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Servants are the magical familiars summoned by the seven Masters to fight on their behalf in the Waxing Moon Ritual. They are familiars are each a fragment of "Heroic Spirits", legendary figures whose feats in history and myth enshrined them in the Throne of Heroes, a location outside of time and space where these figures' souls reside. Responding to the wishes of their Masters and their own wishes for the Waxing Moon, these Servants are sorted into one of seven classes based on their deeds in life: Saber, Lancer, Archer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker.

But the peculiar nature of the Waxing Moon Ritual has led to the summoning of additional "Rogue Servants" bound to the leylines of the land rather than any particular Master. These Servants are unable to leave their leylines for prolonged periods of time without risking dissolution, but are free to fight for any cause they wish.

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Masters' Servants

    Saber 

Voiced by: Hibiku Yamamura

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Hero of the Boundless Azure
“You're weak. Have you no abilities besides the sword?”

The Saber class Servant of Miyamoto Iori, a warrior in oriental clothing wielding a wavy sword and another held in its sheath.


  • Achilles' Heel: In their former life, Saber was cursed to death after they disrespected the Great God Ibuki, better known as the Yamata-no-Orochi once felled by the god Susanoo. As a result, they're extremely vulnerable to snake gods, forcing them to be extra careful around Assassin, who summons snakes en masse as he too was cursed by the Great God Ibuki.
  • Adaptational Badass: In their original myth, Yamato Takeru was once cursed with disease after disrespecting the god of Mount Ibuki. And yet, their profile in this game describes them as someone who has slain armies, gods, and demons as a conqueror.
  • Aloof Ally: Despite Iori being their Master, Saber intends to fight the Waxing Moon Ritual alone since they consider him weak. This gradually eases over the course of the story, with the two of them becoming Fire-Forged Friends.
  • Ambiguous Gender: Saber has an androgynous appearance, and their profile doesn't use pronouns. In addition, Saber exclusively uses the gender-neutral "Watashi" throughout the story and doesn't take offense to being called a "damsel". Hilariously, unlike other Fate stories, the game gives a non-answer with Saber never attempting to correct anyone on their assumed gender at any point, and the "gender" section on their profile never changing from "?". This is likely an interpretation of the "real world" Takeru's clandestine killings against the Kumaso nation while disguised as a woman, while also synergizing nicely with Takeru's Saberface.
  • Ambiguous Gender Identity: Even after the mystery of who they are is cleared up, the mystery of what gender they identify as remains. In dreams of the past, Yamato Takeru is referred to with male pronouns, but Saber in the game's present never changes from being a "?", and prefers to distance themself from their original identity due to their distaste for their past actions.
  • Ambiguous Situation: The franchise's history of playing with sex and gender means there are a number of possibilities with Saber, but it's never actually clarified. Are they assigned male at birth, but prefer feminine presentation like Astolfo? Did their sex actually change due to the summoning, like Caenis? Were they assigned female at birth, but recorded in history as a man like Altria? Who knows.
  • Anti-Magic: Saber posseses A-Rank Magic Resistance, the highest conventional grade a Servant can have. This means that most forms of magecraft available in the modern day will harmlessly bounce off of them. Only great rituals, Noble Phantasms, or a Servant would be able to bypass or overwhelm it.
  • Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Saber is initially insistent that they can win the Waxing Moon Ritual all on their own with nothing but their sword and skills. They look down upon Iori as The Load and gripes about not being allowed to kill people outside of the ritual.
  • Ascended Extra: Yamato Takeru was mentioned in Fate/Strange Fake before appearing in Fate/Samurai Remnant, more specifically their Noble Phantasm as an example of what a Noble Phantasm is. They even have a more traditional design before having their proper design.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Saber is very easily distracted by the amenities of the Japan they're summoned into, buying souvenirs, getting sidetracked by shows, and drooling at street food carts.
  • Big Eater: Just like the original Saber, they have quite a large appetite. They are all too eager to try the new types of cuisine that have been created since their time and are extremely happy at how food is much more abundant during the Edo period than their own timeline. Every time Iori buys something from a food stall with Saber present will almost always result in an eager comment from the Servant. The only exception would be the Boss Candies, where Saber is too annoyed at their resemblance to the Boss and the fact Iori had to buy them from him to fully enjoy their flavor.
  • Bigger Stick:
    • Most Noble Phantasms are ranked on a power-scale of A-F, and are listed as being 'anti-personnel', 'anti-fortress', or 'anti-army' depending on what they're capable of/specialized for dealing damage to. Saber is one of the vanishingly few Servants with an EX-ranked Anti-World Noble Phantasm, which is exactly as insanely powerful as it sounds, and more than justifies Iori's decision to prevent them from using it for most of the Waxing Moon Ritual. In the rare circumstances where they can fire it off without risk of collateral damage, there's absolutely nothing that can stand against it.
    • On a more general level, Saber themself serves as a particularly potent version of the standard protagonist Servant Bigger Stick, an especially powerful ancient hero who's enough to keep a dubiously-capable rookie Master alive against fearsome competition until they're finally ready to start playing with the big boys. They're a class known for its excellent all-around capabilities, and have particularly high Mystery (the age and power of their legend, which translates into their overall strength as a Servant) and Divinity (a stat that's a bit complicated in its effects, but mostly serves to let them No-Sell or resist other Servants' and Masters' magecraft and other powers) in addition to that top-tier Noble Phantasm. They're almost on par with Gilgamesh, who's the traditional gold standard (both literal and metaphorical) for Servants.
  • Black Bug Room: They carry enormous guilt over their brutal life of conquest, creating a Hell Is War landscape in a section of their mind where the corpses are never buried, the flames never fade, and the screaming never stops.
  • Blow You Away: Saber can produce gusts of wind with a swing of their sword, using it to extinguish Lancer's flames and put out fires they run into across Edo.
  • Blue Is Calm: Zigzagged. Saber is strongly associated with water and the color blue, as they're introduced with the title "Hero of the Boundless Azure". In battle, Saber can be unnervingly calm about the thought of killing others while keeping a level head in most circumstances. But they can also be petulant, childish, and mischievous. They whine about Iori making them do things "the hard way" by not killing ruffians outside of the Waxing Moon Ritual and can be quickly distracted by the amenities of Edo. In life, they followed their father's orders almost mechanically, killing their own brother without a hint of remorse.
  • Boss Subtitles: They're introduced as "Saber, Hero of the Boundless Azure". In their boss fight in Entreat the Darkness, they're introduced as "Saber, the Righteous Prince".
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: At one point in the story, Saber's senses are robbed from them by an outside force, turning them against Iori. It takes Iori diving into Saber's mind with the Crimson Codex's help and learning Saber's True Name to snap the Servant out of their trance.
  • Breaking Old Trends: They're the first Saberface to have dark hair instead of blonde or white.
  • Braids of Action: They wear a warrior's braid that they typically hang over their left shoulder and are a Master Swordsman with the air of a conquerer.
  • Character Development: Saber starts off aloof towards Iori and unconcerned with collateral damage, but as their bond with him increases they go from reprimanding him to stay out of their way and not hold them back to praising his swordsmanship and remarking how delightful it is to fight side by side with him. In the "Entreat the Darkness" ending, Saber even raises their sword against him to keep him from destroying the very peace he initially wanted to protect, and the very people they were initially unconcerned about.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Saber might be a skilled swordsman, but they have few qualms with resorting to more dishonorable tactics to win a fight befitting their personal belief that a sword is meant to cut down your opponent. They kill Samson by stabbing him from behind after he's lost most of his power from his hair being cut off and he's too busy staring at Dayu in shock at her action and wipe out Kouga by letting Iori and Dorothea break through his defenses before immediately appearing out of spirit form and blasting him with their Noble Phantasm.
  • The Conqueror: Iori notes that Saber carries themself with the air of a conqueror, from their demanding personality that's eager for a challenge to the way they fight. Seeing Saber's memories and the aftermath of their actions when they were alive soon reveals their True Name: Yamato Takeru, the lonely, bloody conqueror of ancient Japan.
  • Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Unlike Altria and Nero, who are foreign rulers who met their ends following a tragic betrayal and otherwise seen as regular human beings (albeit gifted with special weaponry or magic), Takeru is a Japanese Saber-class Servant and prince who committed numerous atrocities in their father's name and became a Deity of Human Origin following their death. Saber's relationship with their Master also greatly differs from Altria and Nero's relationship with Shirou and Hakuno respectively as Saber initially sees Iori as The Load and is wholly willing to leave him for dead until they learn they will disappear if he dies. Additionally, while Altria had a strained relationship with Guinevere, and Nero is Nero, Saber genuinely adored their wife and remembers her with fondness and longing.
  • Cool Sword: In the introduction manga, Saber's unnamed Noble Phantasm has their sword transform to look like Kusanagi. It's the same Amenomurakumo-no-Tsurugi of old used by Ibuki-douji and gifted to Amaterasu by Susanoo in myth, making it a divine weapon capable of enormous destruction. Even this is the most basic application of its power, as to wield its full strength is to wield the power of a god.
  • Criss-Cross Attack: One of their attacks has them conjure numerous water spouts that they then use to Wall Jump repeatedly, attacking their foe with a series of criss-crossing slashes.
  • Crutch Character: Saber not only keeps the pressure on enemies, but they Draw Aggro as well, which they can do safely as they can only die if the player is controlling them. As their bond grows with Iori, Saber will start to randomly initiate free Dual Strike opportunities, and leap into the fray to protect him from a mortal blow. A player will feel their absence acutely whenever they have to enter combat without Saber, or even as Saber.
  • Damned by Faint Praise: Caster describes them as Japan's greatest hero to both empathize Saber's personal failings in spite of that, and as an insult to the people of Japan for knowingly putting such a bloody and brutal figure on a pedestal.
  • Deity of Human Origin: Saber's greatest Noble Phantasm, the Amenomurakumo-no-Tsurugi, possesses power so great that to release its True Name is to wield the power of a god, even briefly. After their death, Yamato Takeru was deified as the Great Bird, Otori, a deity worshipped throughout Japan, explaining their Divinity skill.
  • Destructive Saviour: In their first fight, they try to launch their Noble Phantasm at Rider in the middle of Asakusa which likely would have reduced a good chunk of it to rubble had Iori not unintentionally stopped them in their tracks with a Command Seal. They complain about being forced to stop, apparently not seeing the problem with endangering so many innocent bystanders.
  • Dude Looks Like a Lady: Although Saber's historical identity is Yamato Takeru, the legendary Warrior Prince of Yamato, they're called a damsel or a pretty woman even though they're recorded as a man in history. That said, their Ambiguous Gender obfuscates things and the story never reveals what they identify as.
  • Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Flashbacks to Saber's past life depict them with these, as they stoically kill all of their father's enemies at his order. After losing Ototachibana-hime, Saber is shown standing alone in a desolate field while lamenting that the path they walk is one of nothing but blood and death.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: On their father's orders, Takeru killed their brother much his shock and horror. On the other end of the spectrum, Takeru isn't surprised that Iori wants to plunge Japan back into war so he can become a warrior on par with his adoptive father, but is still hurt by his decision and resolves to stop him.
  • Famed In-Story: Saber is apparently a Japanese character of some renown and looks offended when Iori fails to recognize them on sight. They are so insulted that they refuse to tell Iori their name.
  • Final Boss: In one ending, Saber becomes the game's final opponent when Iori declares his intent to plunge Japan into chaos to truly master the blade as Musashi did. So Saber turns against him to protect Japan's peace from Iori's wish for war.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: Saber looks down upon Iori for the early parts of the story, seeing Iori as The Load. Saber even declares that they'll win the Waxing Moon Ritual all by themself. But as they fight alongside each other and open up about their goals and dreams, they gradually become close friends, with Iori admiring Saber's technique even more than Musashi's. This is mutual, as Saber starts secretly practising the Niten Ichiryu while Iori is asleep and as their bond improves they start praising him for being able to keep up.
  • Fish out of Temporal Water: Unlike the Holy Grail Wars of series' past, the Waxing Moon Ritual grants little to no knowledge of the modern day to Saber. As a result, they're confused when Iori uses a metaphor involving paper, as no such thing existed in Japan when Saber was alive. Saber also needs some time to wrap their head around "money", with Iori speculating that they came from the Heian era or earlier when coinage wasn't as common.
  • Foil: To Iori. Iori is a strait-laced, grounded person who seeks to walk the path of peace despite desiring to become a Master Swordsman. He repeatedly chides Saber to act morally while also aspiring to be able to fight as Saber does. Saber is already a master combatant with The Gift and vast magical powers as a Servant. But they are naive and prone to whimsy. The contrast between them is highlighted in the "Entreat the Darkness" ending. Iori's desire To Be a Master is so strong that he becomes willing to plunge Japan into war with the Waxing Moon to achieve his goal. But Takeru, a conqueror who killed countless people and became miserable for it, opposes him to protect the peaceful Japan they've defended throughout the story.
  • Foreshadowing: There are a number of clues relating to their identity. Namely that they predate the use of paper in Japan (roughly before the 7th Century), and that they're supposedly a famous mythological or historical warrior from that timeframe. In addition, their Noble Phantasm is a traditional Japanese tsurugi strongly associated with water and summons the visage of the Yamata-no-Orochi. They're also blown away by the size of Edo, its huge population, and the relative abundance of food, all of which were unimaginable to Saber when they were alive, implying that they were born during a time of war and strife.
  • The Gadfly: Saber likes to poke fun at Iori whenever possible, especially when it concerns the women he ends up attracting. They also make no effort to deny Kaya’s assumption that the two are in a relationship as a means to troll him.
  • The Gift: Saber fights as though they are walking through an empty field without ever needing to change their footwork, breathing, swordplay, or observations to match their opponent while being single-mindedly focused on victory. Iori calls it the "peerless swordplay of a conqueror" and finds it breathtaking. Saber isn't conscious of any of this, implying that it just comes naturally to them, much to Iori's astonishment. However, never needing to hone their swordsmanship means that they see a sword as a tool for killing rather than something to build a way of life around. This leaves them confused by the pride Iori and Musashi display as "swordfighters" when they're challenged by the Big Bad of the second DLC.
  • Glass Cannon: Their stats are all around high with A-Rank strength, B-Rank Agility and an EX-Rank Noble Phantasm, but they only have C-Rank Endurance.
  • Happily Married: In life, Saber was married to a wife who supported them with her boundless love and was one of the few good things in their life, but who sacrificed herself to appease an angry sea-god—leaving them devastated and heartbroken. Saber is very surprised to find their wife, Ototachibana-hime, in this time period. They are very happy and consider it a miracle that they were able to be reunited.
  • Heroic Self-Deprecation: While Saber will never hesitate to take pride in their ability as an incredibly powerful and skilled swordsman and they have a sense of ethics and morals, it's pretty clear they don't really see themself in anything resembling heroic terms. When Iori earnestly thanks them for saving him from one of Assassin's snake familiars by killing the monster, Saber is briefly rendered speechless and befuddled while staring at their sword.
  • Hey, You!: When first summoned, Saber is oddly picky about how they're addressed: they won't give Iori their True Name, but also chafe at being called Saber, explicitly preferring "hey!" or "you". They relent on this after a couple days, probably once they realize using the class name is normal in a Grail War.
  • Horrifying Hero: When Saber was alive, their gift for swordsmanship and talent for killing terrified others. Takeru's ability to kill their older brother without hesitation unnerves Emperor Keiko despite him being the one who ordered the attack. He then sends Takeru away on expedition after expedition both as a living weapon and to get Takeru away from him. Takeru's unflinching loyalty led them to massacre even women and children, which made them feared by their allies and their enemies alike. As a Servant, Saber initially demonstrates an astonishing lack of care for collateral damage and is prone to believing that Murder Is the Best Solution. But this apathy toward the lives of others softens as the story continues, to the point that they oppose Iori's wish to plunge Japan into eternal war in the "Entreat the Darkness" ending.
  • Idiot Hair: Like Altria before them, Saber has a single lock of hair that sticks out from the rest of it. This reflects the rambunctious and childish part of their personality easily taken with the amenities of Edo.
  • I Hate Past Me: Saber's legend remembers them as a great Japanese hero. But Saber sees it very differently, to the point of actively avoiding telling Iori their name. Under the orders of their father, Emperor Keiko, Takeru slaughtered innumerable people, including their own brother. They deceived the people of Kumaso before massacring its inhabitants. When Iori dives into Saber's memories, he sees them standing alone in a lifeless field with Dull Eyes of Unhappiness while the screams of men, women, and children ring in their ears.
  • Innocent Innuendo: Saber is prone to making comments that can easily be misinterpreted—seemingly without realizing they're doing so. This leads Kaya and Sukenoshin to assume they're in a committed and very enthusiastic relationship with Iori.
  • I Work Alone: They initially try to fight and win the Waxing Moon Ritual on their own, thinking Iori would be nothing but The Load, even telling the latter he could just go ahead and die and it wouldn't stop them. They are rebuked for this by Dayu and Musashi who stress that a Master and Servant must be able to work together if they want to have any hope for victory.
  • Ironic Name: Saber's True Name, Yamato Takeru, means "Hero/Brave of Yamato". But they earned the name as a spiteful, ironic title from their enemies in Kumaso after Saber disguised themself as a maid to infiltrate a bandit gang before massacring everyone in it before they could properly defend themselves.
  • Kill the God:
    • In-life, Saber was a reknowned warrior who slew any opponent they came across, be they mortal, monster, or god. One of their more notable divine victims was a white snake-god, making them uniquely suited for slaying Great Orochi and vanquishing Assassin's One-Winged Angel. However, it's noted that Saber is weak to snakes—the reference to the legendary cause of their death having been a curse from the god of Mt. Ibuki, the same deity responsible for Assassin's powers—with Yui noting that a direct assault on Assassin is ill-advised.
    • Over the course of the story mode and differing routes, Saber uses their divine sword to kill Great Orochi (a manifestation of the snake-god Yamata-no-Orochi), kill Assassin when he's in his snake-god form, kill the demigoddess Ushi Gozen and the divine beast summoned by her Noble Phantasm, kill the Waxing Moon Monster (a nascent god of destruction born from Chiemon fusing with the Waxing Moon Grail), and kill the Yasomagatsuhi (a primordial god of destruction from Japan's creation myth summoned by Caster and empowered by the Waxing Moon Grail's mana).
  • Locked Out of the Loop: As an unintended side-effect of the Waxing Moon Ritual being in the experimental phase, Saber lacks certain details that are otherwise common knowledge for Servants in Holy Grail Wars such as knowledge of the present day and the bond between Master and Servant. This only applies to Servants from more recent eras, however; as Saber is from Japan centuries ago, they don't have that knowledge and were under the impression they could win the war by themself until Musashi explains that if Iori dies, they will disappear.
  • Magical Incantation: Saber has several different incantations for their Noble Phantasms, though these seem to be optional as Saber can omit them entirely.
    [when using Eight-Current Raging Storm] O sacred water... trickle... flow... rush to the sea as a star... Secret Technique—Eight-Current Raging Storm!
    [when using Amenomurakumo-no-Tsurugi] Sky, ground, sea, gale. and flames...gather here the forces of heaven and earth... Sword of Heaven — Amenomurakumo-no-Tsurugi!
  • Making a Splash: Saber is able to manipulate water through their Mana Burst (Water) skill, bringing it down to douse flames, dragging groups of enemies together in whirlpools, and boosting Iori up with a geyser-like spout. This is further enhanced by their Noble Phantasm, Divine Water, which is similar to Invisible Air except that it uses water to conceal a sword rather than air.
  • Master Swordsman: True to their class, Saber is a master swordsman. Iori is entranced by Saber's technique, particularly their Noble Phantasm, looking up to them as a "god of the sword" he admires even more than Musashi. Saber's profile describes them as being a born genius far beyond the limitations of man.
  • Money Dumb: Saber hails from a time before coinage and paper money was introduced to Japan. So while they understand the concept of wealth, they tend to spend Iori's money frivolously when it comes to enjoying food and Edo's amenities. In the ending of the DLC, Saber goes from festival stall to festival stall to try every game and scoop up as much food as they can, regardless of the harm they're doing to Iori's financial situation.
    Iori: If we keep going from stall to stall like this, my purse won't survive.
    Saber: You should've thought of that before, Iori. You could have used the wish granter for coin.
    Iori: Had I foreseen that, I just might have...
  • Morph Weapon: Normally, Saber's weapon takes the form of a flame-bladed silver sword. But when they unleash their Noble Phantasm, the sword transforms into a traditional Japanese tsurugi.
  • Mundane Luxury: They go absolutely gaga for relatively simple fare like rice and miso soup, showing exactly how old they must be as a Japanese servant for such things to be delicacies.
  • Murder Is the Best Solution: Saber is prone to offering to kill sources of trouble at the start of the story, only to get admonished by Iori, who tells them to hold back and not kill anyone when dealing with thugs. Saber is perplexed and irritated by Iori's insistence on doing things "the hard way"—at one point even noting that samurai like Iori have the right to kill those of a lower station as they please—but reluctantly agrees to abide by Thou Shalt Not Kill.
  • Mutual Disadvantage: Against Assassin due to how their legends interact. Takeru's sword is the very one that was inside of Orochi, from whom Kouga obtained his curse, so this makes him extra vulnerable to Saber's attacks. At the same time, Takeru died in life to the machinations of a snake god, so Kouga drawing upon the power from the snake god Orochi makes him one of the worst foes in the Waxing Moon Ritual Takeru could face in straight fight. As a result, they choose to lie in wait in spirit form and let Iori and Dorothea weaken Kouga and break through his defenses before Takeru can appear and wipe him out with one good blast of their Noble Phantasm.
  • My Master, Right or Wrong: Saber isn't unquestioningly loyal to Iori during in the events of the game, but in their past life as Yamato Takeru, they fulfilled all of their father's orders without hesitation. They murdered their own brother and willingly slaughtered men, women, and children at their father's command. It's only after Takeru's beloved wife, Ototachibana-hime, sacrificed herself to appease Wadatsumi and enable Takeru's expedition to the east that Takeru begins to wonder Was It Really Worth It?. Given their Dull Eyes of Unhappiness and clear look of mourning, it definitely wasn't.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • Saber's Noble Phantasm is concealed in a "water sheath" (as Iori calls it) called Divine Water, paralleling the wind sheath Invisible Air that Altria uses to hide Excalibur in Fate/stay night. They even strike the same pose that Altria does in the anime adaptation of Fate/Zero when she's deploying Excalibur. Saber's ability to stand on water is another trait they share with Altria.
    • Their Noble Phantasm Eight-Current Raging Storm takes cues from Berserker Ibuki-Douji's Noble Phantasm, both of them conjuring up the visage of Orochi as a water attack. Which fits as both have a connection to Orochi and wield Kusanagi.
  • Naïve Newcomer: Saber is only slightly less clueless than Iori—they know what the Waxing Moon Ritual is, but nothing beyond the elevator pitch. Most damningly, they need to be told by Musashi that they need to keep Iori alive to maintain their own manifestation. Before that lecture, Saber would've been happy to abandon Iori if he ever got too inconvenient.
  • No-Sell: As they and Iori note early on, they've got particularly high Divinity, which renders them immune or resistant to most methods of controlling or weakening them. This proves helpful many times over in the course of the Waxing Moon Ritual, especially once Teuchimikado starts messing with the leylines, and during the Final Battle of the "Ray of Light" route, a frustrated Caster notes that Saber is a hard counter to his otherwise-impressive Reality Warper powers.
  • Oh, Crap!: At first, they outright tell Iori in his face that they'd gladly leave him to die if they thought he'd just slow them down. When Musashi points out to them that Iori dying or severing the contract would result in them returning to the Throne to stress why they need to learn to work together, their face is noted to become rather pale at the revelation, hinting that they were unaware of that detail when they were summoned.
  • Older Is Better: Saber's True Name is Yamato Takeru, a legendary Japanese prince born nearly 1,500 years before the events of the story, making them the oldest Servant actively participating in the war—Gilgamesh being older by a sizeable margin but refusing to get his hands dirty. They have multiple powerful Noble Phantasms, skill as a Master Swordsman to rival the likes of Ushi Gozen's, and high stats across the board. Caster even refers to Saber as the finest Japanese hero as one of Japan's oldest legends.
  • Older Than They Look: Saber looks young enough to be around Iori's age, to the point that passers-by mistake them for a couple at a glance. However, Yamato Takeru died at the age of 42. Even if they were summoned in their prime, they would be in their mid-twenties or early thirties.
  • One-Man Army: In their past life as Yamato Takeru, Saber slaughtered entire armies in their father's name. Flashbacks show that this was not hyperbole, as they stand alone amidst a field of bodies left in their wake. Their father, Emperor Keiko, would then send them against the gods and demons in the east for the sake of Yamato's interests.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Due to Saber's refusal to share their True Name with Iori out of spite for Iori not recognizing them, Iori exclusively refers to Saber by their class container. Their True Name is Yamato Takeru, which in itself is an epithet meaning "Hero/Brave of Yamato"; their given name is actually Ousu.
  • Ornamental Weapon: Their second sheathed sword is never used. Until the Entreat the Darkness route, where Saber uses the second sword to bring an end to the Waxing Moon Ritual, after killing Iori.
  • Orochi: Saber is one of three Servants with connections to the Yamata no Orochi, and their Eight-Current Raging Storm Noble Phantasm fires a Sword Beam in the shape of the Orochi that is powerful enough to obliterate Assassin's Great Orochi summon — also a manifestation of the Orochi. This is due to their sword being the Amenomurakumo-no-Tsurugi, a divine sword extracted from the Orochi's tail by the storm god Susanoo.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: Their Noble Phantasms are very destructive. Iori using a Command Seal to stop them from fully releasing one ends up destroying a sizable chunk of the nearby street and several houses near his residence. This is also reflected in how they use it against Rider. In "Flames of Resentment", the fact they're still fighting in the middle of Asakusa forces Saber to limit and condense the Sword Beam down to the point it only manages to destroy Rider's weaponry and leaves her too wounded to stop the follow-up finishing stab. In "Ray of Light", Dorothea's distraction moving Rider and her Noble Phantasm out of the populated area and down to the port allows Saber to cut loose and launch a much bigger blast that completely obliterates Rider in one shot that eclipses the port.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: They're easily a head shorter than Iori and initially consider him to be too weak to fight alongside. Saber is also strong enough to boost Iori up like a springboard when he needs to jump over scaffolding as a high as a building's.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: Discussed. Once Saber's true identity is revealed, they're talked up as Japan's greatest hero and one of its most famous figures in myth. But Saber doesn't see themself as heroic at all and is actively ashamed of their deeds in the past. As Yamato Takeru, Saber fought as an unfeeling weapon of destruction on behalf of their father, Emperor Keiko. Takeru's deeds made them a feared and bloody conqueror who massacred men, women, and children if their father willed it. So while the legends call Takeru a hero-prince who crushed the enemies of Yamato, Takeru is aware of the gravity of their deeds and became miserable and lonely.
  • Reused Character Design: They're this game's resident "Saberface", a character with the same face as the franchise's famous female King Arthur. A number of Altria's character traits, such as her initial critical aloofness and love of food, are likewise emulated. Their true name is Yamato Takeru, who has been linked to Arthur through comparative mythology.
  • Semi-Divine: Saber possesses D-Rank Divinity, as they were deified after their death as Otori, the Great Bird, whose shrines can be found throughout Japan.
  • Skilled, but Naive: Saber is a Master Swordsman and a literal One-Man Army who is more than confident in their ability to win the Waxing Moon Ritual all by themself. But that same ritual has also left them woefully underinformed about the nature of the war Saber is participating in. In addition, they're a Fish out of Temporal Water who is amazed at how different Japan is from how it was when they were alive. When they first visit Yoshiwara, they mistake a bunch of men wearing "lewd grins" as being enchanted by an enemy force, while Iori knows that it's a different kind of "enchantment" given Yoshiwara's Red Light District.
  • Straight Man and Wise Guy: Saber is the Wise Guy to Iori's Straight Man. While Saber is a master combatant, they're a naive Fish out of Temporal Water easily distracted by Edo's many sights, sounds, and smells. This contrasts Iori's serious and grounded nature as he constantly corrects Saber's misconceptions and keep them on-track.
  • Strong and Skilled: Goes with the territory as a Saber, which is a class where your skill as a Master Swordsman becomes raw strength by fuelling the longevity and popularity of your legend. This one is one of the most gifted warriors in history, and therefore an extraordinarily powerful Heroic Spirit.
  • Supernatural Gold Eyes: They have amber eyes and are a Servant whose true identity is that of the legendary Warrior Prince Yamato Takeru, who was deified as the divine bird Otori after death.
  • Superpower Lottery: They are a Master Swordsman with high stats all across the board (aside from their C Rank Endurance), several powerful Noble Phantasms with the strongest being an EX-Rank Anti-World (same rank and category as Gilgamesh's Ea)Context and is the oldest Servant in the Ritual.
  • Sword Beam: Wouldn't be a headlining Saber in the franchise without one.
    • Some of Saber's heavy and Affinity attacks have them shoot waves of water from their sword's blade.
    • Saber has two different sword beam Noble Phantasms. One is Eight-Current Raging Storm, which conjures the visage of the Orochi in the form of eight serpents made out of purifying water, which converge on and destroy its target. The other is Sword of Heaven - Amenomurakumo-no-Tsurugi, an EX-ranked Noble Phantasm that concentrates its power into a single beam, which Saber uses to dispatch Rider in both routes.
  • Teleport Spam: Saber can choose to vanish into their Spirit Form and reform elsewhere in an attempt to throw their foe off-guard in their final battle with Iori in the "Entreat the Darkness" ending.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Rice. Saber adores eating freshly cooked rice, seeing it as synonymous with peace and civilization. Eating it in any form fills them with joy. When Iori dives into Saber's memories, the first thing he sees is a rice field. They also love miso soup.
  • The Unreveal: Early on, Saber mentions that they don't remember what their wish for the Waxing Moon is, though Kaya implies they never forgot their wish but never told Iori. In the "Entreat the Darkness" route, Saber states that despite they and Iori parting on miserable terms, they're at least grateful that Iori helped them fulfill their wish, though what exactly their wish was to begin with is never elaborated on.
  • Walk on Water: Saber's command of water allows them to solidify it beneath their feet, turning it into a foothold for them to run or Wall Jump on in their attacks.
  • Warrior Prince: Their true identity is Yamato Takeru, who is effectively the Ur-Example in Japanese culture, having in life slain many enemies by the wave under the orders of their father Emperor Keiko.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: In their legend, Yamato Takeru fought tirelessly for their father's approval. They walked a path of blood and slaughter, killing men, women, children, demons, and gods in the name of Emperor Keiko and the nation of Yamato. Takeru even killed their own older brother on their father's orders without hesitation. Takeru's adherence to their father's orders was only shaken when Takeru's beloved wife, Ototachibana-hime, sacrificed herself for the sake of appeasing the sea god Wadatsumi, who threatened to sink Takeru and their entire fleet.
  • You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Invoked. When Iori learns Saber's True Name, Yamato Takeru, Saber asks Iori to continue calling them by their class. They then say that they only want to be referred to by their True Name at an important time, such as when Iori calls Takeru's name while asking them to destroy the Waxing Moon with their Noble Phantasm.

    Archer 

Voiced by: Kensho Ono

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fsrarcher.png
The Red Commander
"...If anyone, perhaps I can entrust my dying wish to you."

A handsome young man of loyalty, he is the Archer class Servant of Zheng Chenggong.

His True Name is Zhou Yu, the famed general of the Wu during the Three Kingdoms period. Seeking a lord to serve faithfully unto his death, he lends his strength to Zheng's cause of retaking China from the Ming.


  • Arrows on Fire: His main method of attack. His arrows are almost always covered in flames when he attacks, and when playable, few attacks lack his arrows being on fire. His Noble Phantasm, Fireship Afloat, is also this, if combining with his Cool Boat.
  • Ascended Extra: Zhou Yu was namedropped as a potential 'Pseudo Servant' identity in the gag-animation of Fate/Grand Order x Himuro's Universe: Seven Most Powerful Great Figures Chapter, to celebrate New Year. And now, he's a full-fledged Servant.
  • Back from the Dead: At the end of his and Zheng Chenggong's route through the Keian Command Championship, Zheng uses his wish to incarnate Zhou Yu in a new flesh-and-blood body—effectively resurrecting him.
  • Badass Armfold: Archer's default resting position is this pose, which helps sells his aloof coolheaded nature.
  • Become a Real Boy: In Archer's Keian Command Championship ending, Zheng uses his wish to reincarnate Zhou Yu into a proper body as opposed to a temporary Servant vessel.
  • Boss Subtitles: He's introduced as "Zhou Gongjin, the Red Commander".
  • Chain Pain: When using his second Noble Phantasm Red Cliff Calamity against Rogue Berserker, he's able to bind him with the superheated chains that were (according to legend) used to bind the Wei fleet together.
  • Cool Boat: He can summon a ship capable not just of water travel but also of flight. It's one of the louchuan warships from the Battle of Red Cliffs, which his Noble Phantasm recreates. Notably, he has the Riding skill to go along with it, something not seen often for Archers.
  • Composite Character: Of his own historic self with the abilities of his Romance of the Three Kingdoms self. Instead of being simply the historical or fictional version like some characters in the setting are, he's basically both aspects of his identity rolled into one person, which he finds slightly annoying.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: Invoked and weaponised in-universe. His Noble Phantasm basically consists of recreating his most spectacular military victory and then having everything deadly and destructive on the battlefield focus itself on whatever enemies are unlucky enough to be his victims. In other words, his targets won't just be stuck in the middle of the fire attack at the Battle of the Red Cliffs - they'll have burning battleships trying to squash them, the red-hot chains that shackled the fleet together wrapping around them, and gunpowder explosions literally chasing after them.
  • Heroic Suicide: After being corrupted by Tsuchimikado Yasuhiro and attacking Zheng Chenggong and his retainers, Zhou Yu regains just enough self-control to stab himself in the head with an arrow to prevent himself from hurting his friend any more than he already has.
  • Historical Badass Upgrade: An In-Universe example. Zhou Yu was a mostly normal warrior in history, but the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story made him a significantly more powerful warrior, causing him to be summoned as his historic self, with the powers and skills of his fictional self. Zhou Yu finds this a bit annoying, since he doesn't feel like it can really be properly attributed to himself because of that.
  • Humble Hero: He regularly calls himself not very competent in a direct fight and more suited to drafting strategy, but also shows himself to be very dangerous in any battle he gets himself in. As his mind is that of the Zhou Yu of proper history, he sees himself undeserving of the abilities given to him due to his interpretation from Romance of the Three Kingdoms and considers them a tad too powerful.
  • Mental World: Somewhat more ambiguous than most cases in the Nasuverse. Red Cliff Calamity - Cradle of Fire certainly looks like a Reality Marble, the world around Zhou Yu actively transforming into the burning fleet of ships from the battle of Red Cliff and acting to enhance his abilities to an insane degree, but unlike Hieda-no-Are's Puppet Playground, it's never actively pointed out as such.
  • Multishot: As a show of his skill as an archer, Archer's attacks involve repeatedly firing flurries of arrows in a fan pattern to catch large groups of enemies.
  • Quick Draw: His Deadly Attacks have some of the shortest wind-ups in the game, and he can use them consecutively, encouraging a player to interrupt them just as they initiate or even right before.
  • Sacrificial Lion: He's one of Iori and Saber's first and most stalwart allies, noble and courteous in personality, and helps them out of several binds. He's then rendered Brainwashed and Crazy and needs to be fought to the death before he regains just enough control to commit Heroic Suicide, being the first Servant casualty of the Waxing Moon Ritual.
  • Situational Sword: Archer's strongest Noble Phantasm, Red Cliff Calamity, is only usable if the target has been held in place for a certain amount of time. This means that Archer must trap his opponent in one place long enough for his Noble Phantasm to activate.
  • Square Race, Round Class: Considering his experience as a military commander and his Noble Phantasm, a fleet of ships during a naval battle, he seems better suited to the Rider class.
  • Token Good Teammate: The only regular Servant in the Waxing Moon Ritual who is neither evil nor comfortable with reckless violence.
  • True Companions: With his Master. The two display nothing but the utmost faith and trust in one another, with Archer himself being heavily invested in granting Zheng's wish. In his Keian Command Championship ending, a newly reincarnated Zhou Yu abandons the Waxing Moon Ritual with Zheng as they return to China with the intent of making Zheng's dream a reality without relying on the Waxing Moon.
  • Weak, but Skilled: His stats show him having only a C+ in Strength, but all of his other stats are at least B rank. Gameplay-wise, his attacks don't have the same power as someone like Saber, but his combos allow him to do things such as fight from a distance, or clear groups quickly.

    Lancer 

Voiced by: Maaya Sakamoto

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jalter_lancer.png
The Tenebrous Spear Wielder/The Corrupted Maiden
"...Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. All things───shall be consumed by the flames."

A mysterious woman who looks identical to the Dragon Witch, Jeanne d'Arc Alter. She is the Lancer class Servant of Chiemon, wielding two spears that make flowers of darkness bloom.


  • Ambiguous Situation: For some reason, promotional materials are leaving her name obscured. Considering the original Jeanne Alter from Grand Order is a fictional creation of Gilles de Rais and not a "real" Heroic Spirit, there may be something more to this Servant than meets the eye. Furthermore, her Noble Phantasm is different, which is not unusual when changing classes, but it is yet another point of difference from the original Avenger Jeanne Alter. The reality is that she is the proper Jeanne d'Arc, rather than the fictional creation of Gilles de Rais like in Grand Order, but due to circumstances of her summoning that led to her sacrificing her Sainthood, she transformed into an Altered version of herself even though it should be impossible for her to normally be Altered due to her Incorruptible Pure Pureness. This has the consequence of leaving her significantly weaker than her true self in spite of her more offensively-focused kit.
  • Anti-Villain: Despite being a corrupted Jeanne, flashes of the noble saint still pop up from time to time, most notably when she urges Iori and Saber to flee to safety with the unconscious Kaya while she stays behind and takes on the brainwashed Rogue Lancer.
  • Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: During the confrontation with Tsuchimikado, Iori, Saber, and Yoshinaka are preparing to confront Caster's master to end his ambitious plans, but in the midst of the dialogue between the two parties, Chiemon shows up unexpectedly and has Lancer do what they should of done while he is monologuing and stab him, killing him on the spot and derailing the whole Ritual as Tsuchimikado and Caster had planned in the process.
  • Being Evil Sucks: Turns out taking one of the most holy and pure characters and forcibly corrupting them via their Summoning does a number on their combat effectiveness. Despite her more offensive-focused Noble Phantasm lineup, she is straight-up one of the WEAKEST Servants involved in the Waxing Moon Ritual, and definitely the weakest of all of Jeanne's various incarnations in the franchise. In fact, this is the reason why, unlike his showing against Rider, Iori holds up incredibly well against this corrupted Jeanne because she's so Nerfed by her transformation into an Alter despite being a Servant, who tend to be generally way stronger than the average human even at their weakest.
  • Boss Subtitles: She's introduced as "Lancer, the Tenebrous Spear Wielder". After her True Name reveal, she's introduced as "Jeanne d'Arc, the Corrupted Maiden".
  • Drama-Preserving Handicap:
    • Jeanne d'Arc in Fate is famously a very powerful and devout holy servant whenever she's summoned, who's capable becoming a Stone Wall against her opponents and able to perform miracles due to her saintly disposition — which ordinarily would prevent her from being corrupted into an Alter state at all, as it should not work on someone who has Incorruptible Pure Pureness as a defining trait. However, in the process of performing a Heroic Sacrifice as part of her summoning for Chiemon, she compromises her virtue of protecting the many to instead protect the one sinner and his wish, which proves enough of a corrupting factor to override her usual immunity and make her an Alter. This compromise of self ends up absolutely destroying a lot of her advantages she ordinarily would have and makes her a Paper Tiger at best, on top of destroying her idealism altogether and making her a stoic Blood Knight.
    • Her second Noble Phantasm, Flamme Pays Etranger, summons forth the flames that executed Jeanne d'Arc on the stake in a radius around herself, setting any humans in range ablaze and causing devastation to her surroundings. While it damages Lancer as well upon usage, it's not the self-sacrificial Noble Phantasm that La Pucelle is and so can be used repeatedly as long as Chiemon doesn't care too much about her taking damage which he doesn't. However, using this Noble Phantasm goes against the few standards the corrupted Jeanne still has, so Chiemon has to use a Command Seal to force her to use it.
  • Identical Stranger: Is a dead ringer for Jeanne d'Arc Alter, save for the purple burnt cloak instead of black one of the original, despite the fact that ordinarily she should not be able to exist outside of that timeline due to the circumstances of her creation by Gilles de Rais, but she's a far more somber character lacking the characteristic Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist attitude of the original. In reality, that's because she's an Alter of the real deal Jeanne d'Arc and not her fictionalized "clone" created by Gilles de Rais's wish, even though it should be impossible for the normal Jeanne to be corrupted into an Alter state. The fact she is wearing the purple cloak is the only tell tale sign that distinguishes her as a corrupted version of the original Jeanne instead of her doppelganger.
  • Irony:
    • Despite taking clear influence from Avenger Jeanne d'Arc Alter in Fate/Grand Order, this corrupted Jeanne is actually more in line with the Lethal Joke Character status of what the Avenger class was envisioned originally in Fate/hollow ataraxia than her inspirationnote , instead being something of a Paper Tiger due to the Drama-Preserving Handicap at play with her forced Alter transformation compromising her Saint Graph's integrity.
    • The Lancer class is infamous for being practically Cosmic Plaything with how abysmal their luck is in the Fate seriesnote , and Lancer here is no different with an E-rank in Luck. Yet hilariously, she and her master end up making it to the very end of all the routes, even participating as part of the Final Boss (albeit as part of the power source of Chiemon's Humanoid Abomination form) in the Flames of Resentment route.
  • Perpetual Frowner: Lancer has a frown as her default expression and it barely ever changes, to the point Saber nicknames her "the gloomy woman".
  • The Power of Hate: Her Noble Phantasm, Tristesse de la Vierge, is powered by the grudges of those who died in battle. It's noted to be a extremely degraded, inverted version of her usual Noble Phantasm, Luminosite Eternelle.
  • Purple Is Powerful: The main difference physically that differentiates her from Jeanne d'Arc Alter from Grand Order is the fact she's wearing a noticeably purple cloak instead of the black cloak she wears in her first ascension, albeit burned at the ends and is one of the more physically-oriented Servants in this Waxing Moon Ritual. Ironically however, this is probably the weakest incarnation of Jeanne d'Arcnote  despite being the genuine corrupted form of the original, due to the fact she is a corrupted form of someone who's defined by her Incorruptible Pure Pureness and thus is given a massive Drama-Preserving Handicap despite her more physical stance than any other Jeanne to date.
  • Technicolor Fire: Her flames are purple-black, and they seem to invoke the imagery of Hellfire given her apparent Alter state for a Saint and her Master's Chiemon's intentions to create Hell on Earth.
  • Token White: While there is a foreign Master participating in the Waxing Moon Ritual, and there are Rogue Servants with origins in other lands, this Lancer is the only Servant among the "main" set of competitors who isn't clearly East Asian.
  • Undying Loyalty: To Chiemon unquestionably despite how coldly he treats her, in fact, it's the reason why she's an Alter in the first place. As Jeanne d'Arc ordinarily couldn't be an Alter due to her Incorruptible Pure Pureness, but seeing the fire and pain that has traumatized him so deeply when she was being summoned, rather than reject him as an unfit Master, she chose to still try and save his soul regardless — which caused her to bear his grudge into her own heart, corrupting her into a shadow of her former self and just as much of a bloodthirsty cynic as he is.
  • The Unfought: In both "Ray of Light" and "Entreat the Darkness", Jeanne has a rather anticlimactic end when Chiemon is killed by Iori and Caster while Jeanne is separated from him in the respective routes. With her Master gone, so is her anchor to the world, causing her to disappear.

    Rider 

Voiced by: Haruka Tomatsu

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ridersr.png
The Dark Warrior
Unarmored appearance (Spoilers!)
"With all due respect, killing them in their ignorance would be a mercy."

A warrior in dark armor with a tendency towards ruthlessness, they are the Rider class Servant of Yui Shousetsu. They attempt to kill Iori before he summons a Servant, and continues to serve as an antagonist throughout the story.


  • Adaptational Seriousness: Minamoto-no-Raikou in Fate/Grand Order, while having a fair bit of drama about her past like most Servants (especially in consideration towards her Oni half that this game expands upon), tends to have quite a considerable amount of levity to her thanks to her specific kind of Madness Enhancement as a Berserker. In Samurai Remnant, however, Ushi-Gozen is played completely serious from the get-go to a terrifying degree as a barely composed Omnicidal Maniac callously using her Master to fulfill her ambition while under the guise of being her more heroic self, and even when she's pretending to be Minamoto-no-Raikou, Ushi-Gozen shows none of the more sympathetic traits that allowed her to have levity in her origin game.
  • Age Lift: For all intents and purposes, Ushi Gozen here is Raikou Lily, as beneath the bulky armor she's wearing she is in a underdeveloped teenage form instead of the curvy figure of her more familiar adult form as a result of her "Divine Manifestation" skill physically altering her appearance. Humorously, her younger appearance ends up making her resemble her Arch-Enemy Shuten-Douji considerably.
  • Animalistic Abomination: Her Noble Phantasm, "Ox-King Reversal - Frenzied Tempest", summons an ushi-oni, here depicted as a bizarre, headless ox with six legs that towers over the entire city of Edo and threatens to destroy it simply by trampling through it.
  • Ascended Extra: While Minamoto-no-Raikou has been a prominent mainstay Servant ever since her introduction in Grand Order, her Ushi Gozen persona has been more of a footnote that has only appeared in a couple events and wasn't shown to have much in the way of character beyond being her Superpowered Evil Side. This game, however, has Ushi Gozen as the prominent identity this time around and players are able to properly see more of her Oni self's overall persona as a major antagonist in this story.
  • Arch-Enemy:
    • Is this to Rogue Saber as she's the "Evil Ogre" that he is hunting. Although, she considers him just another adversary in the way.
    • One made very clear by the Keian Command Championship DLC is Ibuki-Douji, though this could be her inner Raikou speaking. Her feelings towards Ibuki-Douji are best described as "kill on sight", and the general rivalry between their respective less divine selves is quite legendary.
  • Armor Is Useless: Zigzagged. Functionally speaking, for a Servant armor alone tends to not be a particularly noteworthy trait to hold a genuine defense against unless they are historically defined by their usage of it, as they are magical beings that are borderline immune outright to mortals inflicting damage to them and vulnerable to other Servants, where armor of any kind doesn't matter. That said, Rider's usage of their armor is a bit more creative than the standard case as the floating pauldrons/sodes allow them to act as impromptu shields that can deflect most attacks. But then it is revealed she doesn't actually need to wear it at all; as a particularly powerful Oni of Divine blood, she's plenty resilient without it and was simply using the armor to obfuscate her identity as a much more virtuous character.
  • Berserk Button: Yep. Even when Raikou is controlled by a different personality entirely, Shuten-Douji (or Ibuki-Douji, in this case) is still one that presses itself by merely existing.
  • BFS: Wields an odachi (a Japanese greatsword designed for fighting against cavalry) wreathed in dark energy. It's unusual enough for the post-Sengoku setting (where nearly everyone who does carry a weapon uses the comparatively dainty katanas) that the characters use the weapon as an identifying feature when describing Rider to others.
  • Black Knight: A Japanese variant, but Rider's appearance invokes the classic idea of this trope of being an imposing warrior in dark armor that easily trumps the heroes from the gate to establish that Servants are beyond mortal capabilities to quarrel with. Although, she's actually far stronger when not hiding her identity behind her armor.
  • Boss Subtitles: They're introduced as "Rider, the Dark Warrior". After their True Name reveal, she's introduced as "Ushi Gozen, the Unholy Transgressor".
  • Combat Pragmatist: In contrast to their Master's Code of Honor, Rider occasionally expresses a desire to eliminate potential problems as soon as possible. Following their first bout with Miyamoto Iori and Saber, they suggest the solution of just killing the two while Iori has yet to come into his own as a Master but Yui shuts down the idea.
  • Cool Horse: To travel swiftly, they ride the legendary horse Kyogoku, the same one Minamoto-no-Raikou rides. It is able to fly.
  • Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: Ushi Gozen, once her face is revealed, has prominent black rings around her eyelids that, when coupled with her permanent piercing Kubrick Stare, makes her visibly unhinged and frightening.
  • Demon Lords and Archdevils: Ushi Gozen is a really big deal by oni standards, a Semi-Divine powerhouse entirely capable of flattening towns and cities and very enthusiastic about doing so. There's a reason she's passed into legend as an Arch-Enemy of one of Japan's most legendary demon-slayers, even if the truth is a little more complicated.
  • Exact Words: Rider told their Master Yui their identity immediately upon being summoned when they were asked, however, Ushi Gozen did not specify which personality was dominant after being summoned, so she was not straight up lying to her face when she said she was Minamoto-no-Raikou to her but favored omitting any mention of her Oni nature to manipulate her Master to serve her own ends. She also completely earnestly pledges herself to Shousetsu's cause of fixing worldwide inequality; she just has a very different idea on how to do that. Due to this, Shousetsu's Command Spells have no effect on her, because she is technically doing exactly what her Master wishes.
  • Final Solution: Following the reveal of her true nature, Ushi Gozen reveals she does intend to help Yui right the world... by hijacking the Waxing Moon Ritual and using her Noble Phantasm to destroy Edo and everyone along with it. Yui attempts to stop her by utilizing all three of her Command Spells but it fails to deter Ushi Gozen in the slightest, because she is still fulfilling their shared objective, just through a completely different means than her Master intends.
  • Friend to All Children: In Rider's Keian Command Championship ending, she's seen playing with a bunch of kids in a courtyard, even letting one sit on one of her shoulder pauldrons she's shifted with the flat side up. Jury's out whether she's only doing so to keep up the act, though.
  • Giant Spider: Rider's Noble Phantasm summons a massive cross between a spider and bull to trample enemies.
  • A God Am I: Granted, Ushi Gozen actually is a demigod, due to being the daughter of Indra, but upon the reveal of her identity, she is demanding Iori and Saber prostrate themselves before her as a genuine Divine Spirit in the flesh while flashing a sadistic Slasher Smile, telling them that she will grant them a quick and merciful death if they grovel and worship her.
  • Graceful Loser: In both "Flames of Resentment" and "Ray of Light", Ushi Gozen's final moments before being finished off by Saber's blade or straight-up obliterated by their Sword of Heaven: Amenomurakumo-no-Tsurugi are of peace and contentment at being able to bask in the divine light of destruction she so craved, even seeing a shining light from the heavens in the former.
  • The Heavy: While they are not the Big Bad by any stretch, Ushi Gozen is the most overarching and readily apparent antagonist right out the gate, looming as an opponent for Iori and Saber to eventually have to face for much of the game, and that's even before the reveal of her plans that cause multiple parties, including her own Master, to all end up grouping together in a massive Enemy Mine to put down Ushi Gozen for good that no other party successfully accomplishes to the same degree.
  • Heinz Hybrid: Minamoto-no-Raikou is partly divine, partly demonic as an oni, and human all at once. This imbalance leads Raikou to struggle with balancing her innately inhuman values with the moral, human lifestyle she wants to live. When her divine and demonic powers overwhelm her, she suffers a Split-Personality Takeover and becomes Ushi Gozen. In this case, Rider was summoned as Ushi Gozen, making her an Ax-Crazy Omnicidal Maniac from the start.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: Rider demonstrates the gap between Servants and mortals by overpowering all of Iori's attempts to defend himself. Rider doesn't even bother to swing their sword with both hands while hammering away at Iori's desperate attempts to block. Meanwhile, all of his attempts to counterattack bounce harmlessly off of Rider, who makes it clear that he would be a corpse already if not for Saber's intervention; even on a second play through with a highly upgraded Iori, he still won't be able to dodge, block, parry, or otherwise mitigate their area HP to One attack. This happens again during the final battle with her in Chapter 5 where she shrugs off everything Iori and Saber throw at her. It takes her massive Noble Phantasm being weakened by multiple other Servants cutting off the leyline connection to the Spirit Fonts (both routes) as well as Rogue Saber arriving to settle the score to finally even the odds (Flames of Resentment), or Dorothea and Musashi providing a distraction to force her out of the main populated sector so Saber can unleash their full unrestrained might without collateral damage (Ray of Light).
  • Hyde Plays Jekyll: Up until she's relieved of her armor, she spends most of the time pretending to be Raikou while working alongside Yui Shousetsu, but she's long grown sick of the charade by the time she's finally outed.
  • I Am Not Left-Handed:
    • For much of the game, Rider appears as a tall, imposing figure that easily demonstrates the gap between mortals and Servants with how much of a Curb-Stomp Battle they inflict on Iori early on. However, she is actually significantly weaker pretending to be the composed "Minamoto-no-Raikou" to fulfill her plans. Once she sheds the guise of armor after it's destroyed by Saber and allowed to fully reveal herself as Ushi Gozen, she shows her true power thanks to her Divinity and becomes a vastly more difficult opponent to fight than before, requiring multiple parties to work alongside each other in a massive Enemy Mine to stall her advance and bring down her defenses.
    • Furthermore, their appearance in Fate/Grand Order reveals they have a skill called Lone Warrior at A rank. FGO discribes it as being able to hide their identity, parameters and even class at the cost of shackling their own destructive impulses. While the skill's discription explicitly states they aren't using it in Grand Order, they appear as an Avenger in that game, strongly implying they're using it to hide behind a false class in Samurai Remnant.
  • The Immune: Despite appearing brainwashed like every other servant by Tsuchimikado's spell, it's later revealed that due to Ushi Gozen's divinity, she's functionally invulnerable to being controlled by a spell of that level and was playing along being brainwashed both for Shousetsu's and her own plans.
  • Insane Troll Logic: Unfortunately for her Master, she has this as the explicit side-effect of one of her hidden Skills. Despite being a Rider, she's got an EX-ranked version of a Berserker's signature Mad Enhancement skill. While this means that she's immensely powerful, she's only superficially rational and interprets every command she's given, no matter how benign, as a request for more death and destruction. She acts in a manner so completely sincere that she can No-Sell Command Spells telling her to do the exact opposite of what she's doing, because in her own twisted way, she is working towards her Master's goal.
  • It Is Beyond Saving: Ushi Gozen was completely honest when she said she answered Yui's call by sympathizing with her wish to put right this Crapsaccharine World. The problem is that Ushi Gozen, with her Blue-and-Orange Morality filtered through her complex self-loathing and inhuman mindset, believes that the only way to "put the world right" is to just kill everyone in it in order to wipe out evil and injustice for good, not sharing her Master's belief there are things worth fighting to preserve and save in the corruption.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: Rider wields an odachi that glows an ominous purple while walking unflinchingly toward their opponents. It's actually one of her Noble Phantasms: Dōjigiri-Yasutsuna, the legendary blade that she channels her Mana Burst: Lightning through and she used to slay many supernatural threats. Ushi Gozen intentionally limits herself to using only this sword in order to better sell her guise as Minamoto-no-Raikou, and as shown in her route in the Keian Command Championship DLC where she asks for permission to use her second Noble Phantasm against Ibuki-Douji to Yui's confusion, she hid the fact she even has other offensive Noble Phantasms.
  • Laughing Mad:
    • Rider's true, unhinged nature is revealed by her laughing maniacally after the armor comes off. The sadistic, mirthless laughter emphasizes how she sees everyone else in the war as beneath her as she prepares to raze Edo and the entire world to the ground.
    • Rider can also laugh uncontrollably in their playable appearance upon using their Noble Phantasm and preparing to lay waste to their enemies in one of their alternate lines. In the Keian Command Championship DLC, some of the routes will have Rider burst into maniac laughter as they get worked up into the fight thanks to Ibuki-Douji's influence.
  • Manipulative Bastard: While they seem loyal to Shousetsu's cause at first, in reality, Ushi Gozen is playing on Exact Words the entire time to egg her Master into allowing her access to the capital's leylines, which will empower her Noble Phantasm to kill everyone within Edo and potentially beyond because she's under the belief that only by cleansing the world (which includes herself) will it finally be given peace free from all evil.
  • Malevolent Masked Man: Rider's armor is masculine in shape and their face is completely concealed behind a mask. They walk toward Iori with the intent to kill them and effortlesly repel his attacks until he can summon Saber to defend himself.
  • Mask of Sanity: Rider maintains a rather cool disposition, reflecting their Master's levelheaded rationale, despite voicing the occasional request to cut out the middle man and just eliminate the problem rather than play to Honor Before Reason. However, once her armor is destroyed and her identity as Ushi Gozen is revealed, her stoicism goes and dies, leaving a egomaniacal demigod who wants nothing more than to burn down the whole of Edo, snickering all the while as she reveals her true sadistic nature. Tellingly, she possesses an EX-ranked "Mad Enhancement" skill just like her Berserker counterpart but chooses to keep it hidden until her true nature is exposed.
  • Misanthrope Supreme: After the mask comes off and her true identity is revealed, Ushi Gozen reveals a deep, unending loathing for mankind, believing it and the world they live in to be Beyond Redemption. Her ultimate goal is to seize the Waxing Moon for the sake of wiping the slate clean. In her eyes, this is the only way to create a truly virtuous and equal world.
  • Named Weapons: Rider's nodachi is called Yasutsuna, and is one of their Noble Phantasms—though it is not their only or even main one. Ushi Gozen also benefits from using the sword well-associated with her other personality to help sell the deception of being Minamoto-no-Raikou.
  • Obliviously Evil: An extreme and incredibly dangerous example. What seems to be Card-Carrying Villain behaviour after the reveal of her true identity turns out to be armour-plated Insane Troll Logic that lets her No-Sell her Master's Command Spells by making her believe that she's diligently and virtuously following Yui's orders while doing the exact opposite.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: After her reveal, she instantly announces her desire to right the world by destroying everything in it, including herself. Yui understandably is not pleased with this.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: When her identity is revealed and she sheds her armor, Ushi Gozen is revealed to be a very petite teenager who's smaller than even her Master (one of the shortest members of the cast). She also reveals herself to be a Semi-Divine Person of Mass Destruction who's been holding back a vast amount of her power. This is due to her Divine Manifestation skill that originates from her nature as a daughter of Indra, which allows her by default to have Monstrous Strength and the ability to shapeshift at will, thus justifying the massive discrepancy between the power levels of her two appearances once she reveals herself.
  • Promoted to Playable: Rider is notably one of the two of the core seven Servants alongside Caster who is not playable in the base game in any capacity. This changes post the first DLC where they gain a playable moveset albeit only in her armored appearance, including their Noble Phantasm, after completing their route in the Keian Command Championship.
  • Recurring Element: Following the pattern set by Lancer in Fate/stay night, Rider is a Servant who attacks the main character on the first night of the Grail War and almost kills him before he summons his Saber.
  • Samus Is a Girl: Rider is an intimidatingly hulking figure in their armor, making it hard to discern their gender, coupled with the Gender-Concealing Voice filter applied to them whenever they speak. Naturally, it's revealed that she is the very female Ushi Gozen as a result. Though, the more surprising detail is that she is not in her typical Statuesque Stunner appearance as Minamoto-no-Raikou, but is instead a petite, tiny, pale sickly-looking teenage girl.
  • Sanity Slippage: Despite not being a Berserker in this form, a younger Raikou becoming Ushi Gozen in earnest actually is worse on her mental well-being, such that it's almost easy to mistake her as a Berserker once she sheds her armor, which is justified given how much self-loathing she has any time she's forced to embrace her Oni heritage.
  • Secret Identity Vocal Shift: Their armor distorts their voice as well, adding difficulty to identify them based on their voice or gender. Until it broke off and a female laughter came, that is.
  • Semi-Divine: While much about them is mysterious, it's known that they have particularly high Divinity for a Servant, an attribute that means they are related to deities and protects them from most forms of mortal magecraft. Turns out that they're a Semi-Divine oni who traces her ancestry back to Indra, king/supreme entity/senior figure (his precise status has varied over the millennia) of the Hindu pantheon.
  • Shock and Awe: Their attacks are often accompanied by purple lightning. Appropriate, considering that she is the daughter of Indra, the Hindu god of the sky, lightning, weather and war.
  • Smug Super: Compared to their more pragmatic stance before the reveal of their identity, Ushi Gozen soaks up her Semi-Divine status once she's exposed and genuinely sees everyone as beneath her, even Yoshinaka who's arguably her Arch-Enemy in this ritual, and is more amused that they are even trying to fight a godlike being such as her than actively annoyed until she's actually threatened by them.
  • The Sociopath: Lack of proper understanding of human morals? Check. Willing to manipulate others in order to reach her goals? Check. Sees herself as above most other beings? Check. Lack of regard towards others despite her belief of doing things out of her goodwill? Check. Ultimately wants death and destruction of everything? Check, check, check!
  • Spider Limbs: When Iori and Saber fight her for the final time in Chapter 5 after disabling the leylines powering her Noble Phantasm, she reconfigures her armor to act as eight large back-mounted mechanical spider legs for her to maneuver around with.
  • Split-Personality Takeover: Ushi Gozen is Raikou's split personality representing her loathed divine/oni heritage. She appears whenever Raikou builds up too much divine energy.
  • Trailers Always Spoil: Consciously averted. Koei Tecmo said that they specifically avoided naming Rider's voice actor in the advertising because doing so would reveal who they are. Though even then, eagle-eyed FGO players noticed that Rider was mounted on Minamoto-no-Raikou's horse Kyogoku in a preview video less than a week before release. Then, when Yui and Rider's trailer dropped, it ended with Rider's mask and voice changer being destroyed, before a laughing voice many players would be familiar with could be heard.
  • Tron Lines: They have single electric blue stripes running up either leg onto the cuirass. The leotard under the armor, which is basically plain black with more blue elements, is a more obvious example of the trope.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: Downplayed. Rider is genuinely skilled with a sword, but comes across as this compared to their older counterpart who is a Multi-Melee Master and doesn't rely so much on their armor or godly powers.
  • Walking Spoiler: While they seem to be just another servant in the Waxing Moon Ritual that serves at best a Boss Tease that would have to be eventually overcome, The Reveal of Rider's identity and the true scope of what they intend shapes them plainly as perhaps the biggest threat in the war.
  • The Worf Effect: Their first fight with Iori serves as a harsh reminder that under most normal circumstances, a human facing off with a Servant is going to end in a Curb-Stomp Battle in favor of the latter. Iori up to this point could handle over a dozen hooded assassins at once without much trouble and the lead-up to their confrontation shows Iori spends his average day thrashing local gangs on his lonesome for coin, but Rider takes at best Scratch Damage from Iori's attacks and completely overpowers him with only a desperate magical explosion giving them pause. Only Shousetsu's honor demanding they stop Rider in order to give their name and kill Iori personally gives Iori time to inadvertently summon Saber.
  • A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Ushi Gozen hides her true identity away from her master by invoking Exact Words and naming herself "Minamoto-no-Raikou" when summoned, which is technically true as Minamoto-no-Raikou is her older self and split personality after Humanity Ensues, allowing her to pretend to be a much more virtuous honorable Servant in Shousetsu's service until she can access the capital's leylines to enact her annihilation of the country with her Noble Phantasm.

    Caster 

Voiced by: Anri Katsu

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/characters_image_05_02.png
The Recorder
"...Do as you wish. I shall do the same."

The mysterious Servant masterminding the Waxing Moon Ritual and Caster class Servant of Tsuchimikado Yasuhiro.


  • Agent Scully: Deconstructed. The game shows that the kind of Arbitrary Skepticism Caster embodies does not actually come from a place of academic rigor or simple materialism, but a deep sense of entitlement over what is real or not. He does not understand the supernatural, and has difficulty accounting for it, so to him, it doesn't exist. It's not so much he can't understand what he's seeing, it's that he does—and he regards it as a personal insult, denying it (and attempting to destroy it) to protect his self-image.
  • Ambiguous Gender: While manifesting as a man when incarnated as a Caster-class Servant, the dossier unlocked by completing the "Ray of Light" route notes that it's unknown whether the historical Hieda-no-Are was a man or a woman, or if they even existed in the first place, which it speculates is possibly the source of Caster's obsession with documenting everything.
  • And Then What?: This is why he opposes Iori and Saber in the "Ray of Light" story path. If the Waxing Moon is destroyed and the Grail War ends, he will no longer be able to record Japan's history and will thus lose his purpose for existence.
  • Boss Subtitles: He's introduced as Caster, the Recorder. After his True Name reveal, it changes to Hieda-no-Are, the Daybreak's Recorder.
  • Control Freak: The core of his personality. As Japan's first historian, he believes he's entitled to decide its history, using his Reality Warper abilities to determine what is myth and what is fact for all that has happened and will happen in the future. Other people going off-script is a massive Berserk Button for him - especially the Saber-class servant who was once called Yamato Takeru, who he views as his greatest creation rather than their own person.
  • Create Your Own Hero: A rather interesting case as Caster is singlehandedly responsible for Yamato Takeru's legend persisting into the present day by recording it, alongside all other early Japanese myths, into the Kojiki and them becoming the Ur-Example of the Warrior Prince of their culture, which would in turn make them an incredibly powerful Servant come the Waxing Moon Ritual due to the way that mystery tends to work. Indeed, he views Yamato as a fictional character he created rather than a historical figure, and is enraged when they try to become more than how they were written by him. This, of course, bites him greatly when they end up being summoned as an enemy Servant opposing him.
  • Drama-Preserving Handicap: His Reality Warper abilities are as powerful and versatile as one might expect, but they're not a Story-Breaker Power because they still play by the same rules as any other Caster's magecraft (even when he's actively trying to change those rules). They need a hefty mana supply to do anything truly big and impressive, other Servants' resistance to hostile magecraft from skills like Magic Resistance and Divinity will let them No-Sell or mitigate anything he does to them if he can't muster up enough juice to overcome it, and his own defensive measures and Summon Magic can be overcome by simple brute force.
  • Entitled Bastard: He's let his legendary/historical significance go all the way to his head, turning him into a narcissistic Control Freak who literally believes he deserves to write the rules of the world.
  • Final Boss: He serves as the final boss of "A Ray of Light" route.
  • Flat-Earth Atheist: Weaponized as a manifestation of his Reality Warper powers. Despite being a Servant and having magical powers, he insists that all forms of the supernatural are not real and are just tricks or illusions, which lets him shut them down as a form of Anti-Magic. His wish is to completely erase the supernatural so that the world will have no more "lies"... or, to put it another way, so that he'll have complete control over it with no threats to his position.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: He notes as he and Yasomagatsuhi die to Amenomurakumo-no-Tsurugi in the "Ray of Light" route the very moment he helped record Yamato Takeru's legend during his writing of the Kojiki, his defeat was all but assured from the very beginning. Even when he invokes his Reality Marble to try to erase Takeru, it fails because the Kojiki (and thus the writings detailing Takeru within) are part of Hieda's own history; he can't rewrite his own myth.
  • Insistent Terminology: Caster prefers to be called as Recorder instead of his proper class name. He also prefers his writings not be called literature, but instead "records" for the same reason.
  • I Reject Your Reality: Invoked. He tends to take obviously ridiculous Flat-Earth Atheist stances in order to cudgel the world into behaving how he thinks it should with his Reality Warper powers, with a degree of success depending on how challenging/strongly opposed the change he wants to make is.
  • Irony: Hieda-no-Are and his Kojiki are the Japanese equivalent of the Greek Hesiod and Theogony. The work is the only source for much of early Japanese culture and history, and combines disparate regional traditions into a single coherent Japanese mythology. Over the passing centuries it has had an indelible effect on Japanese culture and language. Despite the document's own importance, however, Are is a complete enigma whose very existence is debatable.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In his and Tsuchimikado's ending in the Keian Command Championship, Caster notes that while his master may find the outcome undesirable the narrative is likely to please the humans of the future.
  • Manipulative Bastard: In the "Ray of Light" story path, he uses a mix of "The Reason You Suck" Speech and The Corruptor to form a contract with Zheng Chenggong, who lost his Servant Archer earlier in the war, in the hopes of continuing the Waxing Moon Ritual and fulfill his dream of archiving Japan's history while demanding to know whether Zheng will forfeit his own dream when he has another opportunity to lay claim to the Ritual's prize. It works and Zheng becomes his new Master in Chapter V.
  • Marathon Boss: The final battle with him in the "Ray of Light" route has several phases, and while they each have a checkpoint, they form a wide gulf between the last save point the player can use and its very last segment. Switching Servants and adjusting the difficulty would necessitate starting all over again.
  • Mental World: He can summon a Reality Marble called Puppet Playground in which his Reality Warper abilities become much more powerful, letting him literally rewrite the laws of physics and magecraft to weaken his enemies and strengthen himself.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The "Ray of Light" story path had the Crimson Codex poised to absorb the Waxing Moon vessel so it could be destroyed safely at the cost of his life. Caster shoving it into Yasomagatsuhi to try to kill the heroes during that route makes such a sacrifice unnecessary.
  • Reality Warper: As Japan's first historian, this is what one half of his powerset revolves around, literally writing the rules of engagement with an effectiveness that depends on his magical strength and his opponent's magical resistance. His Reality Marble, Puppet Playground, is the apex of this ability, transporting him and his enemies to a Mental World where he has near-omnipotence and can render weak enough foes completely helpless.
  • Seers: He has imperfect-but-powerful precognition. The game implies that this was what helped the Tsuchimikado clan crib notes from future Holy Grail Wars to create the Waxing Moon Ritual in the first place. As a Control Freak Entitled Bastard, meanwhile, he sees it as his duty to correct those imperfections, using his Reality Warper powers to make sure that what he sees will play out to his greatest advantage.
  • Servile Snarker: Caster doesn't exactly have the greatest respect for his Master Tsuchimikado, and often mocks his plans and strategies. It doesn't help that he's often proven right about his Master's incompetence in nearly every route.
  • Squishy Wizard: A classic example. His STR, END, and AGL are all at the bottom of the barrel at Rank E, but his LUK is at Rank A, his MP is at Rank A+, and his NP is at Rank EX thanks to his Reality Marble and ability to summon a Divine Spirit.
  • Stone Wall: Casters are, strategically speaking, the Holy Grail War's Stone Wall class, focusing on turning their Master's Workshop (headquarters) into an impenetrable fortress through setting up Bounded Field traps and fortifications, creating guards with Summon Magic, and so on. Once that's done, they will pursue Victory by Endurance by gradually but inexorably expanding their territory, and/or exploit the fact that My Defense Need Not Protect Me Forever by setting up massively powerful magical rituals that can end the war in a single stroke, forcing other Masters and Servants to either accept their doom or run into the meatgrinder the Caster has set up to defend themselves. This one is an extremely orthodox Caster who follows this playbook to the letter, with the rule differences of the Waxing Moon Ritual (like leyline control and recruitable Rogue Servants) only adding strength and depth to his strategy.
  • Summon Magic: As a Caster, he makes extensive use of this to summon various monsters (in his case, yokai from across Japanese folklore) to wear down the opposition and defend his territory. One of his ultimate panic-button Noble Phantasms is also based around this, summoning the massive, dragon-like primordial demon-god Yasomagatsuhi to annihilate anyone who really needs to be annihilated.
  • Teleport Spam: During the first part of the Final Battle on "Ray of Light", Caster will use his precognition to anticipate the party's attacks and rapidly teleport away from them before they can connect, much to Saber's frustration. Shousetsu tells Iori and Saber to focus their attacks on Zheng instead so as to stun and weaken Caster, opening him up to a beatdown.
  • Too Many Mouths: He has small mouths on the palms of his hand that have writhing black serpentine tongues.
  • Underestimating Badassery: In the "Entreat the Darkness" ending, Caster refuses to take Chiemon seriously and dismisses him as a non-threat. While Caster casually lops off Chiemon's arm, he fails to stop Chiemon from grabbing him and igniting both of them with Lancer's flames, killing them both.
  • Viler New Villain: Casters in major Fate entries that involve Holy Grail Wars have a tendency to be amoral, selfish, or murderously unstable. This Caster stands out as being the most aggressively unpleasant one so far, quick to jeer, slow to help, and unwilling to bond. The shameless, loveless way he carries himself can make him come across as less likable or sympathetic than his counterparts who betrayed their Masters (which he never technically does) and killed children. Though he never reaches the heights of perversity and sadism as some of his predecessors, he is perfectly comfortable with cruelty and ruthlessness in service of attaining his simple and completely egocentric wish.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: He's nowhere to be found in the "Flames of Resentment" ending.
  • Written by the Winners: As a megalomaniac Control Freak historian, he considers it his life's work to invoke and enforce this trope using his precognition and Reality Warper powers. He specifically wants to be the winner who writes stuff.

    Assassin 

Voiced by: Hideo Ishikawa

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fsrassassin.png
The Gray-Clad Phantom
"You truly are fascinating. Testing you is well worth the effort!"

The Assassin Servant of Dorothea Coyett. A phantom clad in white with snakes coiling all around him, he is able to manipulate said reptiles to do his bidding.


  • Animal Motifs: Snakes; even his gem decorations are made to look like snake eyes.
  • Boss Subtitles: He's introduced as "Assassin, the Gray-Clad Phantom". During his boss fight at Yokosuka in the Snake route, he's introduced as "Kouga Saburou, the Ibuki Incarnate".
  • Breath Weapon: One of his attacks has him transform his hand into a snake and fire a stream of venom from its mouth. The giant snake-god summoned as part of his Noble Phantasm can also spit a stream of extremely potent venom.
  • Call-Back: With his hood and elongated limbs, this Assassin shares a number of visual similarities to the Hassan of the Cursed Arm, his Class counterpart in Fate/stay night. And like Zabaniya, his Noble Phantasm shares its name ("Ibuki Daimyoujin Engi") with the ones wielded by his successors.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: He was mentioned in the Shimousa chapter of Fate/Grand Order as the ancestor of Shimousa's Assassin, Chiyome, due to bearing the curse of Orochi that was later passed on to her and caused her immense grief.
  • Creepily Long Arms: His arms go down to his knees by default, and they can even stretch further. Or just turn into snakes.
  • Cursed with Awesome: Like Chiyome before (after?) him, his curse gives him relatively nebulous negative consequences, and a whole bunch of cool snake-themed superpowers. It's later explained that this was only part of the curse, as he was also supposed to be a permanent, indentured denizen of Ibuki's realm, and would have been if Ibuki-Douji hadn't helped him escape.
  • Deity of Human Origin: His Digressions reveal that he is worshiped as a god at Suwa Shrine, a piece of which was used as a catalyst to summon him as a Servant.
  • Demon of Human Origin: According to the legend from which he originates, Saburo was the member of the Kouga ninja clan and once travelled to the underworld beneath Mt. Ibuki, where he was cursed by the mountain's god — an aspect of the Yamata no Orochi — and was mutated into a humanoid snake-demon.
  • Eyes Do Not Belong There: Some of Assassin's snakes have eyes running down their sides in addition to the eyes on their head, emphasizing their supernatural origins.
  • A God Am I: One of his lines upon using his Noble Phantasm has him boast about showing his opponents the power of a god. Quite literally, since he's channeling the power of the Great God Ibuki.
  • Insistent Appellation: Assassin refers to his Master as Princess, Dorothea corrects him that though she may be a noble she is not of royal blood. She even asks to be called milady instead with Assassin only for him to call her Princess Milady due to their cultural differences.
  • Kavorka Man: In his Digression, Dorothea expresses surprise that he knows how to treat a lady. Assassin replies that — despite his monstrous appearance — he had a wife when he was alive... several of them.
  • Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Unlike the other playable Servants with Noble Phantasms, Assassin's is not an AoE attack that hits for massive damage, but rather a Super Mode. He channels his snakes and his curse by the Yamata-no-Orochi in a way that they become an organic pseudo-mech suit he can pilot, turning him into a massive Lightning Bruiser capable of quickly steamrolling the opposition as long as the Noble Phantasm gauge lasts.
  • Monstrous Humanoid: Owing the the curse he was afflicted with, Assassin was mutated into a humanoid creature with pale skin, blue makings on his face, red Hellish Pupils, elongated arms he can stretch or turn into snakes, and claws.
  • Mutual Disadvantage: Against Saber due to how their legends interact. Takeru's sword is the very one that was inside of Orochi, from whom Kouga obtained his curse, so this makes him extra vulnerable to Saber's attacks. At the same time, Takeru died in life to the machinations of a snake god, so Kouga drawing upon the power from the snake god Orochi makes him one of the worst foes in the Waxing Moon Ritual Takeru could face in straight fight. As a result, Saber chooses to lie in wait in spirit form and let Iori and Dorothea weaken Assassin and break through his defenses before Takeru can appear and wipe him out with one good blast of their Noble Phantasm.
  • Nigh-Invulnerability: It's noted that in his Super Mode he's covered in snake-god scales, which Saber notes from personal experience can only be damaged by weapons or attacks imbued with divine energy.
  • Not Brainwashed: Played with. He's perfectly capable of resisting Tsuchimikado's control spell... but he gives in anyway to test Dorothea's mettle.
  • Orochi: In-life, Assassin was cursed by the god Ibuki, an aspect of the Yamata-no-Orochi, turning him into a humanoid snake and giving him the power to summon snake-demons. His most powerful summon is a manifestation of the Yamata-no-Orochi, though it less resembles a single snake with eight heads than multiple snakes wrapped around each other, with one main head, six smaller heads surrounding it, and the eighth head serving as its tail.
  • Poisonous Person: Assassin's snake summons have venom noted to be extremely potent, and Iori only survives being bitten by one though the intervention of Ototachibana-hime. Assassin himself can use poison in various manners such as releasing it it toxic streams and gases, as well as create a body double of himself out of poison.
  • Polyamory: In one of his Digressions, he informs Dorothea that he had multiple wives in-life when she expresses surprise at him knowing how to treat a lady.
  • Quantity vs. Quality: Assassin's snake summons aren't the strongest in the franchise as even a regular mage like Iori can kill one, but he compensates by making a lot of them.
  • Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: His Twin Vipers technique involves him rapidly striking his targets with both arms at once.
  • Rubber Man: He can stretch his arms into prehensile serpentine appendages, letting him strike at opponents from far away.
  • Semi-Divine: He was cursed by the great god Ibuki, transforming him into a human/snake god hybrid, and was deified at Suwa Shrine—factors that grant him a measure of Divinity.
  • Snakes Are Sinister: He is an Assassin who is able to use snakes to his will.
  • Spanner in the Works: Assassin's decision to give in to Tsuchimikado's control spell and his rampage after the final fight with Samson is the nail that determines whether the story follows the Ray of Light or Flames of Resentment routes. Iori choosing to help Dorothea against Assassin leads to the former, while choosing to go after Tsuchimikado and leave Dorothea to handle herself leads to the latter.
  • Square Race, Round Class: While he does have the ninja aesthetic and skillset, Assassin often fights more like a Caster or a Rider with his gratuitous use of Summon Magic to have his snake familiars fight for him. He very rarely has to engage in direct combat nor does he rely on his Presence Concealment to sneak-attack his foes.
  • Summon Magic: Assassin can summon enormous numbers of snake familiars to do his bidding. Most frequently, they take the form of abnormally large venomous snakes with multiple eyes that attack Iori and Saber in waves. They can also twist around each other into huge, multi-headed hydra-like creatures. Even while not going all-out, Assassin can create enough snakes to occupy three Master-Servant teams working together until Rider enters the fray and takes control of his largest and most powerful familiar, an embodiment of the Yamata-no-Orochi.
  • Technicolor Ninjas: Assassin is a shinobi and legendary founder of the Koga clan, or at least he was in-life, but dresses in all-white and has a very conspicuous appearance. As such, he typically disguises himself as a monk in situations where he must avoid drawing attention to himself.
  • To Serve Man: Right before the route split at the end of Chapter IV, after allowing Tsuchimikado's control spell to affect him, Assassin grabs a woman and is about to feed her to the giant snake summoned by his Noble Phantasm. Dorothea distracts him and goads him into trying to eat her instead.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: He can turn his arms into snakes, which he uses to inflict a would-be fatal wound on Iori if not for the actions of Ototachibana-hime.
  • Weak, but Skilled: In contrast to Chiyome and Ibuki-Douji's Noble Phantasms that summon Orochi to battle, Assassin incarnates the beast through his snakes to create a suit of living armor he can pilot. While not as large or as capable of wide-scale destruction as those of his counterparts, his Noble Phantasm greatly enhances his existing parameters, increases the amounts of familiars he can summon, and shields himself at the same time rather than fight separately while otherwise not improving his inherent defense as it was with the serpent he used in the harbor.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The profile explaining Assassin's Noble Phantasm takes note that the reason his Super Mode has a time limit is entirely a conscious choice, as if he spends too long in it he becomes Drunk on the Dark Side as the power of the Great God Ibuki overwhelms his mind.
  • You Remind Me of X: In Assassin's route of the Keian Command Championship DLC, Musashi will make direct mention after fighting Shousetsu and Rider that Assassin's fighting style reminds her of "a shrine maiden who bore a giant serpent's curse."

    Berserker 

Voiced by: Ayane Sakura

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/notsummeriori.png
The Flower at the Apex of Heaven
"All right, then! You've gained your teacher's support!"

The Berserker Servant of Takao Dayu. Obviously, her True Name is Miyamoto Musashi. Despite sharing the name of his late foster father, this is clearly not the Musashi that Iori knew. For more information on her character, go here.


  • Alleged Lookalikes: Despite the obvious differences between herself and her male counterpart, Iori is able to instantly recognize her as Miyamoto Musashi in spite of flashbacks showing the male Musashi as a very distinctively different man visually. The apparent resemblance is uncanny enough for Iori to probe how his master is alive in the first place before even asking how his adoptive father apparently became a young woman.
  • Alternate Self: She is a female version of Miyamoto Musashi with a similar, yet divergent history.
  • Anti-Mentor: Though Musashi aids Iori's quest and helps him get stronger, she doesn't really try to address his deep-seated personal problems that make him feel out of place in his relatively peaceful era. She recognizes them and the persistent discomfort it causes but just assumes he'll either get over it or find some way to cope. And he does in most routes.
  • Boss Subtitles: She's introduced as "Miyamoto Musashi, the Flower at the Apex of Heaven". During the boss fight against her, she's instead introduced with her full name Shinmen Musashi-no-Kami Fujiwara-no-Harunobu.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Her Madness Enhancement is rank EX: she isn't insane, just much more capricious. Her rational decisions require a Luck check, which is a fairly high stat for her at B. This doesn't limit her competency in the slightest, seemingly making her a bit sillier but not actually changing her actions.
  • But Now I Must Go: Near the end of the game she realizes that she's about to rayshift back to the Fate/Grand Order timeline and doesn't have much time left. Notably, when she Disappears into Light, she doesn't go so with the typical golden light of a dying Servant but rather purple light.
  • Character Name Alias: As an Alternate Self of this timeline's Musashi, Berserker Musashi struggles to be taken seriously at first since she's accused of using the name of a dead man from everyone else's perspective. Never mind how she's a female samurai in a chauvinistic Japan. Dayu gripes about it when Musashi introduces herself, asking if she could possibly have a better alias before Dayu learns about the Waxing Moon Ritual.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Her Establishing Character Moment has her ambushing Iori who for all she knew was a normal human combatant and attempting to kill him with a barrage of cheap hits. This continues as the story goes on with Musashi showing willingness to engage in espionage, hit-and-run tactics, and temporary alliances to win the day.
  • Composite Character: Of her Saber and Berserker versions from Fate/Grand Order. She's the same character as her Saber version, but taking the class and some minor traits from her Berserker summer alt, something the developers confirmed to have been intentional on their part.
  • Crutch Character: As a playable Servant who isn't Saber, she stands out for starting with four Affinity Techniques, one of which is an extremely late-game skill for most other Servants that greatly fills up her Noble Phantasm gauge. She's fast strong, and all her combos cover a lot of ground, letting her dip in and out of the action easily and safely. As a trade-off, she can't be upgraded, and Iori gains a massive catalogue of combat and recovery options that dwarfs hers in amount (if not raw strength) as the game proceeds.
  • Didn't See That Coming: Musashi certainly did not see and could not have prepared for Iori using a combination of the dual-sword Niten Ichiryu style with Kojiro's Tsubame Gaeshi, trapping her in a simultaneous six-strike she had absolutely no ability to dodge, spelling her defeat in their Duel to the Death.
  • Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: A mutual example with Iori, even if she isn't a "doppelganger" in the literal sense (and Iori might not be either, given she answers his query as to whether he is similarly gender-flipped in her reality with a smirk).
  • The Drifter: Musashi is not a traditionally summoned Servant, as she instead drifts between worlds uncontrollably and against her will. This time, she happened to be swept up in the Waxing Moon Ritual and summoned into the game's setting, upon which she saves Dayu from an irate samurai and realizes that she's been contracted to her.
  • Dual Wielding: She's the master of the Niten Ichiryu school of swordsmanship and an alternate counterpart of the man who literally wrote the book on wielding two swords in Japan. Unlike Iori, who will swap to a one-sword style in some of his stances, Musashi will almost always be wielding two swords.
  • Enlightenment Superpowers: Her whole deal. It's why she's called the 'Flower at the Apex of Heaven', why she's important enough to be a powerful Servant despite having virtually zero Older Is Better advantages, and why the Servant system itself has an imperfect hold on her. Long story short, one of the central planks of the real-life Miyamoto Musashi's philosophy (as expounded on in his famous Book of Five Rings) was applying Buddhist principles to swordsmanship, in the belief that martial perfection could help you attain spiritual perfection and eventually the blissful nonexistence of nirvana. Our Musashi is well on the road to enlightenment, giving her swordplay otherworldly power and making it difficult for reality to determine whether she exists or not (which is why she keeps hopping between timelines as a Non-Linear Character).
  • Friendly Enemy: As a Servant in the Waxing Moon Ritual, Musashi is supposed to fight Iori and Saber. But she instead takes Iori under her wing to teach him Niten Ichiryu and continuously helps him out throughout the story. When they finally come to blows, it's not about the Waxing Moon Ritual but about their mutual respect for each other as swordsmen and Musashi wanting to see the fruits of Iori's dedication to the sword.
  • Go Out with a Smile: Musashi's last request before she rayshifts again is one final duel with her student, the game's version of Miyamoto Iori. Their duel ends with Iori defeating her with a two-sword version of Kojiro's Tsubame Gaeshi. Although she gripes about how Iori won, she congratulates him on her victory with a smile while declaring him unparalleled beneath the heavens.
  • Graceful Loser: Iori defeats her as part of her request for a final duel to the death with her before her next rayshift. While she's miffed at her "two-timing apprentice" for using her rival Kojiro's Tsubame Gaeshi against her, she's happy that Iori surpassed her and declares him unparalleled under the heavens with a smile.
  • Gratuitous English: In reference to her FGO Berserker counterpart's shoddy American disguise, she makes heavy use of English loanwords, much to the confusion of the rest of the cast. Since this is the time of sakoku isolationism, Japanese people are barely encountering European people or languages at all, much less the English. Iori assumes she's speaking Dutch, a more reasonable foreign language for the Edo period.
  • Grin of Audacity: Per usual given her love for a fight that, when pushed to her limits, Musashi's first response is always to flash a toothy grin to show her thrill regardless of the situation. Her showing a lot of these during her final fight with Iori shows how far he's come in surpassing his mentor.
  • Hero of Another Story: Despite the Berserker container, this is the same "living singularity" who drifts from world to world and previously worked with Chaldea. A few allusions are made to her continuing quest to master the sword of "zero".
  • Hold the Line: In the "Ray of Light" route, Musashi pulls this in order to distract Rider's Noble Phantasm to both keep it from destroying Dorothea's ship and limiting its ability to help Ushi Gozen in her final fight with Iori and Saber outside of the occasional Finishing Stomp.
  • Honor Before Reason: The main distinction, beyond their genders, between the two Musashis. The historical Musashi is an infamous Combat Pragmatist who was never ashamed about being underhanded to win a duel because Musashi thought, in his own beliefs, that once a challenge is declared, you must be willing to do anything to win if you sought victory, however in their age, the male Musashi would settle down and eventually die a quiet death. On the opposite end, the female Musashi, even if she shares her male counterpart's cunning, is far more traditionally orientated in a fight and willing to play more to a honorable and fair fight over being practical towards victory, however she's also far more of a Blood Knight as a result which puts her on the path of continuously seeking conflict. This is also why, in the end, she ends up dying to Iori in their Duel to the Death, because her lack of pragmatism ends up allowing Iori to fatally wound her with a two-sword version of the Tsubame Gaeshi that she couldn't have seen coming due to intentionally holding back her Servant strength and speed for a more fair fight with her apprentice to test him whereas Male Musashi would have given his all to prevent any such occurrence.
  • Hope Bringer: Seeing a woman so strong and free gives hope to the prostitutes of Yoshiwara that they too may one day be similarly liberated.
  • Irony: Musashi famously defeated Kojiro in their legends, with her "Zero" triumphing over his "Infinity" during the events of "Shimousa". She's done in not by Iori's mastery of Niten Ichiryu but by him blindsiding her with a two-sword version of Tsubame Gaeshi, trapping her with six simultaneous slashes.
  • Leitmotif: Carrying over from Fate/Grand Order, Musashi is associated with the theme "Twin Flashing Blade" in battle. For more emotional moments, she instead has Severing the World ~ Wandering Warrior, a rearrangement of the "Slash the Void ~ Beyond Zero" theme from the Olympus chapter of Fate/Grand Order.
  • Master of All: Though much of what she's capable of can be chalked up to her being a Servant, her kit nonetheless shows the tremendous gap in her and Iori's expertise with Niten Ichiryu. Without needing to formally switch among them, she can use Fire Stance strikes at full health, Void Stance slashes at low health, Wind Stance rushes from across the battlefield without needing to spend magical energy, successive Water Stance radial swings, and her Earth Stance blows are so strong that they can cause foes to stagger just by being near them. Iori would have no hope of defeating Musashi with his developing style alone. So he doesn't.
  • Master Swordsman: Musashi's claim to fame is being the greatest swordsman in the history of Japan. Having perfected her technique and reached "Emptiness" during the events of the Shimousa in Fate/Grand Order, she's nearly unparalleled in a contest of skill between swordsmen. The only one who can claim to be her equal is her rival, Kojiro.
  • Mentor Archetype: Upon meeting Iori, she recognizes him by his use of Niten Ichiryu. Once she learns about what happened to his Musashi, she declares herself his new master despite ostensibly opposing him in the Waxing Moon Ritual, mentoring him and supporting him through the game.
  • Mentor Occupational Hazard: Musashi realizes that she's about to rayshift again and requests one final duel to the death with her new and only student, the game's version of Miyamoto Iori. He triumphs over her, leaving her fatally wounded before her rayshift to her next destination.
  • One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce: One of the vanishingly few Berserkers who doesn't suffer any serious drawbacks from the class' innate Mad Enhancement skill. Normally, it seriously affects a Servant's mental faculties in exchange for granting them otherwise-impossible power, making them unimaginative, uncommunicative, or even actively dangerous to their Master, and the higher the rank of the skill, the more trouble it tends to cause, as Yui and Ushi Gozen can attest. Musashi, meanwhile, has a whopping EX-ranked Mad Enhancement that makes her a bit more of a capricious, impulsive Blood Knight, but never in a way that overwhelms her basic good sense or puts anyone she cares about at serious risk. As a result, she spends the entire Waxing Moon Ritual as a steady, reliable force for good and one of Iori and Saber's most trustworthy allies.
  • Power Born of Madness: Subverted. A Berserker is supposed to have this via their Mad Enhancement skill, but hers is a unique EX-ranked version that's more 'Power Born of Mild Recklessness' and turns her into a headstrong-but-mostly-sane (and very powerful) Boisterous Bruiser.
  • Saved by Canon: As this is the same Musashi as the one in Grand Order, she's inevitably going to survive and be rayshifted away at some point, as so to meet her eventual permanent end in Olympus.
  • Sexy Mentor: While Iori maintains an admirably straight face about the whole situation, the fact remains that the old man who was his master and adoptive father has now been replaced by a beautiful young woman who likes jokingly flirting with him when she's not pushing him to new heights of swordsmanship (and sometimes when she is).
  • Shipper on Deck: It's a bit ambiguous if she sees them explicitly romantically, but Musashi clearly considers Iori and Saber to be "adorable" together even from their first meeting. She also quips that Yui is a cutie and laments she's not a bit younger while teasing her interactions with Iori, and giggles to herself while sporting a huge grin upon seeing Dorothea blush after seeing Iori off.
  • Square Race, Round Class: Despite being officially a Berserker, she's more or less a Saber in her abilities and skills, something her character sheet comments on. Most of her "insanity" is Played for Laughs in that her natural ditziness and headstrong nature seem to be amplified to the point she essentially marches to the beat of her own drum, much to the exasperation of her more level-headed allies.
  • Sword Beam: She can shoot beams of colored energy, one for each of her stances, at her foes as a ranged attack. She can also rush past her foes with a Foe-Tossing Charge as the beams trail behind her.

Rogue Servants

    Rogue Saber 

Voiced by: Tooru Sakurai

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/saberrogue.png
The Bearer of Infinite Faith
"The Evil Ogre draws in the darkness. And it falls to me to drive that darkness away!"

A Saber-class Rogue Servant bound to the leyline of Todoroki; an armor-clad samurai on a singleminded quest to slay a certain evil oni.


  • Ascended Extra: Yoshinaka only appeared in text and was mentioned in Fate/Grand Order. The manga adaptation of Shimousa gave him a cameo before his proper appearance in the game.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Twiceover. He's one of the few Servants who withstands being turned Brainwashed and Crazy by Tsuchimikado's spell due to his relentless hunt for the "evil ogre" diverting him out of range of its initial casting, making for much needed support when he turns up as the ritual turns into a free-for-all against practically everyone while Tsuchimikado is manipulating everyone to service his plans. Later in the "Flames of Resentment" path, when Ushi Gozen proves to still be a Hopeless Boss Fight even with the much better development and teamwork of Iori and Saber, Yoshinaka comes in to even the odds now having finally found the evil ogre which he hunts and aids them in slaying her.
  • Boss Subtitles: He's introduced as "Rogue Saber, the Bearer of Infinite Faith". After his True Name reveal, he's introduced as "Kiso Jirou Minamoto-no-Yoshinaka, the Asahi Shogun".
  • Cool Horse: He can summon his trusty steed, causing some initial confusion over whether he's a Rider or a Saber.
  • Coordinated Clothes: Yoshinaka's armor bears heavy resemblance to Tomoe Gozen's armor.
  • Dead Man Writing: In his final Digression, only available on the final chapter of the "Flames of Resentment" route, it's revealed he left a message behind for Iori that was delivered by Sukenoshin, thanking Iori and Saber for defeating Ushi Gozen and delivering a short speech that while he spent this Ritual hunting down "The Evil Ogre", not all ogres are evil, that evil itself comes in many forms both ogre and man, and that it is their duty to both hunt down such evil yet also never forget to reach out to help others. Saber is quite amused to listen to that little sermon.
  • Detect Evil: From the moment of his summoning, he immediately is able to sense the presence of a terrible being called "The Evil Ogre" and seeks to bring it down before it's too late. Given said individual is none other than the mad Ushi Gozen, he's right on the money.
  • Disappears into Light: On the "Flames of Resentment" route, Yoshinaka fades away after the battle with Ushi Gozen because he spent too long away from the leyline he's bound to on top of using up too much power countering her. As revealed in his final Digression, however, he did have enough time to compose a letter to be delivered to Iori though.
  • Fighting from the Inside: On "Flames of Resentment", Tsuchimikado manages to take control of him with his spell and sets him on Iori and Saber, but Yoshinaka manages to fight the control enough that the two are able to fight him long enough to cause a distraction (namely Saber snapping off part of Yoshinaka's sword to fly off and impale Tsuchimikado) that breaks the control fully. His profile notes he possesses Independent Action Rank EX, which explains his high resistance.
  • Historical Hero Upgrade: The way he is portrayed here gives him far better credit than his actual record in Real Life during the Genpei War. From history Here, much like in Tomoe's recollections in Fate/Grand Order, he was a straightforward hero betrayed by his superior/clansmen.
  • The Lost Lenore: Yoshinaka himself was this to his wife Tomoe after Yoritomo had him disposed of out of jealousy of his skills. It weighs on him greatly enough that in his side story, he explicitly says that he has absolutely no reason to fight in the Waxing Moon Ritual (beyond his singleminded mission to stop the "evil ogre" he's hunting) because there's nothing it could give him beyond another moment more with her, which he wouldn't dare act on given the faults of the ritual.
  • Out of Focus: In the "Ray of Light" path, Rogue Saber all but disappears in Chapter IV and V as Ushi Gozen is slain by Iori and Takeru without his assistance. Considering he was last seen just before the route split, was intending to confront Tsuchimikado in order to get at Ushi Gozen, and makes mention if Iori and Saber do go to confront Tsuchimikado on "Flames of Resentment" that he was starting to run on fumes from all the fighting and exertion, it's even possible that he was Killed Offscreen while Iori and Saber were fighting Assassin.
  • The Paladin: He mostly takes this role. Armored in white, wielding The Power of the Sun and religious might, out to slay demons and defend the helpless. Though he's a bit more aggressive than most.
  • Polyamory: He had two wives: Lady Yamabuki and Lady Fuyuhime, and Tomoe was his concubine. Yamabuki and Fuyuhime had a rivalry with each other, but surprising both of them got along quite well with Tomoe since she could serve as half of a Battle Couple with Yoshinaka and keep him safe to come back to them all.
  • The Power of the Sun: The flames he unleashes are those of the sun, and he can gain power from sunlight as shown by his NP recharge skill. It is his second Noble Phantasm, "On Arorikya Sowaka", which allows this. A point is made in the profile on this NP that despite being called the "Shogun of the Rising Sun", Yoshinaka never possessed a power like this while alive, implying it became attached to his legend as a Servant.
  • Rage Helm: He wears his samurai helmet and mask so much the number of times he actually removes it can be counted on one hand, which he states is because whenever he wears it he allows his battle lust to take control.
  • Secretly Selfish: The big reason he's so obsessed with hunting down the "evil ogre" is because his own wife Tomoe is a good ogre/oni, and thus he hates those evil monsters since they're an insult to his beloved wife's nature by their mere existence.
  • Spin Attack: His Heavy 4 attack allows him to launch his entire body through the air spinning at the target with sword drawn. Iori gets this technique called "Assail the Darkness" from him after completing his Digression.
  • Super-Persistent Predator: To call him simply single-minded in his pursuit of a certain "evil ogre" is putting it mildly, as all Rogue Saber ever emphasizes repeatedly is his pursuit of his nemesis, fighting anyone who he deems is allied with said nemesis, and abandons all other wants or needs until he puts an end to their evil. Which is justified immensely by the fact that the "evil ogre" in question is Ushi Gozen, who is powerful enough to destroy much of Edo (if not much of Japan) on her own thanks to her divinity if she got control of the leylines facilitating the ritual, so Yoshinaka doesn't really get to lie back and relax as long as Ushi Gozen is alive.
  • Unknown Rival: To Rider, the whole reason for Yoshinaka being here is to put down Ushi Gozen before she is able to exact terrible destruction upon the land. Ushi Gozen, on the other hand, sees Yoshinaka as another pest in her way and has no personal feelings towards them despite being a fellow Minamoto, simply referring to him dismissively as "the Genji" during the final clash.

    Rogue Archer 

Voiced by: Nobunaga Shimazaki

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/arjuna_9.png
The Man of Rectitude
"Show me how deeply that blade thirsts for blood!"

An Archer-class Rogue Servant bound to the leyline of Kanagawa. His True Name is Arjuna, an Archer class Servant from the Hindu epic Mahabharata who debuted in Fate/Grand Order. For more information on him, see here.


  • Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed since Arjuna in his debut game is generally a nice person, but due to his rival Karna being present in Grand Order, many of Arjuna's worst traits are brought out. Here, with Karna not present, Arjuna's nobler and kinder aspects are shown off more, and he is more cordial and friendly than he is often in Grand Order.
  • Blood Knight: As a Kshatriya warrior, Arjuna enjoys a good fight, particularly an honorable one where he can cut loose without worrying about the moral consequences. His digression has him ask Iori for a fight for no reason other than his desire to clash with him again after Tsuchimikado's mind control is removed. Arjuna only gets more excited the closer he gets to defeat and sees the same thirst for blood in Iori.
  • Boss Subtitles: Before he's formally introduced as Rogue Archer, he's introduced as "Silent Sniper". After that, he's introduced as "Rogue Archer, the Man of Rectitude".
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: Arjuna's attacks focus around several attacks at once, that while not as powerful on their own, hit several times quickly, letting him quickly lock down his target.
  • Excellent Judge of Character: In his digression, Arjuna challenges Iori to a fight after seeing how Iori's swordsmanship has blossomed like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. He can tell that he'll get along with Iori just fine and calls him his Only Friend in Japan. In his boss fight, he also notes that Iori thirsts for blood as much as he does, another point of commonality between them.
  • Fantastic Nuke: His most powerful Noble Phantasm, Pashupata: Raised Hand of the Destruction God, invokes a fragment of Shiva's power to destroy the target and everything around them. Despite its massive area of effect and potential for collateral damage, it's an "Anti-Unit" Noble Phantasm for its ability to deliver instant death and sending the victim to nirvana.
  • Improbable Use of a Weapon: One of his melee attacks has him send the ends of his bow alight before swinging it at nearby enemies.
  • Only Friend: As the only Indian Servant participating in the ritual, the only person Arjuna befriends is Iori in their Digressions together. Arjuna cites this as a reason to bequeath one of his techniques to Iori and fighting at Iori's side when called upon after Arjuna's Digression.
  • Playing with Fire: Arjuna's bow is a gift from Agni, the Hindu god of fire, allowing Arjuna to manipulate fire, such as shooting waves of fiery energy from his bow in place of arrows when needed. He can teach one of these attacks to Iori as "Agni's Crashing Wave" following Arjuna's digression, allowing Iori to send out a flaming Sword Beam with a large area of effect.
  • Rain of Arrows: One of his attacks has him fire a single arrow into the sky that comes down as a rain of arrows in an area in front of him.
  • Worf Had the Flu: His Rogue Servant Saint Graph is much weaker than the one he'd have as a regular Servant. Otherwise he'd be an overwhelmingly powerful presence in the war as a Person of Mass Destruction armed with multiple divine weapons.

    Rogue Lancer 

Voiced by: Nobutoshi Canna

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fsrlancer.png
The Vigorous Warrior
"Who am I? Good question. I guess I'm the watchdog of this place."

A Lancer-class Rogue Servant bound to the leyline of Zozo-ji. His True Name is Cu Chulainn, a Lancer class Servant from Irish Mythology that debuted in the original Fate/stay night visual novel. For more information on him, see here.


  • Ascended Meme: In this game he runs the same way he did during his fight with True Assassin in the Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel movies, which became a meme because of how silly it looked (though it's actually proper form).
  • Blade Spam: Cu can rapidly thrust his spear so fast it appears as multiple red spears striking his target. Iori gets this technique, called "Gorge and Skewer", after completing Cu's Digression, adapted to thrust both of his katana at high speeds.
  • Blood Knight: As always. In fact, he allies with Iori and Saber on the basis of wanting to spar with them more often.
  • Boss Subtitles: Before being officially introduced as Rogue Lancer, he's introduced as "Snarling Hound". Afterwards, he's introduced as "Rogue Lancer, the Vigorous Warrior".
  • Hate at First Sight: When Lancer runs into the Boss (aka Gilgamesh, who's incarnated as a Ruler this time around), he notes he gets the feeling he recognizes him from somewhere and immediately loathes him—warning Iori that the Boss is extremely dangerous and not to be trusted. Cu's character profile notes that this shouldn't even be possible, since with very few exceptions Servants' memories are typically reset each time they incarnate.
  • Improvised Weapon: In his boss fights, he can stab his spear into the ground and then snap it back up to launch hard lumps of earth and rock.
  • Mythology Gag: The Hound of Culann is once again summoned far from home in a Japanese Holy Grail War riddled with intrigue. Gilgamesh, one of his old enemies from it, is also present.
  • Super-Speed: Lancer's speed is brought up at multiple points, often in admiration for how swiftly he moves. In his first Digression, it quickly becomes a gag at how fast he can run and leave Iori and Saber in the dust, as well as leaving befuddled citizens wondering if they didn't hallucinate with how he passed them.

    Rogue Rider 

Voiced by: Chiwa Saitō

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fsraria.png
"Let's do lots of fun things together and learn all about each other!"

A Rider-class Rogue Servant bound to the leyline of Ueno. Her True Name is Tamamo Aria, one of Tamamo-no-Mae's split-off tails from Fate/Extra CCC. A member of the Tamamo Nine, described as deep and mysterious yet strange, she is a Rider. It is said that she prefers riding on people rather than things.


  • Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: When Aria declares she wants to live with Iori, it's pointed out that she can't survive for long away from the leyline she's bound to. Aria flirtatiously says that Iori can just give her some of his magical energy, and is disappointed when this is shot down. Saber and Red waste no time in teasing Iori over Aria's crush on him.
  • Asian Fox Spirit: Like the other members of the Tamamo Nine, she's an offshoot of an offshoot of a solar goddess that manifested as a nine-tailed kitsune, though she only has one tail as a result. Her mount is a giant fox with a leaf on its head, but she doesn't actually ride it.
  • Better as Friends: When Saber and Red tease Iori about Aria's crush on him, Iori says he's in no position to be in a relationship. Aria mulls it over and asks if they can be friends instead. Iori agrees to this, but he gets an ominous feeling.
  • BFS: She has a long nihonto strapped horizontally to her back. It is more of an Ornamental Weapon during the game's story. As shown in an animated short, it's so long (as well as her being so short) that she can't actually reach it and she'll just make herself dizzy trying to grab it.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Downplayed. While she's definitely sweet and genuinely kind, she's still a fragment of Tamamo. In her last Digression mission after seeing Iori's flustered expression, she says with a mischievous look that she wants to see his "crying face" next, showing she has a somewhat sadistic side to her as well.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: While there are hints there's some Obfuscating Stupidity at play, Aria's default dopey expression, her slow and breathy voice, and rather odd thought processes (sitting around outside and citing a saying for her reasoning, only to be surprised when Iori tells her that saying isn't quite what she thinks it means) show she's definitely not all there, though she's certainly of a far more serene nature than her maniac counterpart Tamamo Cat. This fits with how she's referred to as "the strange one" in EXTRA.
  • Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Distinguished among the Tamamo Nine by her yellow kimono and hair bow (the original Tamamo wears blue and Tamamo Cat wears red).
  • The Dreaded: Possibly. Although it doesn't crop up in Samurai Remnant, in Fate/Grand Order Saber mentions Aria to Tamamo and Tamamo Cat in her My Room dialogue and is suddenly startled when said Tamamos are suddenly alarmed and get up in their face about where they met Aria, implying that among the Tamamo Nine, she's one of the more "troublesome" incarnations.
  • Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Her initial appearance in Fate/Extra CCC had her the same height as the rest of the Tamamo Nine, with a hairstyle resembling a Hime Cut with twin braids at the front, wearing a yellow kimono and brown hair bow, and without a sword. Meanwhile, her prototype design in Fate/Extra Material gave her a brown kimono and a hairstyle that more closely resembled her current one, but was otherwise identical to her appearance in Fate/Extra CCC.
  • I Love You Because I Can't Control You: In her final Digression mission, Tamamo Aria suddenly displays a possessive side and claims she originally wanted Iori's "beautiful heart" for herself, much to Iori's worry. However, Tamamo Aria then says that she realized Iori's heart is "like the moon" and "can't be dyed", meaning she can't truly make Iori's hers. This does little to deter her feelings for him, and in fact makes her fall in love even more.
  • Informed Ability: She wears a sword as long as she is tall on her person, which makes her the first Tamamo in the series to be so brazenly armed, but at no point does she actually draw it and instead simply uses her magecraft, to the point it seems more like a prop. The New Year 2024 stream humorously suggests that she doesn't use it because it's too long for her to draw.
  • Leitmotif: Her theme song is "By Your Side", a bouncy rearrangement of Tamamo's theme from Fate/EXTRA, "Caster, An Extra Life with Anyone She Wants". It features the use of Japanese instruments instead of the techno sounds of the original, reflecting the game being set in Japan.
  • Recurring Element: Takes the place of her "regular" Caster counterpart, who was involved in a different story centered around the Miyamoto Musashi legacy. And like her fellow Alter Ego Kazuradrop, she is the youngest looking of her fellow Alter Egos and is coded the color yellow.
  • Something for Everyone: On a psychological level, but not a sensory one. Her profile notes that she reflects whatever opinions others have of her: if someone thinks she's innocent, then she'll be as pure as possible, and if they don't trust her, she'll behave suspiciously.
  • Square Race, Round Class: While she does have a mount—a large, white, sleepy fox—it's noted that "riding", for her, means manipulating bystanders into entertaining her bizarre flights of fancy. The other hallmark of the class, powerful Noble Phantasms, doesn't apply either, as she apparently has no Noble Phantasm at all, not even a hidden one. She stays out of battle entirely and only uses support magecraft, much more like a Caster.
  • Support Party Member: Unlike the other Rogue Servants, Tamamo Aria doesn't join Iori and Saber in battle directly. Instead, adding her to the party passively boosts Iori's stats, and her Affinity Technique, Malediction, Bright Sunshine charms nearby enemies and buffs Iori's stats further when cast. This holds true when encountered as an enemy. When the Rogue Servants become Brainwashed and Crazy and attack Iori and Saber, Tamamo Aria can be seen just outside the battlefield, supplying buffs while the others (such as Rogue Archer or Rogue Lancer on different occasions) do the fighting.
  • Through His Stomach: Tamamo Aria cooks Iori a special meal after getting some practice and tutoring from Kaya in the hopes of seeing him make a face she hasn't seen before.
  • Token Mini-Moe: Unlike the other revealed members of the Tamamo Nine, Aria has the appearance of a girl even younger than Kaya—her youthful appearance being speculated to be one reason why they became such fast friends—and is also the smallest and youngest-looking of the Servants. She completely lacks any combat ability, using her magecraft to buff her allies. To Iori's indignation, Saber and the Crimson Codex waste no time in teasing him about Aria's crush on account of her apparent age.

    Rogue Caster 

Voiced by: Himika Akaneya

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/characters_image_14_01.png
"Sorry to keep you waiting, my piglets-to-be! Were you lonely without your owner? I bet you were!"

A Caster-class Rogue Servant bound to the leyline of Koishikawa. Her True Name is Circe, the queen witch of Aeaea, daughter of Helios, and Medea's senior as a disciple of the goddess Hecate. She debuted in Fate/Grand Order. For more information on her character, go here.


  • The Archmage: As a self-proclaimed "queen witch" and a magus from the Age of Gods taught by Hecate, the Greek goddess of witchcraft, Circe's skills are unparalleled among all the magi present in the story. After learning about Yasuhiro's plan to drive the Rogue Servants berserk and curing Iori of his Forced Transformation, she begins grousing at length about the inefficiency of the Waxing Moon Ritual, calling it sloppy compared to the Holy Grail War ritual it was based on.
  • Art Evolution: Has additional alterations to her design besides the obvious ones made to bring her in line with the aesethic of Samurai Remnant. Her larger eyes and more rounded ears compared to those of her Fate/Grand Order appearance give her a deceptively more youthful and deceptively innocent air.
  • Beam Spam: Like her niece Medea, Circe's most powerful attack spells involve conjuring Instant Runes that shoot laser beams at her foes. She can conjure what amounts to a rotating barrel to fire these in rapid succession in a straight line before her.
  • Character Select Forcing: Downplayed. For a good chunk of the midgame, when all the other Rogue Servants are Brainwashed and Crazy, Circe is the only Rogue Servant you can call upon. You're not required to bring her, but there are a number of fights where Saber is unavailable and having a Servant around would make things much easier.
  • Charm Person: She charms Iori into eating some of her food.
  • Dump Stat: Aside from Tamamo Aria, Circe has the lowest Attack of any playable character. Given that most of her combos are magic-based, she doesn't need much Attack to begin with.
  • Forced Transformation: As per usual, Circe's favorite hobby is turning trespassers into piglets for her own entertainment. Iori initially doesn't fall for her Schmuck Bait, so she brainwashes him into being unable to refuse it. Her Digression shows that this spell even works on non-humans, as she accidentally gives the Crimson Codex pig-like features while trying to transform Iori. When called upon as an ally, she can turn enemies into piglets for a brief time, disabling their ability to attack and leaving them vulnerable to being beaten down.
  • Hates Being Alone: Owing to her legend, Circe despises loneliness. When Iori and Saber visit her in a Digression mission, they manage to get her to help them by pretending to leave her alone. One of her conditions for agreeing to help Iori is that he visits her every now and then.
  • Insane Troll Logic: After hijacking the description for Piglet Sakura Mochi, Circe declares that "all paths lead to kykeon, which means all sweets are kykeon as well."
  • Invisibility: One of her spells allowed her to hide from even Saber's honed senses, something that immediately pegs her as a Servant to Saber.
  • Jack of All Trades: Aside from her low Attack and HP, Circe's attributes are excellent across the board, and her kit boasts a little bit of everything a Master could ask for. Circe can buff herself or debuff her enemies, her combos are excellent at crowd control and damage, her Heavy Attack 4 inflicts heavy Shell Gauge damage without using Affinity Gauge, and her Affinity Techniques can stun enemies, poison them, or knock them away to reposition herself.
  • Leitmotif: "The Witch and her Happy Piglets". It plays during the missions whereshe is present and when Iori is turned into a pig.
  • Magic Staff: She wields a magic staff in combat both for casting spells and for whacking nearby enemies.
  • Medium Awareness: When enough of her Digressions have been completed, Circe begins hijacking her Logbook entry (and a handful of related entries), narrating her backstory in first person, excising the more unsavory details, extolling the virtues of kykeon, and offering Iori a "job" as her piglet.
  • No-Sell: Circe is one of the only Rogue Servants to escape being driven mad and put under Yasuhiro's control, likely due to a combination of her divinity and her skill at magecraft. She notices a disruption in the leylines but is otherwise completely unaware of what happened until Saber informs her.
  • Physical God: She's the daughter of Helios, the titan of the sun, making her a minor goddess in her own right. Saber compares her to the kami of Yamato, but notes that she's clearly a Divine Spirit from outside the country given her garb and presence. Circe is impressed that Saber could see this just by looking at her.
  • Schmuck Bait: When Iori and Saber walk into her territory, the first thing Circe does is offer them a welcome feast. Saber is intrigued, but Iori repeatedly warns them not to take the bait. But Iori is the one who falls for it after she presents him with a bowl of kykeon along with what's implied to be a bit of mental suggestion magecraft, turning him into a pig.
  • Squishy Wizard: Zigzagged. Though her HP is the worst of all the playable Servants, Circe's Defense is actually excellent, and is second only to Rogue Berserker. note 
  • Stripperiffic: Circe's clothes amount to a very short skirt and a top that leaves her back and most of her front exposed, with only the clasp just below her chest keeping her from a wardrobe malfunction.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Like her niece Medea, she is a powerful Greek sorceress who gets embroiled with a Holy Grail War set in Japan.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Circe loves kykeon, which in her myth of origin was what she used to turn her victims into pigs and is depicted in the game as a type of porridge made from moly, a plant native to Greece that her presence causes to sprout in her territory. Once her bond is leveled up, she hijacks the descriptions to go on tangents about how awesome and nutritious it is.
  • The Unfought: While she does forcibly turn Iori into a pig due to acting under the impression that he came to invade her territory, Saber manages to talk her down from a fight and convince her to help restore Iori to normal.
  • Winged Humanoid: Circe sports a pair of avian wings and tail feathers on her back, which along with her pointy ears are clues that she clearly isn't a Servant of human origin.
  • You Remind Me of X: Meeting Saber and seeing the sincere look in their eyes reminds Circe of Odysseus. She's disgusted by this, but notes that she can tell Saber isn't lying about wanting to become allies.

    Rogue Assassin 

Voiced by: Kunihiko Yasui

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The Veteran Fist Fighter/Li Shuwen of No Second Strike
"A warrior kills — it's our nature. Some goals cannot be reached without accepting that."

An Assassin-class Rogue Servant bound to the leyline of Kanda. His True Name is Li Shuwen, legendary Bajiquan master, who first debuted in this incarnation in Fate/Grand Order. For more information on his character, go here.


  • Bare-Fisted Monk: Rather than rely on stealth-based tactics, Li Shuwen is perfectly confident in his skill at bajiquan to kill his foes with his bare hands. His incredible skill with the Chinese martial art lets him fight Saber and Iori despite the Assassin class container being unsuited for direct combat.
  • Blood Knight: Li Shuwen relishes combat, claiming that he attacked Iori and Saber simply for the sake of it while asking them to relax with a lonely old man. After this encounter, he invites them to have a Duel to the Death with him whenever they feel like it.
  • Boss Subtitles: He's introduced as "Rogue Assassin, the Veteran Fist Fighter". After his True Name reveal, he's introduced as "Li Shuwen of No Second Strike".
  • Coat Cape: He wears a coat with a massive furred collar across his shoulders like a cape.
  • Combat Pragmatist: He first tries to kill Iori by ambushing him, only to have his attack repelled by Saber in a nick of time.
  • Cool Old Guy: Li Shuwen has no interest in Shousetsu's wish for a more equal and fair world, but feels a need to help her because of her innocent, earnest desire to help others. In his words, it's the duty of old men like him to help needy children. He's also perfectly friendly with Iori and Saber and has no ill will toward them, only fighting them because of his alliance with Shousetsu. During Shousetsu and Rider's route in the Keian Command Championship DLC, he even chooses to show up and watch them from the stands as a supporter, much to Shousetsu's personal embarrassment.
  • 11th-Hour Ranger: On "Ray of Light", he is the last recruitable Rogue Servant unlocked at the beginning of the final chapter, as he chooses to cast his lot in with Iori and Saber due to Shousetsu being directly allied with them on this route.
  • The Glasses Come Off: His eyes are always hidden behind his shades until he uses his Noble Phantasm, upon which he takes them off as he prepares to take his foe's life.
  • Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: Enforced. While attacking an opponent from behind is usually a free hit in the game, Li Shuwen can counterattack such a move nigh-instantly, forcing a player to riposte, block, or dodge and harass honestly when facing him.
  • Outside-Context Problem: In this game he's a Servant from the future, being born about 200 years after Samurai Remnant is set. As a result nobody has any context for his fighting style or even his clothing, as his profile on the website points out. He gives away his True Name almost casually, worrying Iori that he thinks he's too strong for it to matter, when in actuality it's just that it wouldn't ring a bell to anyone. Had he been an active participant with a proper Master, rather than just Shousetsu's aloof associate, his unknowable techniques and his knowledge of future warfare would've made him one of the nastiest foes in the ritual.
  • Paradox Person: Maybe, depending on how the Waxing Moon Ritual works; he is a Heroic Spirit summoned to an era over 200 years before he was born.note 
  • Signature Laugh: As usual, his is 'kaka', a brief, sharp expression of amusement that fits with his dry and precise but quietly cheerful personality.
  • Shockwave Stomp: He can stomp the ground hard enough to shatter the earth and send Iori flying through the air if he's too close to the shockwave.
  • Touch of Death: Li Shuwen's Noble Phantasm is No Second Strike: Wu Er Da. It represents the pinnacle of Li Shuwen's mastery of bajiquan and the saying, "Li Shuwen needs no second strike." By projecting his chi through his fists, Li Shuwen can instantly scramble the functions of his victim's internal organs, giving them a heart attack to make them drop dead.
  • Younger Than They Look: Although he's summoned as an old man, Li Shuwen is the youngest of the Servants summoned by the Waxing Moon Ritual by far, having been born two hundred years after the events of the story.

    Rogue Berserker 

Voiced by: Daisuke Endou

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The Unshakable Bulwark
"▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!"

A large, muscular Berserker-class Rogue Servant who is working with Takao Dayu, and is—in-theory—bound to the leyline of Yoshiwara.


  • Achilles' Heel: His hair, as a Nazirite he was forbidden to cut his hair, drink wine or touch a corpse, in exchange he was given extraordinary strength. But he confided this weakness to his lover Delilah who betrayed him and sold him off to the Philistines. The heroes of course utilize this weakness after being informed by Dorothea and he loses his strength after Takao cuts his hair, allowing Saber to finish him.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Unlike Heracles, Spartacus, Lancelot, or Lu Bu, Rogue Berserker is genuinely nigh-invulnerable with strength to match, and his humongous reservoirs of stamina running low being the only way to chase him off. But as a Servant in a Holy Grail War, he would be extremely difficult to win with as his legend is so famous that, unless everyone in that conflict has been completely sheltered from Abrahamic culture (which most of the cast save for Dorothea is), it's incredibly obvious that he's Samson, and that his weakness is hard to miss though according to the NP profile it does have some nuance in that it has to be a woman who cuts his hair for the De-power to occur. Once exploited, he's way easier to defeat, as attacks that would usually bounce off of him will run him through. Additionally, using his Noble Phantasm attack briefly makes him exhausted and sluggish, allowing anyone who survives it further opportunities to cut off his hair.
  • Barbarian Long Hair: He's a massive, rampaging brawler who fights with his overwhelming melee strength, and his hair is so long that... well, let's just say that's not actually a cape on his back. It's also a very blatant hint to his identity, to the point that Dorothea, who is more familiar with non-Japanese legends than the rest of the cast, instantly guesses his True Name upon meeting him.
  • Battle Aura: When he really cuts loose in combat, Rogue Berserker becomes engulfed in a yellow-green aura of energy.
  • Berserk Button: As a champion of God and the one who bears the epithet of Mighty Judge, he has a low tolerance for sinfulness in all its forms and degrees despite being peaceful by nature. Unfortunately for Rogue Berserker, he was summoned in Yoshiwara of all places, and everyone participating in the Waxing Moon Ritual has some type of abhorrent wickedness in their pasts or beneath the surface. Including Iori.
  • Berserker Tears: When he's about to use his Noble Phantasm "Delilah", tears freely stream down Rogue Berserker's face even as he's yelling and charging up his mana to unleash it all in one massive blow.
  • Black Eyes of Crazy: When in battle, Rogue Berserker loses himself to his Mad Enhancement, his sclerae turning black with yellow irises as his rage overtakes him and he prepares to turn his enemies into bloody smears.
  • Blessing: Berserker's monstrous power can be tied to his pact with the omnipotent Abrahamic God, who granted him extraordinary strength if he abstained from cutting his hair, eating unclean foods, and drinking alcohol. Due to the other characters not being familiar with Christianity, Dorothea describes the strength of his blessing as being equal to receiving the favor of all of the Japanese gods and Buddhas at once. It's so powerful it's actually classified as an EX Rank Noble Phantasm: "Samson Agonistes: I Am the Champion of Contrition".
  • Blood Knight: While it usually doesn't show past his rage and bellowing, when he fights Musashi near the end of Chapter IV he's shown grinning in the cutscene as they clash, if a bit less intensely than Musashi is. Of course, this ends up distracting Samson so much he doesn't realize Dayu is about to cut off his hair from behind until it's too late.
  • Boss Subtitles: He's referred to as "The Guardian of Yoshiwara" when Saber faces him in the aforementioned district. He's then introduced as "Rogue Berserker, the Unshakable Bulwark". After Dorothea reveals his identity, his title for the final fight with him is "Samson, the Mighty Judge". Curiously enough, this last title is used for his Dual Boss fight alongside Musashi despite still being called "Rogue Berserker" in the Keian Command Championship DLC before his identity reveal, though in fairness the ones who fight them in this circumstance happen to be Assassin and Dorothea, who identifies him.
  • Call-Back: Has green hair like David, a fellow Jewish Servant and agent of God.
  • Climax Boss: The final fight with him in-story is directly before the Point of No Return where Iori must make the decision that determines whether the story follows the "Ray of Light" or "Flames of Resentment" routes.
  • Dying as Yourself: While mind-controlled by Tsuchimikado to attack the protagonists, he regains his sanity after Dayu cuts off his hair and Saber mortally wounds him.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: Berserker is clearly horrified when Dayu cuts his hair in a reenactment of Delilah doing so in his past life. He gets flashbacks to his former love and sees her in Dayu along with traumatic memories of being Made a Slave. He's so distracted that he has no chance to defend himself from Saber running him through from behind.
  • Forgiveness: Berserker's wish for the Waxing Moon is to be able to forgive Delilah for betraying him to the Phillistines. In truth, he just wishes to have someone to express these feelings to. Dayu's resemblance to Delilah and subsequent betrayal of him for the sake of Iori, Saber, and Musashi gives him traumatic flashbacks to his painful romance. But in his last moments, he's able to thank Dayu for freeing him from Tsuchimikado's control and fulfill his wish of forgiving her.
  • Gentle Giant: When not in battle, Berserker is surprisingly gentle, helping the people of Yoshiwara with chores like carrying bags of rice at Dayu's behest. He also carries an umbrella to keep falling petals and rain off of her. Dayu describes him as forgiving, protective, and kinder than any man she's met. But he can go from being a quiet protector to a Screaming Warrior at Dayu's command.
  • Go Out with a Smile: Dayu is heartbroken when she cuts his hair for the sake of removing his power and allowing Saber to kill him. But rather than admonish her, Samson raises his arm as if to shield her from the rain with an umbrella. He then thanks her for freeing him and fades away with a smile on his face.
  • Green and Mean: Green-haired and equally vicious against anyone Takao Dayu appears to deem as an enemy.
  • Hope Spot: Seems to shrug off Tsuchimikado's brainwashing, but doesn't last.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Rogue Berserker towers over Dayu, to the point that one of his arms is as long as Dayu is tall. He is also her loyal protector, with him becoming known as the Guardian of Yoshiwara for being constantly at her side.
  • I Cannot Self-Terminate: After his death, the Digression "Samson Agonistes" reveals that after Tsuchimikado originally took control of the Rogue Servants and Samson regained his senses, he gave Dayu back the wakizashi she gave him (the same one Iori picks up after Samson's first Digression and eventually gives back to him). Dayu speculates he knew there was a good chance he would end up controlled again and wanted her to cut his hair if it came to that.
  • Interface Spoiler: One of his Affinity Techniques is called Leveler of Temples. Guess what Samson - a long-haired nigh-unstoppable powerhouse once bound by chains - is best known for.
  • Made a Slave: Berserker's True Name is Samson, the legendary hero from the Book of Judges. After being betrayed by his wife Delilah, he was bound in chains and given to the Phillistines as a slave. His gauntlets also have chains attached and he's clearly enraged to be bound in chains by Archer's Noble Phantasm.
  • Mighty Glacier: His official stat sheet gives him impeccable Strength and Endurance at A+ each. But his Agility is a paltry E. His raw strength is without equal among the Servants present in the Waxing Moon Ritual and he's tough enough to withstand Noble Phantasms and continue to fight. But Archer is able to outpace him fairly easily even when Berserker is running at full speed. This is shown well in his boss fights, as he hits hard and his Shell Gauge is one of the hardest to pierce through on top of his high health, but his attacks are slow enough they're some of the easiest to dodge and get a Riposte off on to stun him and chip away at his Shell Gauge.
  • Mundane Utility: Rogue Berserker's boundless strength and stamina make him a formidable opponent. But while working for Dayu, she has him help with chores and groceries for the locals by using his strength to carry stuff around. One civilian remarks that she saw him carrying ten bags of rice at once.
  • Muscles Are Meaningful: Rogue Berserker is enormous, easily twice Saber's height, with huge muscles that could rival the likes of Heracles. He's also the most physically powerful Servant in the war, with even Archer and Musashi failing to do more than force him to retreat.
  • The Needless: Berserker's Noble Phantasm, Samson Agonistes, is responsible for his seemingly limitless strength, endurance, and stamina. He's able to continue fighting even after taking a Noble Phantasm head-on.
  • No-Sell: In his and Musashi's route through the Keian Command Championship, Rogue Berserker is completely unfazed by Ibuki-Douji's crushing display of power.
  • Removed Achilles' Heel: The Rogue Servants are tied to the leylines they were summoned to as anchors. Straying too far from them for too long will gradually weaken them. In addition, their Spirit Origins are significantly weaker than a traditionally summoned Servant, making them perform well below than they should. Rogue Berserker does not have these issues, as his Noble Phantasm grants him limitless stamina on its own, letting him fight at full strength no matter what.
  • Screaming Warrior: Much like the classic Berserkers, this one is rendered The Speechless.
  • Shout-Out: Many parts of his design, such as the green hair, golden ornaments, Battle Aura, and him being quiet outside of battle but a Screaming Warrior once he gets going, are very reminiscent of the Z incarnation of Broly.
  • Shrinking Violet: Despite his stature, Berserker is quite shy when it comes to expressing himself. Complications from his Mad Enhancement aside, Musashi has to do a lot of coaxing to get him to thank Iori for helping him out in his Digression quests. All the while, Berserker is making frustrated faces as he can't come up the words, settling for handing Iori a rare Spirit Devourer before turning around and leaving.
  • Suddenly Speaking: He regains the ability to speak after he is killed by Saber, using his last words to thank Takao for stopping his rampage.
  • Super-Toughness: Rogue Berserker is incredibly tough, withstanding repeated assaults from multiple Servants and barely slowing down. Even Archer's Noble Phantasm fails to do more than make Berserker retreat.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: Rogue Berserker is a traditional example of a Berserker: trading reason and skill for raw power. Rogue Berserker is incredibly powerful, to the point that he can take on multiple Servants at once. But his attacks are largely instinctual and lack rhyme or reason, letting others plan around him once they learn his True Name. That said, his skills as a warrior still shine through in places, as he instinctually grabs a piece of rubble to hurl it at a fleeing Archer and is always mindful to prevent his foes from cutting his hair.
  • Wrestler in All of Us: He incorporates a few wrestling moves into his otherwise simple fighting style, such as a power bomb, a suplex and a flying chokeslam. In his initial fight, these are often his most dangerous moves and can One-Hit Kill at higher difficulties.
  • You Remind Me of X: Rogue Berserker is clearly fond of Takao Dayu for one reason or another. It's not entirely clear what it is that he likes about her until his final battle, where flashbacks reveal that she has a striking resemblance to his former love, Delilah, who betrayed him and sold him out to the Phillistines. It's clear that Dayu realizes this on some level when Dorothea explains Samson's identity and past, particularly the betrayal by his lover part.

    Boss 

Voiced by: Tomokazu Seki

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The Supreme King
"I am the true and rightful king of all creation! And on top of that, I currently work as a textile wholesaler."

The golden owner of the Babyloni-ya textile shop in Asakusa, heavily resembling a certain King of Heroes. And it turns out to be more than a resemblance — he is indeed Gilgamesh, the God-King of Babylonia.


  • Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed. Even as a Ruler-class Servant, Gilgamesh is as self-centered and haughty as ever and will happily talk down to others at almost every opportunity. That said, he's shown to have a soft spot for children as he gives them candy without asking for compensation, instead asking them for praise and to spread word of his shop to others and rake in customers. Keep in mind, Gilgamesh states he spent three days getting those candies right, something his stay night counterpart would never have done.
  • Adaptive Armor: When he dons the traditional golden armor he's known for wearing for his boss battle, it has taken a distinctly more Feudal Japanese design instead of its more familiar Babylonian style, even forgoing being primarily gold to have much more red incorporated in the outfit. All of which implies either that his armor's appearance can be changed to fit the culture and time he's in or he has multiple different suits of armor much like his many Noble Phantasms he possesses, but rarely ever does so regardless.
  • Almighty Janitor: You'd think someone as bombastic as Gilgamesh to demand a job placement more grandiose than a fabric shop, even if it's a high-class one, but here we are. Woe betide anyone who thinks the boasting of this textile salesman is a bluff, as he is in fact the Ruler for the Waxing Moon Ritual meant to keep the Servants in line, and would have enough power to bury them even with a traditional Servant class.
  • Ambiguous Situation: Gilgamesh as the 15th Servant for the Waxing Moon Ritual turns out to be a Red Herring, which means even as a Ruler he was never part of the ritual at all — so how and why is he here? Was he a Counter Force-aligned Servant sent to stop the ritual but went rogue? Or was he summoned for something else entirely?
  • Berserk Button: Saber unknowingly presses one when they have the chance to finally fight him in the Optional Boss fight by saying they're going to work off some "pent-up resentment", which implies to Gilgamesh that he was actually annoying.
  • Boss Subtitles: During his secret bossfight, he's introduced as "Boss, the Supreme King". During the Dual Boss fight with him and Ibuki-Douji in the DLC, he's instead introduced as "Boss, the Supreme Arena Organizer".
  • Contrasting Replacement Character: To Jeanne d'Arc from Fate/Apocrypha. While the Waxing Moon Ritual is a patchwork Holy Grail War at best, it's still a Holy Grail War that requires a Ruler to mediate and ensure things don't get too chaotic. Unlike Jeanne who does everything in her power to keep the Red and Black Factions in check before going after Shirou Amakusa, Gilgamesh is content to simply hang back and watch everyone duke it out, having a personal disinterest with the Ritual and partly for his own amusement. The few times he does directly intervene, he does the bare minimum.
  • The Force Is Strong with This One: Iori and Saber are able to tell that Gilgamesh is a truly extraordinary Heroic Spirit just by looking at him. Iori notes that Gilgamesh's kenki is off the charts and that he exudes the aura of a king or an unrivaled shogun, while Saber can tell that Gilgamesh's magical energy is incredible.
  • Friend to All Children: He doesn't charge the local children for the candy he distributes, declaring that he's not so poor as to squeeze them dry of money. He only asks for them to praise him and his handiwork, which they're glad to do.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: It boils down to Hates Everyone Equally at worst, but across all appearances Gilgamesh has neither cared who wins a Holy Grail War nor shown any desire for the Grail himself. These two impartialities are the baseline for qualifying as a Ruler Servant.
  • The Gods Must Be Lazy: As a Ruler whose job is to keep rampaging Servants in line, Gilgamesh should be preventing the Waxing Moon Ritual from wreaking too much havoc. He does no such thing, content to let Iori and Saber run around handling it at best, and recruiting the two so he can wreak his OWN brand of havoc at worst.
  • Gold Coloured Superiority: As ever, Gilgamesh's fondness for gold is a fair warning of his immense power. It also becomes literal in his boss fight, where he can manifest a unique golden version of the shell mechanic that causes every kind of attack to bounce off him, encouraging you to leave him alone until it drops.
  • Hostile Show Takeover: The Keian Command Championship DLC Episode in a nutshell. Gilgamesh essentially creates his own version of the Holy Grail War and turns it into a proper tournament where the Masters and Servants are forced to compete. It's later revealed the championship is actually a means to deal with Ibuki-Douji; Tsuchimikado attempted to summon her twice in the Waxing Moon Ritual, forcing Gilgamesh to intervene both times, with his latest attempt causing Gilgamesh to create the Keian Command Championship in the first place.
  • I Gave My Word: He's quite sincere about the Keian Command Championship's prize being able to grant any wish the winners desire. Despite said power being significantly weakened at the tournament's conclusion, he nonetheless chooses to grant the winner's wish.
  • I Know Your True Name:
    • When Saber meets him for the first time, they're eager to fight him and draw their sword. Gilgamesh immediately takes notice of the blade, implying he recognizes it as part of his treasury, and therefore knows their identity. He of course keeps this information to himself since he sees no reason to blab.
    • In the Keian Command Championship tournament, he reveals he knows Rider's true name and nature, noting that her bulky armor is all for show and that she would be far more dangerous without it, though he doesn't disclose it.
  • It Amused Me: The bio entry added in the "Keian Command Championship" states that he had different ways of sealing away Ibuki-Douji. The tournament is one such method, though it's also the one that would bring him the most amusement.
  • Loophole Abuse: Part of the reason he became the Waxing Moon's Ruler; a requirement for the Ruler-class Servant is to be impartial and have no desire for the Holy Grail. Gilgamesh himself doesn't participate in the Ritual and has no interest in its Holy Grail. This is because he already has a Holy Grail in his possession, so why would he bother getting a second one, much less an imperfect vessel for what's essentially a patchwork knockoff of a proper Holy Grail War?
  • Mistaken Identity: As Gilgamesh refuses to divulge his identity to Iori or Saber, his Digression missions sometimes involve them trying to discern his identity. Zheng and Archer initially assume he is Cao Cao. Archer attempts to confirm this by asking him if he's fond of women, particularly other men's wives, before acknowledging Gilgamesh isn't Cao Cao, but otherwise bears a similar presence.
  • Mythology Gag: His shop contains souvenirs from Fate/Grand Order, such as Saint Quartz fragments, his Caster self's Tablets, and a scale model of Zhuge Liang's Noble Phantasm.
  • Narcissist: It wouldn't be Gilgamesh if he didn't have a high opinion of himself. One of his first on-screen acts is to give a pair of candies to a pair of children, with said candies modeled after himself.
  • No-Sell: He completely ignores Tsuchimikado's attempt to Mind Control all Servants, claiming that his will is just too strong for that to affect him. (Really, his semi-divine status and the massive Magic Resistance that comes with the Ruler class probably helped.)
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He's mostly content to watch the Waxing Moon Ritual run its course, but there's one thing in particular that actually makes him exercise his authority as Ruler: Ibuki-Douji. He outright stopped Tsuchimikado from summoning her once, and the whole reason for the first DLC storyline is because he didn't learn his lesson and Boss had to pull a Hostile Show Takeover to deal with the mess.
  • Optional Boss:
    • If you complete his Digression missions, Gilgamesh is so impressed by Iori that he offers to officially make him his vassal. Agreeing leads to a Joke Ending where Iori and a reluctant Saber join his retinue — and become the cast of Mito Komon — whereas refusing leads to a boss battle.
    • In the Keian Command Championship DLC, collecting his seven golden statues across all the routes and placing them on their pedestals will transport the seventh statue holder to a personal arena against him for a self-proclaimed "bonus round" where you can earn more points and (after the first time he's fought) unlocks him as a playable ally for Iori in the main game. Afterwards, replaying the other routes and placing their specific golden statue on their pedestal will provide a similar bonus round and extra points.
  • Proud Beauty: A male example. Gilgamesh is excessively proud of his looks, calling his body a treasure that all should bow down and worship. He even makes candy in his own image to hand out to children. In the Keian Command Championship DLC, the competitors are required to obtain a golden statue of him that he preeningly boasts about, much to their confusion and/or annoyance.
  • Promoted to Playable: By way of Defeat Equals Friendship. If you place all seven of his statues on their pedestals in the Keian Command Championship DLC across all story routes and defeat him, Gilgamesh can fight alongside Iori in battle. Unlike other Servants, Gilgamesh doesn't have a skill tree and only has one Affinity Technique, that being Gate of Babylon.
  • Red Herring: Even before meeting him, the player is told the Ritual summons 15 Heroic Spirits, which a savvy fan would assume means, as in Fate/Apocrypha, two sets of the seven main classes plus a Ruler. And that makeup does apply to this game, since Gilgamesh is a Ruler, but it turns out he's the sixteenth Servant. The real fifteenth Servant is the Caster-class Ototachibana-hime.
  • Riddle for the Ages: Although the Waxing Moon Ritual is a patchwork Holy Grail War at best, the nature of the Ritual demanded a Ruler-class Servant be summoned to serve as a mediator. Unlike the Greater Holy Grail War from Apocrypha, however, Gilgamesh isn't part of the lineup; in fact, he was summoned well before the fifteenth Servant appeared. This seems to imply that Gilgamesh's status as Ruler isn't actually required and he has no overall part in the war (nor does he care to), though that raises the question as to why he was summoned in the first place and whether the Counter Force is involved in some way.
  • Stealth Insult: When Saber angrily notes that he allowed the kids to take the Saint Quartz fragments despite knowing they would draw in monsters, Gilgamesh replies back there was never any need for him to intervene in matters that would settle themselves, which Iori realizes means Gilgamesh knew he and Saber would act to save them. Gilgamesh then goes on to say that a king, much like a shopkeeper, bides his time, but then notes "this may be inscrutable to those who have ruled neither shop nor nation," to which Saber simply fumes in place. The insult of course being that Yamato Takeru, for all their skill in battle and conquest, died without ever succeeding their father to become emperor.
  • Take Over the World: After completing his final Digression mission, Gilgamesh offers to take Iori and Saber as his vassals while he retires as a wholesale textile shopkeeper and fulfills his destiny of world conquest. If Iori accepts, there is a Joke Ending where Iori swears fealty to him, bringing an incredulous Saber along for the ride.
  • World's Strongest Man: Per usual, Gilgamesh is considered the highest ranking Servant for being the Ur-Example of The Hero that preceded all others and holding a treasury that contains every single Noble Phantasm and then some, making him an embodiment of power. As such, attempting to challenge him is typically a bad move. Even during his boss battle, despite being ticked off by Saber pressing his Berserk Button, he is deliberately holding back still because he wants to be amused and to test them and Iori's mettle to be worthy to serve him or earn their freedom rather than outright win, something that they both make note of as the battle carries on.
  • You Remind Me of X: In one of his Digression missions, Gilgamesh is briefly mistaken for Cao Cao until Archer confirms he isn't. When Gilgamesh leaves with Iori and Saber in tow, Archer comments how he "can't bear more than one of that man", implying Gilgamesh reminds him too much of Cao Cao.

    The Fifteenth Servant (Unmarked Spoilers!) 

Ototachibana-hime

Voiced by: Misaki Kuno

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ototachibana_hime.png

A third Caster summoned by the Ritual. The wife of Yamato Takeru possessing Kaya's body as a Pseudo-Servant. A girl who single-mindedly devotes herself to her beloved, she has no combative abilities and can only support making her chances of ever winning a Holy Grail war almost impossible.


  • Affectionate Nickname: She personally prefers for people to call her just Tachibana-hime. This is mainly because the word "oto" used to mean "younger person" in ancient Japanese, but in modern Japanese it means "younger brother" instead.
  • Happily Married: She is devoted to helping Takeru and considers it a miracle that they were able to be reunited.
  • Healing Hands: She uses her powers to save Iori from being poisoned. This power is crucial to perfecting the Waxing Moon Ritual, as at the moment the Vessel can only store the souls of the fallen Servants not as pure magical energy, but corruption, and her power would theoretically be able to "purify" it and create a proper wish granter.
  • Heroic Sacrifice:
    • In her backstory, she threw herself into the sea to appease a raging sea god, though this caused her spouse to sink into despair.
    • When Kaya gets sacrificed to the Waxing Moon, she uses up all her power to protect Kaya. This causes her to disappear, but Kaya remains unharmed.
  • Identical Stranger: Saber's flashbacks to her Heroic Sacrifice show her looking identically to how she does when possessing Kaya, which is to say she looks identical to the girl she ended up possessing.
  • Living MacGuffin: As the Heroic Spirit inhabiting Kaya's body, she is the fifteenth and last Servant to be summoned in the Waxing Moon Ritual and an important piece in Tsuchimikado and Caster's plans, as she has the potential to "purify" the Waxing Moon and turn it into a true wish granter. It's for this reason that Chiemon kidnaps Kaya in the hopes of using Ototachibana-hime as a proper vessel for the Ritual.
  • Magical Barefooter: She wears stockings that do not cover her toes and no shoes over them.
  • Super-Powered Alter Ego: She's this for Kaya. Unlike most Pseudo-Servants which typically are a complete fusion between the Servant and the vessel, Kaya and Otobachibana-hime remain separate personalities which allows her to shift between human form and Servant form at will.
  • Support Party Member: Ototachibana-hime has no combat abilities and is very much support oriented; her Territory Creation is ranked EX.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: In the "Ray of Light" ending, she makes a brief appearance comforting Saber, but never appears again after, leaving it unclear what happened to her.

DLC Servants

    Ibuki-Douji 

Voiced by: Aoi Yūki

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ruleribuki.png
The Great Divine Spirit

A Japanese snake god associated with Mount Ibuki, connected to the backstories of both Saber and Assassin. In truth, she is a Divided Spirit of the monstrous Yamata-no-Orochi, and is regarded by some as his daughter. She debuted in Fate/Grand Order as a Saber-class Servant, though in this game is a Ruler. For more information on her character, go here or here for her Summer variant.


  • Bait-and-Switch: When Ibuki-Douji first appears in full, her first impression is as the intimidating, gravity-manipulating God of Evil she debuted as in Heian-kyo... but then she drops the act and behaves more like the friendly version summoned to Chaldea.
  • Baritone of Strength: Ibuki-Douji is typically peppy and boisterous, but drops her voice a few octaves when she's trying to be intimidating—emphasizing that for all her "onee-sama" energy she's actually a powerful and potentially dangerous goddess.
  • Black Eyes of Crazy: Invoked—when first appearing she pretends to be a typical evil deity, with her sclerae being black... but they turn white when she reveals she was just doing a bit. They also turn black when she gets serious or wants to be menacing.
  • Boss Subtitles: She's introduced as "Ibuki-Douji, the Great Divine Spirit".
  • Breath Weapon: One of her Affinity Techniques has her summon a manifestation of one of Orochi's heads, which fires a stream of golden energy at her opponent.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: One might think blatantly ignoring your Master's orders and causing trouble by existing would make for a poor Servant, but it doesn't necessarily make a poor Ruler Servant. The entire point of the Ruler Class is to arbitrate the ritual and punish those who break its rules, and the one who summoned her was actively Fixing the Game — she derails all of Tsuchimikado's attempted cheats and destroys his ego, and even gets the apathetic Boss to actually do his job as a Ruler, just by following her own whims. Ibuki-Douji is also quite perceptive under the surface, so these feats can hardly be called a fluke; she knew exactly what she was doing and got to have her own fun doing it.
  • Cool Big Sis: She sees herself as one, calling herself a Big Sister (onee-chan in Japanese) and especially insisting on Assassin calling her that, though the most he can manage is a respectful "Elder Sister" (anegimi in Japanese). She is the one who saved him and returned him to the human realm, and she calls him Sabu in turn. In the original myths, Saburou married one of Great God Ibuki's daughters, Yuiman, so his and Ibuki's sibling relationship extends beyond just Ibuki's big sister shtick since they're actually siblings-in-law.
  • Cool Sword: She wields the Kusanagi-no-Tachi, a divine sword sealed inside one of the Yamata-no-Orochi's tails. However, she doesn't consider her sword to be the true Kusanagi due to Saber wielding the same sword under a different name. As a result, her version manifests as a gaudy green and red sword covered in ornate spikes, and she doesn't bother unleashing its true power.
  • Cute Monster Girl: Being a huge and imposing half-snake goddess doesn't detract from the fact that she's drop dead gorgeous.
  • Dimensional Traveler: Beating Caster's route in the Keian Command Championship reveals that after the tournament ended Ibuki-Douji was lonely and travelled to a "slightly different" timeline where the Keian Command Championship hadn't occurred, volunteering her services to Iori.
  • The Dreaded: She's an ancient and powerful divine spirit, and even Gilgamesh—who is two-thirds Semi-Divine and has a history of clashing with deities—isn't keen on tangling with her, and came up with the Keian Command Championship to seal her away and use her energy to fuel a wish-granting device. When he refuses to fight alongside her, all it takes for her to get him to comply is threatening to stop being so well-behaved. She's so powerful that Rider, who is well-aware of who and how strong she is, decides to reveal their second Noble Phantasm that she was intending to keep secret until she could take control of Edo's leylines just to deal with her.
  • Friendly Enemy:
    • To Rider, as she recognizes the armored Heroic Spirit at a glance and more specifically which version of her is currently manifested due to their shared and quite violent history, but she nevertheless treats Rider like a friend she hasn't seen in a long time and suggests that they can use the tournament as an excuse to catch up and beat each other up.
    • She remembers Saber from when they were alive, but holds no grudges against them and even thanks them for taking such good care of her father's sword—officially bequeathing it to them. However, she's just as eager to spar against them as she is the other Servants.
  • Hard-Drinking Party Girl: She loves a good party and spends her route's ending shopping and enjoying a festival while thinking about all the booze she's going to drink. Banking on her sharing her "daddy"'s weakness, Gilgamesh incapacitates her with some of his divine alcohol before sealing her and setting up the Tournament to drain her power. She voices a particular fondness for a type of sake that she comments is almost impossible to get in the 21st century, and is delighted that it's readily available in the 17th century.
  • Hellish Pupils: She has vertical slits for pupils, emphasizing her nature as a mercurial snake-goddess.
  • Hidden Depths: She swings between acting like some all-powerful god when she wants to be serious and/or messing with people and the playful big sister who just wants to have fun most of the rest of the time, but she's also a very perceptive being when she wants to. For example, in Lancer's route, she's the one who expresses that Chiemon has far more going on behind his revenge-driven mindset and there's a tortured soul under it all.
  • Horned Humanoid: She has a pair of black horns extending from her forehead, as well as a pair of red antlers protruding from the sides of her head that are decorated with shimenawa rope and shide, befitting her status as a kami.
  • Human Pincushion: She has multiple swords sticking out of the dorsal side of her snake half.
  • Jive Turkey: When she's not playing up her divinity, she talks and acts like a modern-day "big sister" type complete with time-appropriate slang. The funny part is that she was summoned directly with the Waxing Moon, which doesn't implant memories of the present day — Ibuki-Douji is just like that.
  • Literal Split Personality: Like Tamamo Aria and her "sisters",note  Ibuki-Douji is the Divided Spirit of a deity—in this case the Great God Ibuki, aka the Yamata-no-Orochi. She considers herself to be the Orochi's daughter and refers to it as "daddy" and Assassin as her little brother due to his curse—bestowed by Ibuki itself—turning him into a human/snake-god hybrid.
  • Living on Borrowed Time: Since she was summoned directly through the Waxing Moon, she's not plugged into a magical leyline like the other Rogue Servants, so the mana she got from her initial summoning is all she has. Boss planned his countermeasures around this, using the Holy Grail to keep her sealed until her summon timed out naturally. In the ending of Caster's/her route, she "accidentally" uses the remaining power of the Holy Grail to stay manifested for the foreseeable (if still limited) future.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: She has four arms in this manifestation, adding to her divine appearance.
  • Mystical White Hair: She has mostly white hair, save for the pink tips of her ponytails, emphasizing her nature as an ancient goddess.
  • Mythology Gag: She recognizes Rider in-part from their encounters in Fate/Grand Order, though she notes that Rider is different from the individual she knows. Parts of her profile also paraphrase her profile in Fate/Grand Order. Addtionally many of her attacks are lifted from ones she uses in Grand Order, both as a Saber and in her Summer Berserker variant, and in Caster's ending she appears in her Stage 2/3 Saber form to free-load off Tsuchimikado.
  • Not in This for Your Revolution: She's technically Tsuchimikado's Servant since he was the summoner, but his will holds no sway over her; he didn't even get Command Seals to force her to submit. She just does what she wants regardless of his misgivings.
  • One Degree of Separation: Yui Shousetsu and Ibuki-Douji herself identify her as the daughter of the great snake-god Ibuki, who killed Saber back when they were alive and also cursed Assassin with his snake curse—with Ibuki-Douji referring to Assassin as her little brother as a result. She's also acquainted with Rider from Japan's Heian period and the events of Fate/Grand Order—with Rider hating her so intensely their Mask of Sanity briefly slips off.
  • Oni: In-life she was one of the great oni warlords of Heian period Japan, hence Rider's vendetta against her, and she appears in her fully humanoid form—a Cute Monster Girl version of an oni first seen in Fate/Grand Order as the 2nd and 3rd Stages of her Saber manifestation—in Caster & Tsuchimikado's ending.
  • Orochi: Ibuki-Douji is an incarnation of the Yamata-no-Orochi itself, whose visage she summons as part of her Noble Phantasm, though she refers to it as her "daddy" due to legends referring to her as its child.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: The whole reason Tsuchimikado summoned her and Gilgamesh tried to seal her was because—as a Divine Spirit—she's exponentially more powerful than any of the Servants summoned by the Waxing Moon, and were she to cut loose she could decimate all of Edo—if not the entire Kanto region—with a single attack. Fortunately, Ibuki-Douji has no intention of doing so and goes out of her way to hold back her attacks, several of which summon natural disasters like floods, volcanic eruptions, and tornados.
  • Physical God: She is a Divided Spirit of the Yamata-no-Orochi, aka the Great God Ibuki, manifesting as a white snake god, and is ancient enough to have beef with Saber, Rider, and Assassin.
  • Prehensile Hair: She can freely manipulate her Supernatural Floating Hair to use as Combat Tentacles or deliver Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs attacks.
  • Promoted to Playable: As Tsuchimikado and Caster opt out of the tournament, "their" route in the first DLC is actually Ibuki-Douji's route. Her Skill Tree unlocks upon clearing the first round, and she joins the main story as a Rogue Servant after her route is cleared. Interestingly enough, her ability to be played in Battle Recollections is locked behind completing Assassin's route of said DLC.
  • Retired Monster: She was one of the great oni warlords of the Heian period and terrorized Kyoto from Mt. Ooe, hence her rivalry with Rider... though she's more interested in having fun fighting, drinking, and exploring Edo than she is resuming her reign of terror.
  • Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Boss wipes everyone's memories of the first DLC campaign, but Ibuki-Douji remembers. It's for this reason that she joins Iori's band.
  • Snake People: This manifestation has her appearance being closer to a Nagi from Hindu Mythology with a serpent lower body and a mature female human upper body with multiple arms.
  • Spirited Competitor: Ibuki-Douji really wants to have fun fighting all the Servants who showed up to the Keian Command Championship, to the point she intentionally limits herself just so her fights are challenging but still surmountable. Of course, she also likes to "spice things up" by summoning all manner of monsters just to give the crowds and herself more carnage to admire.
  • Summon Magic: She can summon and control various monsters, mainly focusing on oni—particularly a giant dual axe-wielding variant called Torakuma-Douji, who is noted to either be one of the great oni warlords of the Heian era or a Legacy Character. She can also summon phantasmal serpents in much the same way as Assassin, up to and including the Great Orochi.
  • Super-Empowering: Across the possible routes, she causes Rider and Rogue Berserker to go berserk with a power-up and beefs up Saber's sword simply to make their fights more entertaining.
  • Super-Scream: Her basic Heavy Attack has her do this, and it can not only do damage on its own but also amplify the power of any of her other Heavy Attacks/calamities that are still active on the field.
  • Supernatural Floating Hair: She has multiple ponytails that float around her, which she can use in several attacks.
  • Tail Slap: One of her Affinity Techniques is simply her doing a front-flip that slams her massive snake tail down with enough force to crack the ground and cause a shockwave.
  • To Serve Man: She jokingly refers to her opponent as snacks and teasingly declares her intent to eat Assassin for not showing her proper respect as his older sister, but after taking note of Iori's inner sword-demon she declares her intent to eat him and clarifies that she isn't joking.
  • Willfully Weak: She could effortlessly demolish all of Edo, if not the entire Kanto region, with a single attack were she to cut loose. Since she's only up to have some fun and make some more-or-less harmless mischief, she deliberately avoids unleashing her full power using her Holy Ground Class Skill. This is best shown in the Caster/her route; whereas in the others a Master-Servant team could overcome her "playing" even when she's in a Dual Boss fight with Gilgamesh, here she's actually fighting to win and proceeds to take on Berserker-Archer, Lancer-Rider, and Saber-Assassin in consecutive Dual Boss fights for her "three-round tournament" before facing down a swarm of monsters from Gilgamesh and then actually fighting Gilgamesh himself.

    Yagyu Munenori 

Voiced by: Chikahiro Kobayashi

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/munenorisr.png
The Midnight Moon

A Saber-class Rogue Servant that suddenly appeared in midst of the Waxing Moon Ritual. One of the strongest swordsmen of the Yagyu clan and the retainer of the first shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Whilst investigating word of a mysterious blade wielder at Sukenoshin's behest, Iori and Saber suddenly encounter this mysterious swordsman without a Master. He originally debuted in Fate/Grand Order in the same Class but much older in appearance. For more information on his character, go here.


  • Affably Evil: Yagyu Munenori attacks Iori and Saber on sight, and is suspected by them of being the culprit of the tsujigiri killings. Munenori offers to help their investigation to prove his innocence... and also help Iori clear his own name when overzealous and paranoid constables find him standing over one of the victims. It turns out that Munenori really is behind the tsujigiri killings, and teamed up with Iori to both waylay suspicions and size him up as an opponent, challenging Iori to unleash his inner Blood Knight during their battle. After being defeated, however, he swears an oath to not commit any more murders and to genuinely offer Iori his aid during the Waxing Moon Ritual.
  • Age Lift: Compared to his previous appearance in the Saber class as an old man, he has manifested in a significantly more youthful form.
  • Alternate Self: He's a "what-if" version of Munenori who chose to command the Yagyu clan's ninjas instead of becoming head of the clan. He calls himself the Yagyu's shadow, who found justice in darkness instead of light. To a lesser extent, he's also this to his Grand Order self, which is him as an old man. When he meets Iori and Saber he draws his blades on them before backing down, blaming his youth for his aggression. When his true identity is revealed, he notes he previously fought "a flower at the apex of heaven", aka the female Musashi, in another world, implying he's actually a younger version of Saber of Emperio from Grand Order's Shimousa chapter. Musashi likewise acknowledges him as the same man she fought, but in a different incarnation.
  • Always Someone Better: Easily proves to be this to Iori, who finds himself unable to beat Munenori on their first encounter even with Saber's assistance. In their final battle against Iori and Musashi, he chalks his loss up to pure luck and Iori is visibly about to collapse from exertion.
  • Back from the Dead: While this is true of all Servants by their nature, it's especially notable for Munenori because this game is set in the very same time period that he lived. Yagyu Munenori died in 1646, only 5 years before Samurai Remnant's 1651 setting.
  • Bait-and-Switch: While Iori is initially suspicious that Munenori is behind the tsujigiri killings, Munenori assures him he isn't and goes out of his way to prove his innocence by aiding Iori's investigation—eventually uncovering the culprit as the vengeful spirit of his nephew Yagyu Toshiyoshi... except it turns out that Munenori really was behind the tsujigiri killings all along, using his Casting a Shadow powers to summon demonic ninja that Toshiyoshi was able to seize control of.
  • Boss Subtitles: During his boss fight alongside Toshiyoshi, he's introduced as "Yagyu Munenori, the Midnight Moon".
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Yagyu appeared on the opening in a blink and you miss it moment, before he made his proper debut in the DLC.
  • Master Swordsman: Well-known for being one of the greatest of his time to the point of even being referred to as a "Sword Saint" and is even stronger now that he's been summoned as a Servant in his prime. However he notes he wasn't considered a sword saint at this age.
  • Simple, yet Awesome: Compared to Iori, Musashi, and Saber, Munenori's swordsmanship is practical to the extreme. While stylized, Munenori's attacks all involve swings and thrusts that are relatively realistic when compared to the maverick flair that the Niten Ichiryu practitioners show. Despite this, Munenori's skills are arguably the greatest among all the swordsmen in the story, with Iori failing to defeat him even with Saber's help. Even when Iori and Musashi triumph over Munenori and Toshiyoshi, Musashi chocks Munenori's defeat up to luck.
  • You Remind Me of X: Munenori clearly sees kindred spirits in Iori and Musashi as fellow swordsmen. He's just as interested in working Iori to size him up as a potential Worthy Opponent as he is in solving the tsujigiri murders. Munenori states that even with him gone, there is still another "sword demon" left after his defeat, alluding to Iori's wish in the "Entreat the Darkness" ending when he succumbs to his Blood Knight and To Be a Master desires.

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