Fate/strange Fake

Episode 7

As was conveyed in last week's episode, while the Masters of the False Holy Grail War were chosen normally (to make it appear like any other Holy Grail War), the Masters of the True Holy Grail War were chosen by the US government to further their own ends. In some cases, this means the masterminds behind the whole situation, such as Faldeus and Francessca. In others, it is people that are expendable, like Bazdilot or Sigma—or in the case of this episode, Halri.

Halri's goal is simple: to get revenge on all mages—namely, the mages of the Clocktower-for the death of her parents. Of course, the interesting thing is, like Shirou and Ayaka before her, Halri doesn't consider herself a mage.

In the world of Fate, being able to use magecraft does not make one a mage. Rather, it is the single-minded pursuit of reaching the Root through your family's unique magecraft—and thus gaining True Magic—that defines one. Pesky things like ethics and morals are discarded, while all other people, including mages and family members, are seen as tools in reaching this goal. This is why, by and large, mages are complete, self-serving, assholes. The only true counterexample to this is Waver and his students, like Flat, who have risen to new heights of power in the modern age through cooperation with each other.

This distinction between “mage” and “human” is what ultimately saves Halri's life. Killing, even indirectly through True Berserker, is hard for her. She wants revenge, but she still sees herself in the moral right. In the end, what she hates is the institution of mage society that twisted mages into what they are—not the individual mages themselves.

Thus, when Halri, after being mortally wounded by the Berserker she summoned, encounters “Philia,” she is seen as human and is saved. Now, why being “human” is important all ties into Philia's true identity—or rather the identity of the goddess who has now taken over the homunculus' body.

To anyone who has played Fate/Grand Order or seen the anime Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia, it is obvious who the goddess is. From her style of speech and the flashes of Uruk's wall when she touches Halri, to the fact that both Gilgamesh and Ekidu are in this Holy Grail War and that she has a domineering love for humanity, it's a safe bet that Philia is actually Ishtar.

However, there is one major difference between this Ishtar and the one we got to know in Fate/Grand Order. In that story, Ishtar manifests inside Rin's body, thus making her more virtuous and tempering the more extreme parts of her personality. This, however, is the Ishtar of legend, raw and unconstrained. In other words, she could well be the most dangerous wild card in this entire Grail War.

For the B-plot of this episode, we get a bit more focus on Sigma. When it comes down to it, he is focused on the most basic desires: food and a warm bed. However, there is one thing even more necessary to his life: survival.

Up until the events of this episode, Sigma is just doing a job. He'll participate in the war and lose when he's ordered to. Yet, when Sigma doesn't tell Faldeus the true identity of his servant (because False Assassin is listening in) and learns that Faldeus immediately reclassifies him as an enemy for lying, he realizes that his survival is in question. Thus, he is left with a choice: stay loyal to Faldeus or throw his lot in with the strangers who could have killed him but did not. And in the end, he chooses to believe in Saber and Ayaka—if for no other reason than to have backup should Faldeus try to take him out.

Rating:

Random thoughts:

• While Ayaka can't usurp Jester's connection to False Assassin and become her Master, she can give False Assassin the mana she needs to live—and from False Assassin's body language, you can see how much having to live off of the mana supplied by an unholy abomination has disgusted her.

• Though that does bring the question, how can one single person supply mana to two servants at once without being totally drained and dying?

• Yui Makino (Philia) does a banger Kana Ueda (Rin) impression.

• In Fate/Grand Order, Jason actually summons Heracles as part of his attacks along with the other Argonauts.

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Fate/strange Fake is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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