Note: This Chapter is Re-Translated on 6 / 15 / 2025
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Chapter 54: Lancelot: I'm a Useless Knight! (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`):
After Kayneth wrapped up his analysis of the Heroic Spirits, Shinji handed Miss Archelot back to him.
"Why don't you run some acting drills with your fiancée?"
He said with a wink. "Consider it a chance to raise your affection points."
As mentioned before, Kayneth had led a charmed life—too smooth, too easy. Outside of magecraft, especially in the realm of romance, he was painfully clueless. Not because he wasn't interested in love, but because he had no idea how it worked.
It was like watching an ant try to woo an elephant—he had the heart, but not the technique.
Shinji, on the other hand, knew romance—but his approach was more of the harem-sim, free-love type. He and Kayneth were simply not drinking from the same philosophical teacup.
All Shinji could do was give the man some opportunities and pray for the best.
Just as Shinji exited the studio warehouse to get back to work, the clear sky overhead cracked open with a string of thundering booms.
A chariot drawn by lightning-wreathed bulls came crashing down from the sky in a storm of sparks, landing squarely in front of him with dramatic precision.
"HAHA! Master, greetings!"
A boisterous voice rang out from the sky.
Shinji pinched the bridge of his nose. "You again. How many times do I have to tell you not to waste mana like that?"
The bulls of the chariot—divine beasts classed as Phantasmal Species—weren't just fancy CG mounts. Manifesting creatures of legend took serious magical juice.
Shinji had been very clear: no mana squandering outside of filming.
Compared to that kind of consumption, the spectacle of a bull chariot flying across the sky barely registered.
What? You saw cows flying overhead?
Don't ask. Just blame it on a gas explosion.
But as always, Shinji's words went in one ear and out the other. Iskandar kept grinning, as carefree as ever.
"Come on, Master, don't nag like an old housewife. Besides," he said proudly, "I had a very good reason."
With that, the King of Conquerors pulled something limp and ragged-looking from the chariot—like a wet mop.
Shinji narrowed his eyes.
—Only after a good long squint did he realize that mop was Waver.
"Oi, kid! We're back!"
Iskandar bellowed, giving Waver a solid jostle.
"Uugh… mmrgghhhh…!!"
Waver twitched awake with a shiver, clutching his mouth with one hand and—barely keeping his breakfast in—raised a trembling middle finger at Shinji with the other.
"Mmmrrrrgh!!"
He glared at Shinji like he'd just witnessed a war crime, then stumbled away toward the warehouse, staggering and crawling as if fleeing death itself.
"…The hell was that about?"
Shinji stood there, face full of question marks.
Iskandar scratched his head. "I took him for a spin in the sky. He's been like that ever since."
—Yeah, Waver got motion sick. No surprise there.
Shinji shot Iskandar a sharp side-eye. "And what part of your brain thought air drifting was a good bonding activity?"
"Didn't you tell me, Master? That there are three unbreakable bonds between men: cars, guns, and sports?"
Shinji's eyelid twitched. "So you decided to go joyriding in a flying chariot…?"
A chariot's still a vehicle, technically.
Which… kind of tracks.
LIKE HELL IT DOES.
Unfortunately, it was next to impossible to get through to this bull-headed monarch with logic and nuance.
So all Shinji could do was coldly warn, "Try not to break him. He still has a movie to film."
Waver, just stepping out of the bathroom, happened to catch that line.
Waver: Excuse me, what the f—?!
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Over the next few days, Shinji split his time between directing on set and revising the Fate/Zero script.
Sure, Urobuchi Gen's original novel was a masterpiece. But that didn't mean Shinji could just drag-and-drop the entire thing onto the silver screen.
It wasn't just about translating words into visuals—the mediums were fundamentally different.
More importantly, Shinji's version of Fate/Zero wasn't some niche, arthouse project. It was a mainstream, mass-market commercial film.
That's why Urobuchi Gen's original "dark, deep, and tragic" script had to be reworked—if they wanted a film that mainstream audiences could actually accept.
Sure, in today's film industry, what Shinji was doing—changing the story to make it more accessible—was seen as the antithesis of artistic integrity. Unrefined. Commercial. Selling out.
But from Shinji's perspective? If a commercial director doesn't care about box office, then he's just playing make-believe.
For a director of big-budget cinema, ticket sales weren't just important—they were everything. The one and only metric of success.
Especially for Fate/Zero.
This wasn't another small-scale project like Fate/Stay Night.
This was Shinji's first attempt at a full-scale, mainstream, professional film production—a big-budget movie built with a real studio structure. It was meant to be a template for future mage-tech blockbusters.
If Fate/Zero flopped, Shinji wouldn't exactly be ruined, but the entire model he was trying to promote—magic-enhanced, effects-driven, collaborative mega-productions—would take a massive hit.
So, for all those reasons and more, Fate/Zero needed to make compromises.
While Shinji kept the core plot and themes intact, certain overly dark elements had to be altered to ensure a wider audience could stomach them.
In terms of setting, the two parts that saw the biggest rewrites were the Caster duo, and the Matou family.
After all, one was a child murderer, the other a child abuser.
No matter how loyal you wanted to stay to the source material, there was no way that would pass censorship in the West.
Children, after all, are a sacred taboo in Western media. Anything involving them—especially violence—is judged under a microscope.
And the reason Western governments clamp down so hard on these subjects?
—Well. Those who know, know.
Shinji couldn't care less about the filth in Western politics, but he did agree with this much: mass-market entertainment needs to uphold proper values.
So in his version of the script, Ryuunosuke Uryuu was turned into a generic serial killer, and all his victims were swapped from kids to adults.
As for Sakura Matou, her inhuman suffering was cut entirely. In Fate/Zero, she was still just a child—no way Shinji was touching that storyline.
—But for the adults? Shinji wasn't nearly so merciful.
Kariya's half-dead misery still made it into the movie, of course. The only change was to swap out the squirming worms in his body for burning magical circuits—a safer choice for passing international censors.
Naturally, none of these edits touched the movie's core themes.
Fate/Zero still leaned heavily into the dark fantasy genre overall.
That meant, as expected, the movie's color grading was significantly darker than Fate/Stay Night's.
For a movie, its visual tone is often the most direct expression of the protagonist's state of mind and the story's atmosphere.
Not every film with a black palette is a dark movie—but all dark movies do tend to use shadow-heavy, muted colors to create a sense of dread and oppression even without dialogue.
Having directed one film already, Shinji understood this perfectly.
As long as the foundational tone of the story didn't stray too far, even with all the tweaks, the production wouldn't lose focus—and the filming process would actually run smoother.
—
Starting the day after Kayneth and the others joined the crew, Shinji added a slew of action scenes to the shooting schedule—simple sequences, meant to help the actors ease into their roles quickly.
He also began using high-frame-rate cameras during select shoots—specialized rigs designed to capture slow-motion footage.
This change was directly inspired by feedback from Fate/Stay Night's audience.
Many viewers had commented that the fight scenes were so fast they couldn't see anything clearly, which left some feeling confused or even overwhelmed.
So for Fate/Zero, Shinji decided to incorporate more slow-motion shots—so audiences could properly appreciate the majesty of Heroic Spirit combat.
The feedback on Fate/Stay Night hadn't ended there, either.
Shinji had read all the reviews—flattering and harsh alike—and took notes. Anything useful, he put to work in Fate/Zero.
He knew better than anyone that Fate/Stay Night hadn't succeeded because it was "perfect"—it had succeeded because audiences had never seen anything like it before.
If he got cocky and stopped improving, refusing to listen to criticism?
The market would toss him aside without a second thought.
There may be an omniscient, omnipotent man in this world.
But his name is Gilgamesh, not Matou Shinji.
So as someone far from all-knowing or all-powerful, Shinji had only one option:
Keep improving, until he got as close as humanly possible.
Thankfully, in his past life, Shinji had seen a ridiculous number of movies—especially ones with top-tier special effects.
In fact, he probably had more experience analyzing CGI-heavy blockbusters than anyone else in this world.
He didn't need to know how those incredible shots were created.
As long as he could reproduce the effect, that was enough.
Whoosh—whoosh—!
High above the ground, two streaks of light—one gold, one black—cut across the sky.
Trailing them was a white blur, zigzagging through the clouds.
On the ground, Shinji sat with his eyes glued to the monitor, occasionally glancing up at the real sky overhead.
Right now, the Fate/Zero team was filming one of the most iconic aerial battles of the Fourth Holy Grail War:
The Vimana versus the F-15J Jet Fighter.
This scene had nearly melted Shinji's brain during pre-production.
Having access to the actual Vimana made things easier—live-action filming was totally doable.
But the F-15J jet? That was the real headache.
First off, there was no way Shinji could get his hands on a real fighter jet. Forget the cost—just one of those would eat up more than his entire movie budget.
Even renting one wasn't feasible.
Not because it couldn't be done, but because of Lancelot's Noble Phantasm.
If he used it during filming, there was a very real risk the jet would be destroyed in the process.
In the end, after a long brainstorming session with Touko, Shinji came up with a compromise.
He had her build a 1:1 scale replica of an F-15J and installed a motorcycle inside the frame to turn it into a rideable "vehicle."
Then he handed the whole thing to Arturia to pilot.
Thanks to her Riding skill, she could control it effortlessly. And with Invisible Air, she could generate a protective wind barrier to prevent the model from breaking apart mid-air.
To ensure the magecraft would trigger properly, the fake fighter jet actually worked—in a very grounded sense.
It was, functionally, a motorcycle with a fighter jet shell.
It couldn't actually fly, of course, but it could roll, shoot prop missile props, fire mock machine guns, and do all the visual stuff necessary.
As for the "flying" part?
Shinji had Touko add a suspension rig under Iskandar's chariot, allowing it to haul the jet through the air like a cargo crane.
And for the perfect camera angle, Shinji had Medusa ride Pegasus with a camera rig strapped to her back, filming from behind as the Vimana and fighter jet dueled above the clouds.
In other words, Shinji straight-up brute-forced the air battle into reality with props and stunt rigs.
"Okay... Medusa, tilt upward a bit. I want an overhead shot of the two circling each other," Shinji instructed into the walkie-talkie.
"Make sure the chariot doesn't get into the frame."
At that moment, the monitor showed a very clear shot of the fighter jet—with a certain someone screaming on top of it.
"What is that idiot knight doing?" Shinji growled, eyes narrowing. "Didn't I specifically tell him to wear his helmet while filming?!"
"Master," Medusa's voice came through the headset, mimicking a serious tone.
"I believe he's shouting, 'To think I have forced the King to take the wheel for me! What a disgrace of a knight I am!'"
"…Is that so."
Shinji's lips twitched. "In that case, let the guy stay up there a bit longer. We'll wrap this shot when he remembers to put on his damn helmet."
Cruel? Maybe.
Necessary? Absolutely.