ufotable's Fate/Stay Night

Hmmm what I don't like about Gilgamesh is that his power doesn't even feel like it's really his most of the time. He doesn't really fight, doesn't show skill. He just... has all the treasures of the world and doesn't even throw them himself, they just shoot out on their own. Even him going serious is just the gate shooting more stuff on its own or him waving Ea and ultra sword by itself. They don't usually make a lot out of him being 2/3rds a God or his own accomplishments, it's all the treasury's doing. And for the most part, it wasn't even him that got the treasures, the people just gave them to him or his soldiers did go out and get them it seems. The big trump card of Gilgamesh and what his power is all based on in Fate seems like what any other schmuck would have gotten by default by sitting on his throne.

Seriously, he's basically a Villain Sue if it weren't for his overwhelming pride. I cannot stand him or any of the scenes where he's being a Smug Snake or an overpowered Invincible Villain.

Its really not, and I believe they drill that pretty hard. Without his treasury Gilgamesh isn't all that special.

I hear you, I'm not a big fan of him either. Nasu also outright stated Gilgamesh is THE most powerful Servant, if I recall correctly.

edited 18th Apr '15 10:25:18 PM by Thorn14

Doesn't Gilgamesh have mad physical stats, too? Like, if you tried to box Gilgamesh you would probably lose.

Even Mike Tyson couldn't do it most likely.

edited 18th Apr '15 10:31:29 PM by majoraoftime

Well, he's a "Heroic" Spirit, you can bring a whole battalion of special force soldiers and he would still win without a scratch. Even without the Noble Phantasm.

edited 18th Apr '15 10:34:28 PM by dRoy

I bet Little Mac could.

He does actually have pretty good physical stats, however he has no experience actually making much use of it due to how ridiculously powerful his arsenal is. He pretty much just stood still or sat in a chair in all of his fights in Fate/Zero.

Though that's this version of him. In his actual myth he's a pretty mean wrestler.

edited 18th Apr '15 11:20:10 PM by Moekou

I would imagine Fate-Gilgamesh is pretty decent in hand-to-hand combat, but that's not something that really happens in a Holy Grail War.

At least some of Gilgamesh's traits are a result of Values Dissonance: the ancient epics tended to focus on his amazing strength and ability to kill stuff as what made him a hero, rather than his character. Indeed, the Epic portrays him as a very flawed individual (pretty much as what we see in the series).

What's weird is that Gilgamesh in the Fate series tends to act like his big adventure in the Epic never happened. All the character development that he got in his origin story doesn't seem to have stuck. Only on extremely rare occasions does he even suggest that it happened at all (like obliquely referencing Enkidu in Zero).

I believe it's been stated somewhere that much of Gilgamesh's behaviour stems from him being in an exceptionally foul mood in the modern age, due to him believing that humanity has utterly squandered its collective potential. From his perspective, everything he worked for as a ruler, to help guide his subjects to achieve their potential, was practically for nothing. This is partly hinted in his scene with Shinji previously when he pretty much states his plans for humanity. I have a feeling that his behaviour towards other people is because he thinks humanity beyond his era, aside from those who actually earn his respect, don't really deserve to be treated with any real dignity, and thus he ends up lapsing into his old habits as a result of his mood.

That's pretty much the definition of an Archaic Hero. Although as we've said before there seems to be evidence that the Epic of Gilgamesh is a comedic parody of an earlier text.

Oh Gil is utterly revolting as a person, but that doesn't mean that he can't be fun as a villain.

Yeeeeaaaah any fun things about him are instantly negated for me by his numerous atrocities and killings of likable characters. That, and him being a complete and utter Smug Snake when doing so.

Wait, I'm confused. I thought you said earlier you hated him because he killed Illya.

I kid I kid. Sorry, I saw the chance and I had to take it.

Well that is one of the reasons yes.

Plus, he's arguably one of the main reasons for all the suffering that ends up happening in the story (it was his influence over Kirei that led the latter to embracing his evil side).

Well then you guys are gonna love what comes later then.

Yea, I wasn't really feeling the emotion for Illya's death, not because I had already seen it in the VN, but because that flashback felt really weird and outta place. Like...Mud Iri, where the fuck did that come from?

Other than that though, it did capture the feeling of unbridled rage I had when Gil killed Illya. I remember being livid as fuck when that happened in the VN.

Hilariously, ANN said the flashbacks made the episode better. ahaha

I've already read the VN.

I don't like Gilgamesh.

Kotomine is awesome, Shinji is a Hate Sink and Gilgamesh is irritating.

I'm surprisingly fine with Gilgamesh; He's pretty much the best character to hate, a Smug Super taken to the logical extreme. The you guy you like to watch, but wanna see get punched in the face.

I loved watching 4th War Berserker punk him out multiple times.

And the best part is Gil could have killed him if he'd just....well, stopped being Gil.

Probably the high point of this episode was when Berserker broke the chains. Gil's Oh, Crap! expression was glorious.

Wow! Gil getting owned at all is satisfying to you people.

That's how much he is disliked around these here parts.

I remember a scene from the final episode of Fate Zero in which Ilya talked about hearing Justeaze's voice talking about things Ilya didn't know. I think that implies some sort of shared memory between the homunculi, and that the apparently random scenes with blackmud-Iri were Ilya receiving part of her mother's memory.

Of course, since Iri was corrupted before dying, her memories were told from corrupted!Iri point of view ("Jerkass Kiritsugu betrayed and killed me just when I wanted to grant him his wish like a good girl").

Anyway, luckily I don't care about canon or rules, so I really enjoyed most of the episode. My only problem with it is that they tried way too hard to make a Tear Jerker with the very last scenes, and that made them sort of Narmy to me.

I mean, they could have just shown Ilya crawling towards Berserker's corpse without redundant flashbacks and VN-like streams of words and it would have made a much more powerful ending, in my opinion.

edited 20th Apr '15 12:27:29 AM by Cozzer

Man, I cannot wait to see Gilgamesh get the beat down he deserves (I still found Illya's death heart wrenching in spite of the questionable presentation).

Oh it will be a glorious sight to behold indeed.

"heart wrenching" eh?

As I'm still very early in the VN, I have nothing to compare to, but I still liked it and found it touching.