Motivational analysis: Kiritsugu Emiya

 In this assignment, I will analyze Kiritsgu Emiya, a protagonist of the animation Fate Zero.

Kiritsgu is my favorite anime character, and to understand his background, I will first explain the background of Fate Zero.

Fate Zero is a Japanese animation broadcast in 2011. The story revolves around a battle royal, called the Holy Grail War, among seven mages. All the mages seek the Holy Grail, a magical item that grants any wish of the winner of the war. To win the war, each mage summons a Heroic Spirit, a well-known mythological, cultural, and/or historical figure such as Hercules and Joan of Arc. These Heroic Spirits usually fight at the frontline while the mages stay hidden and support the battle. This is because while Heroic Spirits can always be resummoned even after losing in a battle, mages cannot be resummoned; mages are human beings, so a loss means an immediate death. In short, the Holy Grail War involves seven duos (a mage and a Heroic Spirit), and only the duo who defeats the other six can obtain the Holy Grail.

The Holy Grail War featured in Fate Zero is actually the fourth one in history, and in all three previous wars, the Einzbern family, a bloodline of mages living in Germany, could not win. Because of their consecutive losses, the Einzbern family was desperate, and they decided to hire a mercenary who specialized in killing mages as their representative to participate in the fourth war. This person was Kiritsugu Emiya.

Kiritsugu married a woman of the Einzbern family to become a member of the Einzbern family. Her name was Irisviel, and they also had a daughter named Illyasviel. Although Kiritsugu's initial intention to join the family was solely to obtain the Holy Grail, he came to deeply love his wife and daughter. However, his primary interest was always in the Holy Grail, specifically the power of the Holy Grail in actualizing his wish: achieving eternal world peace. His wish stems from his childhood experience in which he had all of his family members and loved ones killed in a war. He despises war as well as those who cause wars, which, in most cases, are mages. This is why he decided to work as a mercenary; he went to numerous war zones and killed hundreds of mages to end them. However, he gradually realized that as a mercenary, he was powerless. He knew that killing mages would not end the war but instead would just accelerate it. He then became clueless: he had a dream but did not know how to make it come true. It was when he was in such a state that the Einzbern family invited him to join the fourth Holy Grail War. 

Kiritsugu is a complicated character in that, despite his hatred towards wars, he was seen in virtually every single war, and despite his hatred towards murder, he killed so many mages. He is also a character full of love but does not know how to show it to his family. His words, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are well-described in the anime, and his uniqueness makes him an interesting character to analyze from a motivational perspective.