long story short, Tokiomi is the master of Gilgamesh. as in, "The Epic of." Tokiomi, however, is a little bitch baby, whereas Gilgamesh is as much of an rear end in a top hat as Kirei is and has a roughly planet-sized ego on top of that. they do not get along. Gilgamesh, however, ends up deciding that Kirei actually kind of whips rear end, because they are a very similar breed of rear end in a top hat. Gilgamesh has Kirei literally stab Tokiomi in the back and the two of them start doing hosed Up poo poo for the rest of the war while laughing about it and drinking hella loving wine.

then it's down to just him and a mercenary named Kiritsugu as the last two master-servant pairs, and they have a badass fight where Kiritsugu uses bullet-time magic to get around Kirei being able to punch him so hard his organs explode. their duel gets cockblocked because it turns out the Holy Grail is actually Zoroastrian Satan and made up mostly of people-eating acid mud, and both Kiritsugu and Kirei get sucked into it.

it then promptly spits Kirei and Gilgamesh back out, completely healed and renewed, except Kirei's heart is now literally made of Zoroastrian Satan. they go back to the church and Kirei keeps Gil alive by basically using a bunch of burnt, nearly-dead orphans as living batteries, and Gil repays Kirei by drinking all of his wine. (this is not a joke. Gil is a dick.)

ten years later, there's another Holy Grail War going on... and wouldn't you know it, Kirei's the appointed supervisor and Kiritsugu's adopted kid is in it. Kirei goes and engages Fuckery Mode.

now, depending on the route, it can go a few different ways from this point. he's not very interesting in the Fate route, and he's only marginally moreso in Unlimited Blade Works. Heaven's Feel, however, is what really seals it for me.

see, in Heaven's Feel, Fate throws yet another clusterfuck onto the insane pile of clusterfucks it's got going. very very long story short, it's about a background character from the previous routes being revealed to be basically a ticking time bomb who will give birth to a Holy Grail (and the resulting people-eating mud) and cause the apocalypse when that timer goes off. and for as much as an rear end in a top hat as Kirei is, he doesn't particularly like this.

fast-forward to the end of the route. Shirou, the actual protagonist and Kiritsugu's son from earlier, is about to sacrifice himself to blow the almost-born Holy Grail to poo poo with a projection of Excalibur (yes, that Excalibur). except this is the very next thing he sees:



yep, you guessed it, Kotomine motherfucking Kirei in the house.

Shirou goes " dude, what are you doing, go away." Kirei answers "WE GONNA BE BIRTHING SOME PEOPLE-EATING MUD TONIGHT BOI"

Shirou goes " why the ever loving gently caress, you're not going to be able to control the people-eating mud you stupid rear end, let me just blow this thing up so my girl doesn't have to give birth to this poo poo"

Kirei goes "lmao no, I'm a priest, my job is to bless everything that gets born and that includes people-eating apocalypse mud, no abortions here fucko"

Shirou calls him a nutcase, Kirei goes "right back at ya, we're both gonna die either way so who cares "

for, you see, Kirei is running out of heart-Satan to fuel himself, and Shirou has a whole list of current problems that starts somewhere around "horrific brain damage from using his future self's left arm, which has been grafted onto his shoulder, to do stronk magic" and ends somewhere around "his body is literally patching itself together with swords every time he gets injured, making him look somewhat like a human porcupine covered in blood"

after a little back and forth, Kirei ends up for-real explaining himself, and, tl;dr, he doesn't see the apocalypse mud as much different from himself, and he sees the question of whether it should exist as roughly the same as the question of whether he should. because they're both created to do evil and have no capacity for anything else.

so, as a result of his hosed up complex about his own morality in relation to his religious beliefs, Kirei ends up, and I swear this is not a joke or misrepresentation, fistfighting a brain-damaged 16-year-old who keeps popping spikes out of every new wound on his body, who just will not go down no matter what he does, over the issue of whether the latter can abort his girlfriend's Zoroastrian Satan pregnancy using King Arthur's sword. because Fate is an exercise in figuring out "okay, what's the most absolutely ridiculous and insane thing we could possibly have happen for a climax," and then working backwards so that it not only makes perfect sense, but is some loving Shakespearean poo poo.

WeedlordGoku69 fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Aug 20, 2020

SlothfulCobra fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Mar 9, 2021