, it's never confirmed whether such actions are merely another example of him deriving gratification from Rin's misfortune or in fact reflect a rarely seen foolish side to him.
• Sadist: One of the few things Kirei gets a kick out of is other people's suffering and misfortune, deliberately pushing people into despair for his own personal enjoyment.
• Say My Name: Shirou and Kirei seem especially fond of calling each other by full names, especially when yelling.
• Self-Deprecation: When describing the Fourth Grail War's outcome to Shirou, Kirei says that an unworthy Master used the Grail to start the Great Fuyuki Fire. That unworthy Master was him.
• Shadow Archetype: As Shirou comes to realize in Heaven's Feel, Kotomine and he aren't so different — both have essentially no sense of self and can only find purpose through their fellow humans: The only difference is that for Shirou it is helping people, and for Kotomine it is to cause them pain.
• Shadow Pin: Through the use of Black Keys, which freeze the movement of any person who's shadow they land in.
• Sinister Minister: In a way. However, it's more that he is unspeakably evil and also a priest. He possesses genuine faith in God and would like to know why He created someone like him.
• Smug Smiler: See that smirk on his face? That's his default expression.
• The Sociopath: Subversion and deconstructed. He's a born sadist and enjoys pain... but he also has a moral compass and genuinely despises the fact that he enjoys evil, meaning that while he is lacking in empathy, he has a great deal of remorse over that fact.
• Spellblade: His Black Keys can be made to do this, applying various afflictions unto anyone hit by them up to and including petrification, extreme dehydration, setting the target ablaze or getting devoured by a swarm of crows. Kirei is unable to use this because he is an inadequate magus.
• Staring Down Cthulhu: He lectures and insults Dark Sakura to her face, calling her attempts at For the Evulz laughable before escaping.
• The Stoic: Outside of a small handful of scenes, you will never see Kirei with anything other than a sarcastic smile or a smirk on his lips.
• Super-Empowering: He uses the eight spare Command Spells from the last war to temporarily boost himself to the level of a Servant. The one time he actually needs this ability, however, he has already used seven of them saving Sakura.
• Superpowerful Genetics: In the Nasuverse, "Sorcery Traits" are special genes developed throughout time in a Magus family. Kirei inherited a nameless Sorcery Trait from his father used for opening wounds that makes him fit for spiritual surgery.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Stands a full 193 centimeters tall, and is arguably the snarkiest character besides Rin and Shirou.
• Teen Genius: Graduated Valedictorian from the Theological College of Manresa St. Ignacio at Age 14, where he was Student Council President. As his ridiculously long expositions should prove, Kirei has lost none of his genius.
  • However, this does veer somewhat into Informed Ability as for all his supposed intelligence, he somehow failed to realize that the answer he was looking for from Aŋra Mainiiu (that being whether or not something ignorant of good and evil can truly be said to commit evil) is literally found in GENESIS, the first book of the Bible. Somehow this supposedly brilliant holy man managed to never read the story of Adam and Eve.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Due to his time spent as an Executor, Kirei has a supply of "Black Keys", basically throwing swords that are the same as the ones used by Ciel. They can also nail people to the ground if they land in their shadow.
• Trademark Favorite Food: He seems to love intensely hot mapo tofu, a character quirk that carries over into several other installments like Fate/EXTRA.
  Kirei: ... you want some?
  Shirou: I'd rather die!
• Tragic Villain: Once his motives are expanded upon in Heaven's Feel, he becomes far more sympathetic.
• Treacherous Advisor: He technically fulfills this role for Shirou and Rin, but neither of them trust him very much. This is the guy who taught Rin everything she knows in terms of magecraft and combating it. And, to his credit, despite being outright evil, he still taught Rin properly in his role as a man of the cloth and as her caretaker, including morally. He also taught her to not be as foolish as her father was.
• Troll: His only pleasure literally comes from the suffering of others, so he enjoys telling people things that will hurt them. Generally things that are true or might even sound good. According to a humorous little side-story in the manga adaptation, this includes giving Rin clothes she absolutely hates every year.
• The Unfettered: Kirei is so desperate to find the answer to his question that there's nothing he won't stoop down to. His one time use Command Spells, his life, even all of humanity itself is disposable to him if it means taking one step closer to finding his answer.
• Unaffected by Spice: He likes his mapo tofu hellishly hot. Since he can only feel joy in the suffering of others, he needs a food that causes lesser men to weep just by watching him eat.
• Villainous Breakdown: At the end of Heaven's Feel, where both he and Shirou are basically dead on their feet. Despite his 6 or so hours of raw dialogue, this is the only part of the game where Kirei enters Large Ham territory.
  Kotomine: I am going to release my pent-up emotions here.
• Villainous Valor: He's pretty confident given his main opposition are teenagers and he has two Servants. Even without that he's still brave enough to keep fighting even when faced with a Servant himself.
• Villains Out Shopping: Shirou enters a restaurant and finds Kirei eating infamously hot mapo tofu at a Chinese restaurant. He asks Shirou if he wants any.
• What Is Evil?: He loves going on spiels about the nature and definitions of heroism and villainy, which naturally makes Shirou rather uncomfortable. It takes a whole new meaning once it's revealed Kotomine has been asking himself if he can be truly evil if he was born that way.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The main topic of his attempted Breaking Speeches to Shirou in Heaven's Feel, where he argues that Shirou has no right to stop the monster about to use Sakura to let itself loose on the world because, despite the fact that it has killed scores of people in its embryonic state, all creatures deserve to be born into the world. It is not difficult to read this as being about himself more than the monster.
• Will Not Tell a Lie: For shits and giggles. It's much more fun to trick people without lying with half-truths and selective wording.
• Wolverine Claws: His Black Keys, but that's not just all they can do.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: What could be worse than being born naturally evil, only able to take pleasure in the suffering of others, but still born with a conscience? This shows up in Heaven's Feel; the other two routes don't go into his back-story enough to show him as anything but in it For the Evulz.
• Would Hurt a Child: Is willing to use Illya (Fate and Unlimited Blade Works)/Sakura (Heaven's Feel) as vessels for the Holy Grail in spite of the fact that this will kill them (and even has Gilgamesh kill Illya in Unlimited Blade Works to do it) and has no problem trying to hurt and kill Shirou and his goddaughter Rin. He also supplied Gilgamesh with children orphaned by the Great Fuyuki Fire to keep him materialized since the end of the Fourth Holy Grail War. And of course, it goes without saying that causing mass destruction will obviously kill a bunch of people including children.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Kirei will honestly applaud you for picking the choice that leads to Bad End #30, AKA, the infamous "Superhero"/"Mind of Steel" Bad End.

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