Recap / Fate/Grand Order S3 E3: SIN

"The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave
I must make merry before the Spring is spent."

—Jing Ke (quoting Li Bai's "Drinking Alone by Moonlight")

Full title: "Lostbelt No. 3 - The Synchronized Intellect Nation, SIN [The Crimson Beauty under the Moon]". Written by Kinoko Nasu (Intro) and Gen Urobuchi (Main story).

Chaldea has reached the Wandering Sea, the enigmatic third pillar of the Mage's Association, and can finally find some respite from the Crypters in their tentative new home. They meet up with Atlas Alchemist Sion Eltnam Sokaris who has been waiting for their arrival and set up a new headquarters ahead of time. She also reveals her new masterpiece, the Trismegistus II which is set up for all of Chaldea's rayshifting needs. Due to the newfound safety, they elect to take a break from tackling each Lostbelt and make themselves at home, slowly bringing back each Servant as they please.

Meanwhile, the Crypters are dealing with the first actual loss of one of their comrades with Koyanskaya's report on the Scandinavian Lostbelt. After bickering with one another over whose fault it is for Ophelia's loss, they turn to the question of the Wandering Sea and how to deal with the Master who's demolished two Lostbelts by now since none of them, not even their divine benefactor, have the ability to pierce the island. Koyanskaya ends up offering to do the job and reveals that she has one trick up her sleeve; her lipstick under Goredolf's possession, which is enough to create a backdoor through their bond. Quickly slipping in, she poisons a cake neatly labelled for the protagonist to eat... but Goredolf eats half of it first and they quickly cotton onto her presence.

With her exposed, she flees and Chaldea makes sure she can never return. The question of what to do with the now poisoned Goredolf and protagonist remains, and their analysis turns up no known cure in the present. However, Holmes quickly deduces that if the poison was not available in the 21st century, it must have been obtained from a Lostbelt and they narrow it down to China. Even if it is a trap, it's their only hope and take the plunge with a newly summoned Nezha as their guide.

The Shadow Border makes its next dive, and they find a Lostbelt on a completely different paradigm from the previous two, where the Counter Force does not exist and the entire world has been conquered. And its Crypter is not happy with both Chaldea for entering and Koyanskaya for luring them here.

Watch the trailer here.

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Tropes found in this episode:

• Alternate History: Aside from the most obvious fact that the world is ruled by a super-advanced China, Qin Shi Huang mentions how getting to that point involved such things as an Arctic War against the "Aztec Republic" and the last empire to collapse before China was the Habsburgs due to economic strife.
• Anti-Villain: Qin Shi Huang only seeks to protect and ensure his peaceful world, and when he learns the truth of the Lostbelts intends to fight to ensure its safety. Unfortunately, his world is flawed to the extreme, and once Shi himself admits that his world needs to go, he wastes no time teaming up with Chaldea to destroy the rampaging Tree of Emptiness Mayall.
• Anything but That!: Said word-for-word by Akuta when the Emperor threatens to have Xiang Yu commit suicide as punishment for her attempted assassination on the protagonist.
• Arc Words: 真人 (Zhen ren, lit. true human) is the main focus of this chapter.
  • Qin Shi Huang takes it to a literal extreme as he considers himself the only example of humanity.
  • Consort Yu, as an Elemental created by Gaia, is considered the only other legitimate human by him, with the implication of dismissal for all other people in the entire Lostbelt, including Chaldea and the many historical figures both fighting for and against the emperor.
  • It's noted that the actual mythological zhen ren had disappeared long before Qin Shi Huang could find them, leaving behind only their treasures for him to discover.
  • It also has another layer from its Alternate Character Reading, as the Chinese phonetic reading is zhen, but the Japanese phonetic reading is Sin. The true human and the human of S.I.N. are one and the same.
• Area of Effect: Their entire world is this, as the Lostbelt is so peaceful, the Counter Force cannot fight against it, ergo, Servants cannot be summoned and the Servants already there are weakened immensely. It takes a Heroic Sacrifice from Spartacus to give its inhabitants the spark necessary to start wishing for heroes.
• Author Appeal: Urobuchi has stated that Mordred's inclusion was mainly because she's one of his favorite Servants.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Owing to his status as the Ultimate Lifeform, Shi Huang is able to see all within his Lostbelt under the orbital view of the Great Wall. He can also hear anything spoken, but it is noted by himself that he cannot hear stuff not directed towards "the heavens" (aka directed up towards him). He also cannot observe something if his line of sight to it is disrupted, so one can hide from his surveillance by hiding under clouds, trees, etc..
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Qin Shi Huang initially remembers what Jing Ke did but not what her name was, pointing out to her that there's been a lot of assassination attempts over the last couple millennia. He remembers her name when she once again nearly succeeds in killing him.
• Carrying the Antidote: Done intentionally. Koyanskaya has a cure for the Protagonist's and Goredolf's poisoning claiming it was in case of accidentally sticking herself with it, but really she handed it to them as a decoy hoping they'd fight over it believing it was the only one. Holmes fortunately saw through it, correctly reasoning that another cure could be made in this Lostbelt, because otherwise Koyanskaya would have no reason to be here trying to obstruct us.
• Central Theme: Stability as an obstacle to human interaction and consequently progress. Shi Huang created a perfectly peaceful world but destroyed its potential for progress by forbidding rationality. Pan-human Xiang Yu could only attain the peace he sought for through alienating himself from all his peers and being demonized by history and his Lostbelt counterpart made a Senseless Sacrifice for similar reasons. Despite being a naturally superior life-form, Akuta’s desire to stay away from conflict left her unprepared to work effectively as a Master and a Crypter or to confront Xiang Yu about his self-destructive logic flaws. On the opposing side of things, we have Jing Ke, who managed to outdo Shi Huang’s most advanced technology using only a portable smartphone that almost any person in Proper Human History has access to, and Spartacus, whose core philosophy involves achieving higher ideals through an infinite cycle of rebellion that only has meaning when people willingly choose to take the hardest path.
• China Takes Over the World: Happened 800 years ago, leading to the timeline's stagnation and subsequent pruning.
• Colony Drop: Qin Shi Huang's preferred method of wiping out "Confucianism" is to drop a meteor on the source's location. Chaldea is barely able to stop the one launched at the village they stayed in at the cost of Spartacus' Heroic Sacrifice. Qin Liangyu's own village suffered this fate when it rose up in rebellion.
• Coming in Hot: While they do use carriages and later still transport vehicles, S.I.N. often deploys its forces this way via storing them on rockets and shooting them at their locations. This would normally be dangerous if not for the fact that the forces under their command are A) automata, B) augmented humans, or C) a Master with a Servant who can protect her from the crash and whose true nature means the Servant is likely to be more affected long-term by the impact than her.
• Cool, but Inefficient: Qin Shi Huang's giant robot body is the epitome of this. It's massive, awe-inspiring, lets him live forever as long as it's maintained... and horribly energy inefficient. The Lostbelt's economy is dedicated to farming wheat to be turned into ethanol for fuel so the whole thing doesn't collapse under its own weight, and the reason why it's so massive in the first place is because of its inefficiency.
• Crapsaccharine World: A tranquil world where all people live under one banner, with advanced tech to support all their needs, would sound like a dream, wouldn't it?. In practice, all that's left are just ignorant pets who literally have to be culled by shortening their lives via drugs, and anyone who actually rebels or even thinks for themselves gets their entire village Colony Dropped. Any advanced technology is hoarded exclusively within the capital while most of the world lives in housing more fit for the B.C. era. Any "warriors" that Shi has need for are kept in cryogenic sleep until he activates them to deal with a specific task, but are never allowed the chance to indulge in this peaceful world themselves out of fear of disrupting it further. It’s so bad that both Chaldea and Konyanskaya are disgusted by the humanity of this Lostbelt, and even Shi Huang Di acknowledges that he ruined the world and agrees with Chaldea that it needs to go.
• Cryptic Background Reference:
  • Koyanskaya mentions offhand that Kotomine and other Crypter-aligned Servants have been repelling countless Proper Human History Heroic Spirits in the Atlantic Lostbelt for several months now.
  • Qin Shi Huang and his cohorts allude to various conflicts fought in this bizarre timeline, somehow culminating in fighting the Aztec in the Arctic and the Habsburgs crumpling under the sheer economic pressure from China.
• Cult of Personality: The entire Lostbelt has been transformed into one giant cult worshipping Qin Shi Huang. Everything good is attributed to his benevolence even if he's secretly killing them, he takes everything away from the people and hoards it all for himself while giving nothing of value back or sharing it with the people, and everybody must blindly accept his orders and never think for themselves. Those with artistic talent are brought to the capital to create tributes to his magnificence — art about other subjects is immediately condemned.
• Cultural Posturing: Qin Shi Huang and his cohorts spend much of their time painting Proper Human History as some giant shithole where the dead can't rest in peace and everyone spends their lives in misery arguing and warring with each other, compared to their glorious Lostbelt filled with ignorant, mindless bliss. Ironically enough, Qin himself comes around in the end.
• A Day In The Lime Light: As confirmed by Word of God this chapter serves as a focus for Goredolf. Being the first chapter where he's on field himself thanks to needing the antidote to Koyanskaya's poison ASAP.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: The Duō-Duō Yì-Shàn (AKA More is More) has the dubious distinction of being the only enemy in the entire game that violently (and loudly) explodes when defeated instead of simply fading away.
• Devour the Dragon:
  • The Muspel and D'yavol Tron controlled by Koyanskaya devour the remaining giants and Demonic Beasts respectively under their command in order to power up and attempt to kill Chaldea. Holmes notes that the fact their magical energy rose from doing so means they're both Soul Eaters.
  • Hinako herself does this to her Servant Gao after he's defeated for the last time by Chaldea by draining his blood to regain access to her true power and heal her injuries from Koyanskaya. Noticeably, he willingly did this and encouraged her to do so.
• Egopolis: While Xianyang isn't actually named after Shi Huang, it still fits in all other aspects. It's the only center of science and the arts in all of SIN, and all of it is dedicated solely to Shi Huang's glory. Every mural, every painting, every song, every poem, it's all for their entertainment alone.
• The Empire: S.I.N. is one that succeeded in its mission to Take Over the World, creating a single, global state.
• Evil Knockoff: The Mecha-Mooks that serve as Qin Shi Huang's foot soldiers are this to Kuaiji Zero aka Xiang Yu, who himself is also one to Nezha. Qin Shi Huang later makes Shadow Border ripoffs called Duō-Duō Yì-Shàn which are focused on firepower and ease of construction at the cost of no armor and durability.
• The Evils of Free Will: Qin Shi Huang fully subscribes to this as well as Ignorance Is Bliss, believing that humans will inevitably turn evil and start fighting one another if they're allowed to think for themselves.
• False Flag Operation: Koyanskaya, being the Collector of the Strange that she is, uses monsters she took from previously encountered Lostbelts to attack random villages so that Qin Shi Huang will see Chaldea as a threat to his Lostbelt by making it appear that they are either using the monsters to attack, or dragged them in with them. Shi Huang sees right through it anyway because he deduces that Chaldea are not barbaric enough to fight because they like it and has her imprisoned for doing so.
• Final Boss: Akuta's Tree of Emptiness, "Mayall", which needs to be taken down to destroy the Lostbelt. Notably, Akuta is fused with the Tree, making it blossom and its fight very different from the first two Trees.
• Find the Cure!: The underlying problem in this Lostbelt is that Goredolf and the Protagonist are slowly dying from Koyanskaya's poison. Koyanskaya is Carrying the Antidote, but only has enough for one of them, so they still had to raid Qin Shi Huang's palace to get the ingredients for another dose.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Sion offers the protagonist biological and cybernetic augmentations as a joke, which are how Qin Shi Huang achieved immortality in his Lostbelt.
  • The Greek Lostbelt is further alluded to in the intro of this Chapter. Koyanskaya states that Kotomine is fighting off a horde of Proper Human History Servants, Sion reveals its location to be none other than Atlantis, and Holmes extrapolates its nature and the age of Atlantis just from that one piece of data.
  • Sion is interested in Mash's Ortinax suit, and is interested in adding a certain Conceptual Weapon relating to lifespans to it... Also doubles as a Call-Back to Melty Blood where her Alternate Self Atlasia wielded said weapon's replica, indicating that Sokaris possesses it in this timeline too.
  • Koyanskaya warns the Foreign Priestess that Qin Shi Huang might end up cutting down the local Tree of Emptiness. Sure enough, he ends up helping Chaldea do just that.
  • Holmes comments in the ending that the only way any of them could be wise enough to truly ascertain the path for humanity would be if they all transcended their human nature as gods. Kirschtaria's plan is revealed in the fifth Lostbelt to have this exact mindset in place for his endgame.
  • The oddness of the Indian Lostbelt is noted in the epilogue by Sion, who states the Lostbelt's borders keep expanding and contracting at different intervals, which is due to accelerated Yuga cycles caused by its Lostbelt King.
• Funny Foreigner: Chaldea is perceived as this due to their outfits, which Holmes and da Vinci quickly take advantage of by charming the pants off of civilians to extract information.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The main hook of the story is Goredolf and the Player Character being poisoned by Koyanskaya. As the story goes on, the Player Character gets weaker until they get a cure for it. Until then, the players Mystic Codes cannot be used at the start of battle until after a few turns, which gets longer as the poison gets worse.
  • The Central Theme is safe, protective stasis (represented by the empire) vs reckless, aggressively forward-pushing progress (represented by Chaldea). Holmes outright chastises Qin Shi Huang for fighting too defensively. Lo and behold, most of the Lostbelt's main boss battles are designed in such a way that they discourage overly defensive tactics and are much easier to deal with by focusing on a dangerous, high-powered offensive. Berserkers come in particularly handy.
• Genre Deconstruction: SIN might be a technologically-advanced nation, but because the majority of the technology is reserved solely for the usage of the emperor and his most elite warriors, there has never been any need to worry about efficiency or miniaturization of said technology. That's why Shi Huang's body is so massive and requires so much fuel to run properly. As a result, the concept of things like handheld communication devices, allowing ordinary people to communicate over long distances, is a complete blindspot for them (not to mention completely anathema to their thought process). In fact, Shi Huang didn't even consider the possibility Chaldea possessed such things and only came across it by complete accident while trying to analyze the Zero Sail technology and complaining about how they seemed to insist on making things so small when things like vacuum tubes would work fine. And it was Han Xin who had to bring up that possibility when he realized what such miniaturized tech could really mean.
• Godzilla Threshold: Minor example - in order to stop a meteor (see Heroic Sacrifice below), Spartacus asks the protagonist to use a Command Seal and order him to "jump". Keep in mind that under normal circumstances, Spartacus would kill any Master who dares to use a Seal to give him a command.
• Heroic Sacrifice: To prevent a meteor strike on a village that was marked "Confucian", Spartacus flies towards it while using his Noble Phantasm to tank it. While he can be summoned again, the other Spartacus won't have the memories of the previous one.
• Human Popsicle: How S.I.N. keeps most of their warriors around without training new ones.
• Hypocrite:
  • Qin Shi Huang has outlawed all forms of expression on the pain of death in their attempt to keep the populace ignorant except those that extoll their own glory. And those creators are brought directly to Xianyang to be watched over.
  • Qin Shi Huang is also aghast about the concept of Heroic Spirits being summoned to solve a crisis, claiming it's proof that Proper Human History is so barbaric that even the dead can't rest in peace. His system of freezing warriors and generals until they're needed for war functions on the same principles and methods, except it might be even worse. Heroic Spirits at least get some knowledge about the era they're summoned to, and they've lived a full life for the better or worse. The frozen warriors on the other hand often suffer a massive cultural shock when they wake up and see how the world has changed in their sleep, and instead of returning to the Throne of Heroes to be exalted in mankind's collective memory, the warriors get tossed back into the freezer, uncertain if they will ever wake up again.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite all the changes in the intervening centuries, Qin Liangyu and Li Shuwen are recognizable as counterparts of their selves in Proper Human History. Also, Zhang Xianzhong was still born and still led a rebellion, and presumably Qin Liangyu still fought against him.
• Insistent Terminology: Qin Shi Huang labels anything that might disturb the people's ignorance as Confucian. Reciting poetry? That's Confucian. Thinking about leaving your village? That's Confucian. You're teaching others about culture? You're a filthy Confucian that needs to die.
• Irony: Shi Huang was worried enough about their elite warriors possibly turning against them and starting revolutions of their own against their regime that they cryogenically froze most of them and only awoke them for necessary occasions. The one that ultimately does betray them, Xiang Yu, is the one they legitimately never thought would do so, never went into cryo, and is doing so to preserve the very empire and Lostbelt Shi Huang themself has decided to allow to die for the sake of Proper Human History.
• Legend Fades to Myth: Goredolf is incredulous when he learns the Greek Lostbelt is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and claims that such a civilization was never recorded in history, meaning Atlantis was forgotten and relegated to mere myth in Proper Human History.
• Let's You and Him Fight: The captured Koyanskaya leads Chaldea to the "Fusang Tree" that produces the ingredients to cure the Protagonist's poison... failing to mention that it and the Tree of Emptiness are the exact same tree. This ends up causing a three-way brawl between Chaldea, Yu Mei-ren, and Qin Shi Huang. Koyanskaya uses the chaos to escape (but does make the cure as promised, with the obvious caveat that the Protagonist has to survive the brawl).
• Lighter and Softer: Remarkably for a Darker and Edgier storyline and written by one of the most darkest authors of all time, this episode is much lighter than the last two worlds, and while while the grayness of the war is still there, especially with tragic romance of Akuta/Yu and Xi, even that's remedied with the fact that you can summon the two of them and let them be together with Chaldea, while Shi has no hard feelings about their Lostbelt needing to be erased and tells them to go forward and not worry about S.I.N.
• Lost in Translation:
  • When you fight Li Shuwen, Han Xin will use various plans to help him out. The first plan is based on an idiom of "to fight with one's back to the river" while the rest are named after various parts of The Thirty-Six Stratagems. However, the official English version translate them as the direct meaning of the idioms/stratagems such as translating the first plan as "fight like there's no tomorrow", thus making the references harder to catch.
  • Two of Qin Shi Huang's skills are references to his legendary burning of books and burying of scholars. They're localized as "Scripts should be burned" and "Confucianism should be suppressed."
• Low Culture, High Tech: SIN is technologically superior to Proper Human History in many fields but in terms of culture, they're barely above the Stone Age. Everyone spends their days farming wheat and... that's it. No reading, no art, no sports, nothing, because Qin Shi Huang is trying to keep everyone in blissful ignorance. And the few that do have creative talents? Assuming they're not killed via meteor for spreading Confucianism, they get brought to Xianyang and are made to only create art for the entertainment of Qin himself.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: While Chaldea was already likely going to get into a fight with Qin and the defenders in the Lostbelt, Jing Ke's choice to tell the Child Villager random poetry causes him to quote it in front of Qin Liangyu, who tells Qin Shi Huang, and causes them to brand them as Confucians who need to be killed. Jing Ke and the Player Character can Lampshade this issue when it happens.
• Not So Above It All: Holmes leaps at the chance to try a drug that has never existed in Proper Human History WHILE INSISTING IT IS NOT JUST FOR PERSONAL CURIOSITY.
• One World Order: In this world, S.I.N. has turned the Earth into a global state where concepts such as pain, sickness, and war do not exist. However, this has the side effect of turning humanity into the emperor's pets, with old age considered a disease and "cured" by drugging their food to kill those by a certain age, and humanity barely able to think, with those who do are marked as Confucian.
• The Reveal:
  • Akuta Hinako is in fact an Elemental similar to a True Ancestor recorded in history as Yu Mei-ren, and was convinced by Marisbury to join Chaldea and aid his work in exchange for having a place she could belong and the possibility of summoning her lost love, Xiang Yu.
  • The Trees of Emptiness are revealed to be somehow connected to the very galaxies they are named after, literally as Mayall contains a microcosm of its named galaxy inside its form, explaining how they can produce enough energy to anchor the Lostbelts to Earth in defiance of Gaia's will.
• Revealing Cover Up: Holmes and Da Vinci both deduce that Akuta Hinako is not who she seems to be due to the fact Chaldea's official records of her are too perfect, while truthful records would have contained bits of useless information.
• Shout-Out: Bordering on homage. Let's see. The entire world has been united under a technologically highly advanced, Repressive, but Efficient regime which set out to and successfully eliminated almost all pain? War, danger and conflict are practically unknown to the ordinary person? The populace is generally happy and well-provided for, but blind quasi-religious devotion is the norm? Intellectualism and the arts are discouraged in all but a few elites because they are linked to the idea of suffering and seen as a threat to the stability of their Ignorance Is Bliss-based society? The concept of parenthood no longer exists? Folk are regularly fed a Fantastic Drug which they regard as a paternalistic blessing from the top and eagerly consume? Despite massive breakthroughs in medicine people's lifespans are artificially restricted to still end upon hitting early old age? It's basically Brave New World with a Chinese twist.
• Spanner in the Works: Koyanskaya's plan to poison the Protagonist almost went off without a hitch, but Goredolf, being a shameless glutton, ate half of the poisoned cake first. Koyanskaya lampshades how she didn't see that coming.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: Most security guards members use Mystic Codes to empower themselves to fight Servants.
• Tagalong Kid: An unnamed boy becomes the most prominent Lostbelt inhabitant in the vein of Gerda and Patxi, learning about Chinese culture from Jing Ke and admiring Spartacus' strength.
• Technologically Advanced Foe: By virtue of gathering all of their world's knowledge, S.I.N. uses it to fight on par with magical super humans. Hilariously, they seem rather bad at reverse engineering as seen when they create More is More, a Shadow Border knock off with a tiger's head though Qin Shi Huang's Interlude reveals that he did successfully reverse-engineer the Shadow Border's tech, which allows him a way to potentially rebuild his empire via invading Proper Human History. It's also played with because they're behind Proper Human History in some fields, such as miniaturization, communications, and energy generation/efficiency.
• Thoughtcrime: Thoughtcri- sorry, Confucianism is the greatest crime in the Lostbelt, as Qin Shi Huang fully believes that humans thinking for themselves will lead to misery. To keep ideas from spreading, he makes sure to nuke the offender and their entire village, just to be safe.
• Ultimate Lifeform: The Chinese Lostbelt King, Qin Shi Huang, claims to be this. He's not joking, even if he's not quite an Ultimate One. His backup body is made from years of research, which is enhanced by Akuta/Yu's Elemental/True Ancestor nature, he becomes a Servant-like God in Human Form. It's even stated beforehand that he's the only real human Lostbelt King.
• Villainous Breakdown: A rather tragic example. When Xiang Yu dies as the second-to-last boss, Akuta Hinako/Yu Miaoyi goes berserk, questioning the point of the "correct" Proper Human History before using her Elemental/True Ancestor nature to fuse with her Tree Mayall, and have it blossom in an effort to kill Chaldea, S.I.N., and the entire Lostbelt.
• Wham Line: Gordolf reveals Koyanskaya's true identity with two words.
  Gordolf: You are TV (Tamamo Vitch) Koyanskaya!? Impossible, how did you get into the Wandering Sea!?
• You Cannot Kill An Idea: Qin Shi Huang is determined to keep the population ignorant, and Spartacus is determined to enlighten them. When Qin Shi Huang drops an evil star on villagers beginning to think for themselves, Spartacus sacrifices his life but inspires them to begin wishing for heroes, connecting the Lostbelt to the Throne of Heroes and allowing Servants to be summoned.

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Behold, those who are leaving.
They bear the responsibility called the future on their backs and challenge an increasingly treacherous path. The only thing we can do is see them off.
-Oh, do not worry, I will not impart such a trial upon you. There is nothing to clamor about, nothing to be afraid of, together let us sleep in this tranquil dream.

Shi Huang Di (From "The Phoenix is on the Vast Land")