Norikata Emiya (衛宮 矩賢, Emiya Norikata?) is the father of Kiritsugu and fourth head of the Emiya family.
Profile[]
Background[]
Despite the relatively shallow generation of his family line, Noritaka is an acknowledged genius with a Sealing Designation from the Mage's Association. To avoid the seal, he spent more than twenty years in hiding. He was married during this period, but lost his wife to the Association's hunters. Norikata escaped with his recently born son, Kiritsugu, who had no memory of it. They settled on the small Alimango Island in the Philippines years later, residing there for a year.[1] Norikata took a local inhabitant, Shirley, as an assistant to his research, preferring to stay out of town for the most part in their purportedly haunted home.[2] He prepared a means of escape from the island in advance.
Personality[]
Norikata is an eccentric and strict man, but Kiritsugu views him as as very gentle and a great father in their personal life. He shows concern for Kiritsugu's safety during the incident on the island, waiting until Kiritsugu returns before attempting to flee and showing his normally hidden feelings upon seeing Kiritsugu safe. Norikata cares little for the residents of the island, refraining from interacting with them and showing no care for the incident his experiment caused. He views Shirley as having great potential, saying it would be a shame to leave her on the island. Upon her death, he says it is a pity, but shows no regret or shame in his words.[2]
Role[]
Fate/Zero[]
Norikata finds that a someone has entered his workshop without permission, first asking Kiritsugu if he was the one who did it. Upon learning that it was not Kiritsugu, he tells him not to leave the house and starts making preparations to escape from the island. Shirley, out of curiosity and desperate to validate Norikata's work, drinks his experimental Dead Apostle potion, transforming and infesting the whole island when Kiritsugu refuses to kill her. Kiritsugu is saved by Natalia Kaminski, and upon learning that his father is the culprit, resolves himself to put an end to it.[2]
Norikata is relieved upon Kiritsugu's return, revealing that he knew what would happen upon discovering the theft of the potion. He says it is a pity, but Shirley could not win over her own curiosity. He explains the necessity of the research to Kiritsugu, but says he must abandon his current method because it proved to be a failure. Despite the sacrifices, he intends to continue his research until reaching a satisfactory conclusion. In the novel, he tells Kiritsugu that they need to leave and turns his back to his son, allowing Kiritsugu to shoot him in the back of the neck and then twice in the head.[2] In the anime adaptation, he stabs Norikata in stomach with Shirley's knife and then shoots his bewildered father three times.[3] His body is given to the Association, which takes most of the Emiya Magic Crest. Natalia is able to negotiate for a section to be inherited by Kiritsugu, although only a fragment.[2]
Lord El-Melloi II Case Files[]
Decades later, Doctor Heartless would use Norikata's research[4] as part of his plan to transform Iskandar into a Divine Spirit. With Norikata's time manipulation magecraft combined with the Spiritual Tomb of Albion accelerating Faker's personal time, the thousands of years' worth of prayer required to become a Divine Spirit could be accumulated in much less time.[5] To use the Emiya magecraft, Heartless steals Noritaka's Sealing-designated remains, consisting of his brain, eyes, nervous system, and Magic Circuits in a jar.[6]
Abilities[]
Norikata is a genius magus whose research has deemed him necessary of a Sealing Designation despite the pedigree of his family not being exceedingly great. He followed his family's path of Time Manipulation magecraft, accelerating or stagnating the flow of time within a Reality Marble. He perfected the craft, bringing about the idea to shrink a Bounded Field until the resistance was almost zero and then accelerate the flow of time without limit to witness the end of the universe and arrive at the Root beyond it. Although a promising theory, he believes it would require several hundreds of years of research.[2][1]
The other part of his research involves him attempting to "come up with a solution for aging" for himself or at least Kiritsugu so that the necessary time to complete the formula will be available.[2] One attempt is to halt the flow of time in a living being, successfully performing it on one hundred flowers. They never age or wither, but he is unsure about being able to perform it on a human.[3] Another part of his research has him reluctantly studying Dead Apostles, having created a potion that can turn a person into one.[2] Although it is potent enough to bypass the normal steps and make the person directly into a Dead Apostle, Shirley going out of control and succumbing means it is still a failure.[7] Deciding that the whole theory is a failure, he plans to abandon his current line of experiment and start from the basics.[2]
Development[]
Norikata's English voice actor, Kirk Thornton, previously voiced Kiritsugu in the 2006 Fate/stay night anime by Studio Deen. Thornton being cast as Norikata seems to be a reference to this.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1
[] Fate/Zero material - Encyclopedia: Emiya Norikata [Person's name], p.093 Norikata Emiya [Person's name]
Kiritsugu’s father. His family thaumaturgy involved time manipulation inside the body or possibly small cause-and-effect, and he was a genius who in only the fourth generation, a relatively shallow generation, rose to the rank of gaining a Sealing Designation.
Spent more than 20 years hiding from the pursuit of the Magic Association, and finally hid himself on a small southern island. Though Norikata’s wife died at the hands of the Magic Association’s hunters, Kiritsugu, who had just been born at the time, has no memory of the incident.
Accelerating or slowing the flow of time inside a Reality Marble free from the world’s interference is the thaumaturgy of the Emiya family. But after investigating it thoroughly, Norikata found that, in a Bounded Field that was minimized until resistance was almost zero, the flow of time could be accelerated without limit, and reaching the Root would be possible, right before observing the universe’s end. Although the theory itself was very promising, finishing the experiment would still require several hundreds of years. In order to resolve the issue of life span, he decided to explore the methods of becoming a Dead Apostle.
The tragedy that arose as a result was the story narrated at the beginning of Volume 4 of Zero.衛宮矩賢【人名】
衛宮切嗣の父。体内、あるいは小因果の時間操作に特化した家伝の魔術を、4代目という比較的浅い世代において封印指定の域にまで昇華させた天才。
20年以上に渉って魔術協会の追跡をかわし続け、最後は南国の小さな島に身を潜めていた。彼の妻もまた魔術協会からの追っ手によって命を落としているのだが、その経緯は、当時生まれて間もない切嗣の記憶にはない。
世界によって干渉されない固有結界の内側において時間の流れを加速あるいは停滞させるのが衛宮家の魔術だが、矩賢はこれを突き詰め、抵抗がほぼゼロに等しくなるは、ど極小まで縮めた結界の中で、時間流を無限に加速させ、宇宙の終烏を観測することでその先にあるはずの『根源』に至ろうと企んでいた。埋論そのものはかなり有望だったのだが、実験を完遂するためには数百年の期間が必要とされ、やむなく彼は寿命の問題を解決するべく死徒化の手段を模索しはじめる。
その結果もたらされた惨劇は、Zero4巻の冒頭に描かれた通り。 - ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Fate/Zero Volume 4: Flames of Purgatory - Interlude
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Fate/Zero Anime - Episode 18: "Distant Memories"
- ↑ Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files Volume 9: case. Grand Roll (Middle) - Chapter 1 Part 1
- ↑ Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files Volume 9: case. Grand Roll (Middle) - Chapter 3 Part 4
- ↑ Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files Volume 10: case. Grand Roll (Lower) - Chapter 3 Part 1
- ↑
[] Interview de Gen UROBUCHI à l’Épitanime 2013 TMF: Becoming a vampire normally requires a hundred years, and only one individual in ten thousand can do it. But Shirley came to that point in a few minutes. Does she have a particular latent power which she couldn’t awaken because she died too early?
U: It comes from the potion which Kiritsugu’s father gave her, which has that special property. But because she went mad, it’s a failure.
TMF : Devenir un vampire nécessite normalement une centaine d’années et seul un individu sur 10 000 peut le faire. Mais Shirley y est arrivé en quelques minutes. Est-ce qu’elle avait un pouvoir spécial latent qu’elle n’a pas pu éveiller parce qu’elle est morte avant ?
U : Ça vient de la potion que lui a donné le père Kiritsugu, qui a cette propriété spécifique. Mais comme elle est devenue folle, c’est un échec.