Personality (continued): About that: as has already been mentioned Kariya’s quest to save Sakura from becoming the heir to the Matou brand of thaumaturgy has horrific consequences for him. The deal he makes with Zouken during the prologue is simple; a straightforward exchange of Kariya for Sakura, with the condition that Sakura will only be released if Kariya manages to win the Fourth Holy Grail War. The catch – and there is literally no way to put this delicately – is that since Kariya has never trained a day in his life, the only way for him to become enough of a magus in the space of a single year to summon a Servant to fight for him during this war is to have numerous Crest Worms implanted in his body. While expanding his magic circuits greatly, the worms also eat away at his body from the inside, and ironically place more strain on him whenever he casts magic.
It goes without saying, then, that after a year of enduring such pain, it’s not just Kariya’s body that changes for the worse. Though still fundamentally a decent person, he is outwardly more reserved and taciturn than before and tends to avoid people, if only for the problems his now somewhat terrifying appearance would cause. Thanks to the constant pain he is in and also Crest Worms having literally eaten parts of his brain, Kariya is also now more prone to emotional outbursts when triggered and is on a much shorter fuse, having much less of a hold on his temper. Since he knows all too well that he’s existing on borrowed time, he also becomes a lot more reckless when it comes to trying to get what he set out to do done, caring little for any sort of strategy.
His determination to accomplish this becomes frighteningly single-minded, to the point where saving Sakura from her fate and killing Tokiomi become the only real purposes he has for what’s left of his life – to the extent of ignoring the threat of a large monster created by one of the other Servants in favour of sending his own Servant to fight Tokiomi’s while confronting Tokiomi himself at the same time. Whether it was his original intention or not, by the time of the Grail War, getting revenge on Tokiomi by killing him becomes just as important to Kariya as his goal of rescuing Sakura. It’s easier to survive putting yourself through terrible pain if you have someone to blame and get angry at, and other than Zouken, Tokiomi, who gave away his own daughter to the Matou, is the obvious choice. What started as small seeds of resentment becomes fully-fledged hatred, and the Kariya of the Grail War now takes a vicious and unstable kind of pleasure in causing any kind of humiliation or throwing any kind of spanner in the works for the Tohsaka magus. Kariya also develops a certain amount of loathing towards himself; he blames himself just as harshly for Sakura’s situation as he does Zouken and Tokiomi, reasoning that if he had just accepted his fate eleven years beforehand instead of running away, Sakura could have carried on living happily with her mother and sister.
Ultimately as the Grail War wears on, Kariya progressively loses more and more of his grip on his own sanity to the point where he begins losing sight of himself and everything that he once held dear, with only his twin goals of Save Sakura And Kill Tokiomi Before I Die to cling to. His fragile mental and emotional state combined with his single-minded desire to see these two goals through makes him an easy target for manipulation by others since he no longer has the ability to really perceive when he’s being duped, something that Kirei Kotomine is able to mercilessly exploit to increase Kariya’s suffering and unhinge his mind even further. Once Kariya’s mind starts breaking down completely, he even becomes capable of hurting those closest to him when triggered the wrong way; all it takes during a moment of Kotomine-engineered misunderstanding is for Aoi to say something that is so out of place with Kariya’s remaining perception of her that his mind briefly snaps – for long enough to lead to some truly tragic consequences.
The real tragedy of Kariya Matou is that his slow descent into insanity reveals as much about him as it destroys; although it could never be denied that his self-sacrificial efforts were genuine and whole-heartedly meant, there are more selfish layers to his actions that Kariya himself neglects, practicing some pretty thorough self-deception as a protective measure. It’s only during his final moments when his body and mind finally give out completely that his deepest, suppressed wish for himself – to be a family with Aoi, Sakura and Rin – is embraced in the form of a final, delusional vision.
[ CANON ] Kariya Matou || Fate/zero || reserved || 3 of 4
It goes without saying, then, that after a year of enduring such pain, it’s not just Kariya’s body that changes for the worse. Though still fundamentally a decent person, he is outwardly more reserved and taciturn than before and tends to avoid people, if only for the problems his now somewhat terrifying appearance would cause. Thanks to the constant pain he is in and also Crest Worms having literally eaten parts of his brain, Kariya is also now more prone to emotional outbursts when triggered and is on a much shorter fuse, having much less of a hold on his temper. Since he knows all too well that he’s existing on borrowed time, he also becomes a lot more reckless when it comes to trying to get what he set out to do done, caring little for any sort of strategy.
His determination to accomplish this becomes frighteningly single-minded, to the point where saving Sakura from her fate and killing Tokiomi become the only real purposes he has for what’s left of his life – to the extent of ignoring the threat of a large monster created by one of the other Servants in favour of sending his own Servant to fight Tokiomi’s while confronting Tokiomi himself at the same time. Whether it was his original intention or not, by the time of the Grail War, getting revenge on Tokiomi by killing him becomes just as important to Kariya as his goal of rescuing Sakura. It’s easier to survive putting yourself through terrible pain if you have someone to blame and get angry at, and other than Zouken, Tokiomi, who gave away his own daughter to the Matou, is the obvious choice. What started as small seeds of resentment becomes fully-fledged hatred, and the Kariya of the Grail War now takes a vicious and unstable kind of pleasure in causing any kind of humiliation or throwing any kind of spanner in the works for the Tohsaka magus. Kariya also develops a certain amount of loathing towards himself; he blames himself just as harshly for Sakura’s situation as he does Zouken and Tokiomi, reasoning that if he had just accepted his fate eleven years beforehand instead of running away, Sakura could have carried on living happily with her mother and sister.
Ultimately as the Grail War wears on, Kariya progressively loses more and more of his grip on his own sanity to the point where he begins losing sight of himself and everything that he once held dear, with only his twin goals of Save Sakura And Kill Tokiomi Before I Die to cling to. His fragile mental and emotional state combined with his single-minded desire to see these two goals through makes him an easy target for manipulation by others since he no longer has the ability to really perceive when he’s being duped, something that Kirei Kotomine is able to mercilessly exploit to increase Kariya’s suffering and unhinge his mind even further. Once Kariya’s mind starts breaking down completely, he even becomes capable of hurting those closest to him when triggered the wrong way; all it takes during a moment of Kotomine-engineered misunderstanding is for Aoi to say something that is so out of place with Kariya’s remaining perception of her that his mind briefly snaps – for long enough to lead to some truly tragic consequences.
The real tragedy of Kariya Matou is that his slow descent into insanity reveals as much about him as it destroys; although it could never be denied that his self-sacrificial efforts were genuine and whole-heartedly meant, there are more selfish layers to his actions that Kariya himself neglects, practicing some pretty thorough self-deception as a protective measure. It’s only during his final moments when his body and mind finally give out completely that his deepest, suppressed wish for himself – to be a family with Aoi, Sakura and Rin – is embraced in the form of a final, delusional vision.
Perhaps it’s kinder that way.