Fate/strange Fake

Episode 8

If it weren't clear already, this episode makes the point that Flat is far from your average mage. If he were, and had Orlando at his mercy like he does in this episode, he would have killed the police chief and had Jack take his place. With that, he could have ordered the police to do whatever he wanted—be that saving False Rider's Master or killing her as well. Or to put it another way, a normal mage would only be concerned with winning the Grail War and advancing their own path towards True Magic. Why Flat doesn't act this way all comes down to a simple statement: that he values Waver and his El-Melloi classmates' view of him far more than his own mage family's.

It's important to understand just how insane that sentence is in the context of Fate where mages are amoral bastards concerned only with their ultimate goal—looking down on and willing to sacrifice anyone or anything in order to reach it. To put the idea of “What Would Waver Do?” above everything else signifies the revolution occurring in mage society. While Waver may see himself as a Holy Grail War loser and a third-rate mage, the fact of the matter is that he has nurtured a generation of mages who see him as a hero—the living embodiment of a new path towards the Root built on trust, cooperation, and doing the right thing (though the definition of “the right thing” absolutely varies from mage to mage with Flat being an extreme example).

Of course, while Waver has the knack for surviving fights (if not coming out downright victorious) against men and creatures far more powerful than himself thanks to his analytical mind, he's not some infallible mastermind. After all, removed from the dual Holy Grail Wars as he is, he has no way of knowing just how many strings are being pulled and by who—and how some are willing to throw Waver, Flat, and Orlando's plan into chaos for no greater reason than seeing if they can take advantage of it.

That said, there is one other wild card out there with the knowledge and power to effect what's about to go down at the hospital—a person who is basically Flat if he had not met Waver: Sigma. Ripped from the womb and trained for a single (long since irrelevant) purpose, he is now in the midst of searching not only for the meaning of his life but also who he is and what he wants to be.

Up until this Grail War, Sigma has been content to be the pawn of others—doing what he is told and getting the bare minimum to survive in return. But now he's faced with the dichotomy of his previous masters and Ayaka's fledgling alliance. Ayaka, Richard, and False Assassin are, if not good people, then at least people true to their convictions. None of them would betray him without him doing so first. Even False Assassin, a religious zealot, feels shame at confronting him once she realizes that, rather than being a dangerous unknown, he's just a man searching for something to believe in—and that's something she can understand and sympathize with, even if the result may end up being something she is forced to fight against eventually. And when faced with trust and comradery unlike what he has encountered before, Sigma chooses to rise to the occasion—to go against his normal modus operandi and try to be the better version of himself that Ayaka, Richard, and False Assassin believe he can be.

With that, we are left moments before the start of the Grail Wars' biggest battle yet, as Flat and the police attempt to free Tsubaki from her Servant, True Archer tries to twist the operation to his own ends, and Ayaka and her allies set out to the hospital for some good, old fashioned, vampire hunting.

It's going to be chaos, pure chaos.

Rating:

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Fate/strange Fake is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.