Fate/Zero 11
Let me start by saying this was a great episode, and here's why:
Saber is utter shit as a character. Absolute shit from every angle.
Animation wise she's fucking hideous to behold, her motivation doesn't jive with either the pseudohistorical nor popular, legendary Arthur, nothing about the hilarious charade they'd have had to enact to fool medieval-or-pre-medieval Anglos into believing she was a man and letting her ascend the throne holds up to an ounce of scrutiny, she can't hold her own in any fight ever (requiring, without fail, that men bail her out) and frankly she's a bore in conversation.
I mean take a minute and think her through with me. If she's the pseudohistorical Arthur who repels the Saxon invasion, then why is she so obsessed with saving Britain from destruction? She already did. If she's the legendary Arthur and is referring to the end of his reign over Britain, with Lancelot's and Mordred's insurrections, that raises a shitton of other questions. Remember that Britain was saved from that, too. Arthur's realm either passes into the hands of his surviving sons or into the hands of his kinsman Constantine, but the point is that Britain outlasts Arthur, Lancelot and Mordred, so it isn't destroyed.
Where the fuck would Mordred even come from, though? Arthur couldn't sire him or anybody else in this version of the story, so the traitor who does him in simply doesn't exist. All that leaves is Lancelot, except Lancelot's treachery doesn't happen until Arthur is an old man and the flashback makes it look like this British Apocalypse happened when Saber was still exactly the same age she is in the show. What's more is that Lancelot's entire treachery begins to unravel with Arthur as a woman. How in the world did they ever manage to carry the farce far enough to get Arthur a wife? In what world do dark age thinkers let women get married?
But let's hit that flashback again because that shit pissed me off to no end. In it, we clearly see Saber in the exact fucking dress she wears in the show. Remember that Saber allegedly posed as a man her whole life and basically nobody knew she was a girl.
How? She wore a fucking skirt to war. That doesn't make
any sense. If I was a woman pretending to be a man I can't think of a better way to fuck that up than to forego the gender hiding platemail of my day and wear a fucking ball gown to battle. Also, her hair is long in this scene. Now, it isn't that uncommon for men to have long hair back in those days, sure, but you're telling me that nobody at any point saw Arthur's pretty face and flowing hair and said "Hey but doesn't the King look rather like a lass?"
Absolutely nothing about her backstory holds up. It works for Joan of Arc, sure, because Joan of Arc actually did see France destroyed and would want to stop the shit that happened to it. Joan didn't wear skirts into battle because only fucking idiots do that, but the character's fundamental motivation makes so much more sense that way. It's sad when a stark raving lunatic knows the character better than the writers do.
The rest I've gone into detail before, how Saber constantly needs saving even though she's supposed to be the mightiest of all these warriors (despite her having displayed exactly 0 powers compared to literally every other character), how she never ever lightens up, and how everything related to her, Irisviel and Kiritsugu is just a boring fucking drag written to appease the Newtype Magazine voters.
But let's bring this back to the point I want to make. The reason this episode is good because for the first fucking time somebody actually points out how much Saber fucking sucks. Rider just tears her to pieces and he's spot on on each and every point about this sanctimonious little shit playing dress up and pretending she's Xena Warrior Princess. To emphasize his point, he shows her that any King worth his salt has friends and doesn't whine like a bitch about being alone, pulls out his red materia, summons Knights of the Round, and beats the shit out of the Ass Creed Player's Convention just to prove his point. All this in the middle of a fucking drinking contest him and Gilgamesh are having while she sits there and mopes.
Because a fucking Anglo king somehow isn't going to be a heavy drinker.
The point I'm making is that Rider opens his mouth, flat out says what we're all thinking "You're not a king, you're a little girl." and then proves it again and again in a glorious display of what a fucking war-king is like. And it is
magical. So magical, in fact, I will be downright livid when this show pulls the inevitable and unfair move of killing Rider so that Saber can find her balls and do some shit and win, since her awful, terribly drawn face is the face of this franchise.
Because the writer once jerked off to a copy of The Mists of Avalon and has been desperately trying to justify it ever since.
