Characters with
Character: Kirei Kotomine
Many
stories have at least one villain, and a villain must have a motivation that
puts him or her upon a path that runs opposed to our heroes’. These motivations
could be anything from a desire for power to revenge, and for a memorable
villain these motives can be used to give the character depth. Out of all the
motivations a villain can have, the most usually scorned is that the villain
does what he does simply because he’s evil. It is understandable why since that
usually results in a character with little depth and often times one that can’t
even be taken seriously. Type Moon’s Fate/Stay Night provides a rare exception
to this rule in Kirei Kotomine.
Warning
before we continue, I will be discussing (and showing) spoilers for both
Fate/Stay Night and its prequel light novel recently adapted into an anime
Fate/Zero. If you have not played the game and want to experience the
(excellent) story without being spoiled, buy it now here or here, install
the game, patch it into English (your choice if you want to seek out the voice
patch), play all three routes, watch Fate/Zero, and come back (feel free to
play F/SN again after watching Fate/Zero, I sure did).
One of
the things that makes Kotomine so fascinating as a character is how his
backstory makes for an interesting nature versus nurture story in which nature
ultimately wins out. Born “broken”
as a few characters in the game call
him, Kotomine could only find joy in things most people would see as negative,
particularly the suffering of others. However, because his father was a man of
the church Kotomine was essentially raised to be a good man and through that
grew up knowing he was abnormal but could not really find a way around it. It’s
this upbringing of his that sets the stage for an inner struggle that helps to
not only give credence to his eventual step into villainy, but also to give him
the character depth necessary to make him both believable and memorable.
The
details provided about Kotomine’s backstory during the Heaven’s Feel scenario
help in properly establishing the disorder he was born with so that it doesn’t
come off as a cheap way of backing up his motivations in the game. The player
learns how Kotomine, prior to the game’s events, really put every effort into trying to become normal from devoting himself
to the church in hopes that God would show him the way to getting married and
starting a family. In the end both only resulted in giving him indulgences for
his twisted personality from finding pleasure in seeing the depression and
self-loathing of church attendants brought on by the sermons he spoke to only
finding joy in his wife’s dying of a terminal illness and the anguish it caused
their daughter.
Left
like that, Kotomine probably would just come off as an interesting villain, but
one that could be interpreted as an “I’m
evil, but I feel ‘so’ terrible about it” kind of villain. However, Kinoko Nasu avoided
this by writing it that rather than feeling guilt over finding joy in these
things, Kotomine’s disorder conflicting with his upbringing brings about a
feeling of bafflement (and to some extent anguish) instead which will end up
tying into a question he considers his entire life which I’ll get to later. In
the case of his mass readings, particularly on December 31 as in his eyes his
preaching’s effect on people gave him the power to ruin both the past year and
the New Year, his bafflement was in how thankful the parishioners were to him
after the mass even after being reduced to such a sorry state.
Kotomine’s
reaction to his wife’s death is a bit more complex and requires some
explanation. The woman he chose to marry was someone he knew had a terminal
illness from the start, but it’s debatable if that’s the reason he chose to
marry her or if it was because she was the only choice he had as not even Kotomine
himself could figure it out. Still, despite the illness, his wife was, in Kotomine’s
eyes at least, a saint to him, knowing of his disorder and accepting him. Until
her death she did all he could to change him, but to no avail with Kotomine even
admitting to her as she was dying that he was unable to love her. She noted
however that he was crying as he said this and soon after died believing that
she had managed to change him. In reality, the reason for Kotomine’s tears was
because he was unable to kill her himself.
The
main bafflement he has as a result of this is the recurring thought on his
wanting to have killed his wife at that time. Kotomine is never able to
determine if this thought is one of regret at a missed opportunity or some form
of regret at having those thoughts towards someone who he loved (or tried very
hard to love). He eventually gives up on trying to find an answer to that
question because in his mind finding a definite answer would make her death worthless,
which is something he didn’t want even if their time together couldn’t change
him.
Kotomine’s
giving up on finding an answer to that recurring question actually ties in to
the only solution he could find at that time. In despair at not being able to
change even with starting and losing a family and unwilling to take his own
life, Kotomine concluded that joy and pleasure must be sinful as his finding
that in other people’s pain could only be seen as such. Until the events of
Fate/Zero, he would devote himself to his work in the Church until gaining a Command Seal that
would designate him a Master
in the Fourth Holy Grail War, all the while seeing himself as an empty man
devoid of any real desires.
The
Fourth Grail War is where Kotomine finally accepts his true nature, beginning
with his interactions with the summoned Servant of Tokiomi Tohsaka, a
fellow Master and a mage that the church has assigned him to serve (the Church
and the Mage’s Association have an agreement with one another when it comes to
managing the Grail War). This Servant encourages him to embrace pleasure rather
than reject it, giving Kotomine the necessary push that would lead him down the
path of villainy. These interactions make for an interesting look at two
characters with completely different viewpoints and are written well enough so
as not to diminish Kotomine as a villain as the actions he takes from pursuing
his curiosity about the other Masters to utterly destroying one of them for fun
are all his own and not something that can be put under “the devil made me do
it” trope (insert Star Wars Episode 3 joke here). I do however find it
interesting that the aforementioned Servant to give Kotomine this advice is
Gilgamesh, who in his mythological story loses the fruit that will grant him
immortality to a snake.
To make
a long story short, Kotomine does get killed in the war by the last remaining
Master Kiritsugu Emiya, but the Grail, corrupted in the previous war by the
Servant Avenger ( a little more on him later) preserves both his life and
Gilgamesh’s (who at this point had become Kotomine’s Servant after Tokiomi’s
murder at his hand). This ends up setting the stage for the next Grail War, the
events of Fate/Stay Night, in which he ends up manipulating both the daughter
of Tokiomi, Rin, and the adopted son of Kiritsugu, Shirou. While the Fate and
Unlimited Blade Works routes portray him as a pretty one dimensional villain
who ultimately dies in a way ironic to his killing Rin’s father, it’s in the
Heaven’s Feel route that not only portrays him better as a written character
but also provides a conclusion to his story that actually ties him well with
Shirou.
To
begin with, one of the things I liked about Heaven’s Feel was how it portrayed
Shirou as a more human and believable character than in the previous two
routes. This route does the same for Kotomine in a few ways. First it reveals
most of the background information I just discussed and second it shows him act
in a role other than as a manipulative villain in his allying with Shirou
against the new threat posed by Zouken Matou/Makiri and his plot concerning
Sakura (the main heroine of that route (unless you count Ilya…and Rider) and
the Holy Grail. Thanks to that alliance we actually get to see Shirou and Kotomine
actually talk to each other from a genuinely funny scene (always comes to mind
whenever I see mapo tofu on a menu) to an interesting bit of character dynamic that
makes for another interesting look at two characters with opposing viewpoints
interacting that comes off as an opposite of Kotomine and Gilgamesh’s
interaction yet at the same time ties in with it in how Kotomine rationalizes
allowing the birth of something that could very well destroy all life it comes
across.
This
brings us to the third part, in which we learn about a question that Kotomine
has been pondering his entire life: whether or not his birth was a mistake. In
the aftermath of the death of his wife, part of his deciding joy must be a sin
was his deciding that it was a mistake, but the events of Fate/Zero open that
question up again as he eventually begins to ponder whether or not something
born evil can really be considered evil if it’s just following its nature and
doing what feels right to it. He ends up getting a chance at finding an answer
in Avenger, a Servant summoned by mistake during the Third Holy Grail War that
ended up becoming part of the Grail after its defeat and corrupting it. This is
because Avenger’s identity is Angra Mainyu, a spirit of pure evil and
destruction from the mythology of Zoroastrianism (to any who have played Prince
of Persia (the one that doesn’t have anything to do with the other games) you’d
probably remember it as Ahriman, the main villain of the game) so his influence
ends up corrupting the grail, and his summoning is a mistake mainly because
there can only be seven servants: Saber, Archer, Rider, Caster, Assassin,
Lancer, and Berserker (in Avenger’s case he replaced Berserker) and up until
then the Grail could only summon heroes whose alignment would be good.
Avenger
ends up becoming a part of Kotomine’s lifelong
question during the events of Heaven’s Feel as the events of that route
lead to the Grail giving it life as an “incarnation of All the World’s Evils”
(as the game describes it). Kotomine essentially wants to see this new creature
born, even if it does mean it’ll probably kill everything on the planet
including himself, because it will be something that will be evil in nature
like him. Up until this point Kotomine has seen himself as unique in his
desires, which seem to support the notion of his existence being a mistake, but
with the impending birth of Avenger from the Grail he now has a chance to see
how something born evil will react to the world that it’s born into and compare
it to his own. The reason this all helps his character is because this is as
close to a personal wish that Kotomine ever has (aside from his earlier desire
to be normal) because it the Fourth Grail War he didn’t have a wish at the
start and even after he betrays Tokiomi his main motivation from there on was
basically to have fun .
This is
basically where the part about Kotomine’s character tying in with Shirou’s
comes in. The character reveals about Kotomine in this route establish him as
someone similar to but at the same time very different from Shirou. They’re
both empty beings as a result of their backgrounds, each trying to find some
sort of happiness. The difference being that Shirou’s aims are to do good for
other people as opposed to Kotomine’s joy coming from the suffering of others.
By the route’s climax the two are actually in a similar position, while they
both have a personal desire, Shirou to save Sakura and Kotomine’s to see the
birth of another being like himself, it’s not something that the Grail can
grant them (revelations about it aside) and is therefore something they have to
fight each other to the death for. While
in the end Shirou wins, Kotomine is able to find some satisfaction at his
life’s end because he was at least able unleash his frustrations and envy he
had towards normal people.
Interestingly,
Kotomine’s being drawn to both Shirou and Avenger in Fate/Stay Night and
Kiritsugu in Fate/Zero may also be signs of a twisted desire for companionship
with those who have something in common with him. When the fourth Grail War
begins, the first thing to catch Kotomine’s interest is Kiritsugu after going
over intelligence gathered about him and from those (limited) details
determines that Kiritsugu must be a person similar to him. Unfortunately for
Kotomine, he soon finds that Kiritsugu is neither empty like he is and even has
companions who he has genuine bonds with, which ends up planting the seeds of
hatred and envy that will influence the wish he will make upon the corrupted
grail. Kotomine’s being drawn towards Shirou could be an unconscious one
considering their differences and while part of the reason the two of them
interact so much in this route is a combination of circumstance and so Kotomine
can manipulate Shirou, there’s no denying that in their interactions Kotomine
is surprisingly truthful towards Shirou and by the end the two don’t really
hate each other even if circumstances have forced them to fight to the death.
Unlike
the case with Roa in Tsukihime, Kirei Kotomine hasn’t faded into the background
and is both well remembered and regarded by the Type Moon fanbase when it comes
to the villain characters of Fate/Stay Night. While I admit Fate/Zero probably
helped to extend his character relevancy, the fact that he makes a bigger
impression than most of the Servants as a villain in the Heaven’s Feel route
and its prequel story is a testament to how well written he is as a villain.
His backstory not only manages to give
him the necessary depth that he was lacking in the other two routes, but it
also makes an effective motivation for a villain out of the much derided “because
he’s evil” motive. Considering his presence in all of the spinoff material (and
yes, I realize he’s not in Ataraxia, but considering much of the events of the
that fandisk are connected to him I’ll count him as “present in spirit”) from Fate/Unlimited
Codes to Fate/Extra*, it’s practically undisputable that Kirei Kotomine is a
major part of Type Moon’s Fate series and is well worthy of that place. Now
having written so much about the serious side of Kotomine, it’s time for me to
take a look at his funnier side be it battling the other Masters and Servants
of Fate/Stay Night and Zero together with Gilgamesh and Lancer in a game of hanafuda all to reach the
local hot springs or overseeing a Grand Prix version of the Holy Grail War…yeah,
Type Moon is weird.
*On a side note, if you want a good sample of the Fate
series, Fate/Extra was recently released in English for PSP (don’t worry, it’s available
on PSN) by Aksys. It’s an alternate universe to the original game where the
Holy Grail War is fought inside a virtual reality with more than seven Masters
and Servants and many of the returning characters are completely different from
their F/SN versions. The story’s really good, though the RPG gameplay can get a
bit monotonous outside of boss fights. I do recommend playing it, though I must
say you’ll find it a bit more enjoyable if you’re familiar with the Fate series…also
I want it to do well so Aksys can license its upcoming sequel of sorts
Fate/Extra CCC where one of the Servants we get to choose is none other than
Gilgamesh (the official thread for it is here).
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