| Assassin (Fate/Zero) | |
|---|---|
| |
| Type | Servant |
| Gender | Male Female |
| Master | |
| Master | Kirei Kotomine |
| Appears in | |
| Anime: | Fate/Zero Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya |
| Voices | |
| Japanese Voice | Abe Akina(Female) Takuo Zawamura(Zayd) Eiichiro Tokumoto |
Assassin is the Assassin Class Servant of Kirei Kotomine in the Fourth Holy Grail War of Fate/Zero. He is unique in that he has the ability to manifest as multiple Heroic Spirits at once, some of them male, and some of them female.
Profile[]
Identity[]
Assassin is The Hundred-Faced Hassan (百の貌のハサン, ?), one of the nineteen people to hold the legendary Persian title of "Old Man of the Mountain", Hassan-i-Sabbah, the leader of al-Assasīn. He was a candidate along with The Beautiful Assassin, but he was chosen due to their fear of her. Their official reasoning was that even though she copied the eighteen previous Zabaniya abilities, she had not produced a miracle of her own.[4] His own ability, Delusional Illusion, was unique in that it was the first to be an inborn ability rather than achieved through modifying his body. He became the nineteenth in succession and currently the last to have become a candidate for summoning. His wish to the Grail was ultimately "to be reconstituted as a complete personality."[5]
Appearance[]
The multiple bodies of Assassin can vary widely in age, gender, build, and style of dress, but in general, their hair appears purple, and their skin and clothing are nearly black. They wear the standard skull mask associated with the known Hassan of the other Grail Wars. The masks change as he changes personalities.[2]
Personality[]
Each of the Assassins has their own personality, and their experiences are not shared between them. The female Assassin is shown to be the main one to interact with Kirei. The Einzbern Consolation Room introduces the first Assassin to be killed by Gilgamesh as Zayd (ザイード, ?). He has a polite tone of speech and a habit of pushing his mask up repeatedly while he speaks. He is very passionate and emotional, and he is upset that his role was to simply die. He is eventually convinced to have pride in his role, and vows to become Zayd, the King of Assassins, before dying in despair while seeing the others being slaughtered by Rider.
Assassin's goal in wanting to obtain the Grail is "to have a perfect and unified personality." Due to his Master having no intention of winning the war, he is instead damned to the fate of a voyeur. Kirei following the orders of Tokiomi makes it so he is truly a servant of a servant. He had plotted to hijack the Holy Grail before either Kirei or Tokiomi in the event the War had gone in their favor, but he didn't even get a chance to display his rebellious side before becoming the first Servant eliminated from the war.[5]
Development[]
The female Assassin is given a design for her face in Fate/Zero material. Takashi Takeuchi calls her the "most delicious" female and says she looks more like a thief than an assassin, but says he made her more like a "Terasawa Girl" rather than just having a beautiful form to keep from overlapping with Maiya. Urobuchi thinks he may have used her more if he had seen her face earlier, and he likes her muscular figure. Despite the design, she doesn't actually have a face under her mask, much like True Assassin.[2]
Urobuchi originally designed a plot line involving one of Assassin's personalities, a small girl called Child Assassin (, Chibi Assassin?), joining with Waver and Rider in the second or third volume to lighten up the story, but it remained unused because giving Waver too much focus would have made the identity of the main character too confusing. She was conceived as a unfortunate young girl lacking in conversational skills, memories, and the awareness that she was a part of Hassan-i-Sabbah. Her clueless personality surfaces when she is captured by the enemy in order to protect her secret, so when she, along with the other Assassins, attack Waver and Rider in Caster's workshop, she separates herself from those who are beheaded by Rider.
Waver mistakes her presence there, believing her to be one of Ryuunosuke's victims suffering from memory loss, and while Rider knows of her identity, he honors Waver's chivalry to allow the Mackenzies to take in yet another false household member. After Kotomine, who knows of her existence, utilizes the Command Spell to attack those at the Einzbern Castle, she regains her memories as Hassan. Through a dramatic farewell tragedy, Waver would climb another step on the path to becoming an adult.[6]
Plot[]
Fate/Zero[]
The Assassins initially act as reconnaissance agents for Tokiomi and Kirei, after Gilgamesh kills one of them
in full view of the other Masters who possessed no specialization in any particular skill. This tactic successfully lead most of the Masters to believe that Kirei and Assassin had been defeated, and allowed the dozens of remaining Assassins to move freely without suspicion.
In the conversation between Kiritsugu Emiya and Maiya, Kiritsugu found it hard to believe that Assassin was defeated so easily so he orders Maiya to send familiars to keep an eye on Kirei Kotomine who surrendered in Fuyuki Church. In the battle between Saber and Lancer, Kiritsugu notices one of the Assassin watching the battle.
Their continued existence, however, is discovered when Rider and Waver Velvet accidentally encounter three Assassins in Caster's lair but they retreated after one of them was killed.
Kirei uses all of his command seals to send all the Assassin to gauge Iskander's power levels. The Assassins meet their end when they decline Iskander's wine offer. He complies by using his most powerful Noble Phantasm, "Ionioi Hetairoi: Army of the King", to massacre each and every one of the Assassins.
Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya[]
When manifested, their appearance is similar to the original except all of their masks are slightly cracked and is shaped like a cyclops instead. Since Illya was at the brink of death, she unknowningly released her mana in a massive explosion and managed to defeat the Assassin Class Card, but as a result, she injured Miyu and the others.
Abilities[]
Unlike True Assassin, who was one entity, the Zabaniya of the Assassin of the 4th War permitted him to divide into up to 80 separate existences. This was not a result of modifying his flesh in the manner of the 18 Hassans that predated him. Rather, the multiple bodies he possessed as a servant came of intentionally fragmenting his psyche in life—a sort of self-inflicted dissociative identity disorder intended to compartmentalize the various skill sets and knowledge he had accumulated during his lifetime; a total of 32 distinct specializations. Summoned by the Grail, he obtained the capacity to express each personality as a independent body, and to relegate individual tasks to the personalities best suited to them.
Among these, several distinct persona are observed. The first, sacrificed in a staged battle against Gilgamesh is noted as having no specific abilities, but was shown to be very acrobatic. Dancing freely between the magic defence of the Tohsaka house, he used stones with lethal accuracy and power to shatter the gems that maintained the bounded field around the building.
A second, female persona seems to act as the liason between Kirei and the Assassins. Her unique skills are not seen, but it may be her ability at delegation that led to Kirei interacting most with her.
A third, while not seen in the final version, was a young girl who suffered amnesia. Planted in order to be picked up by enemies, she would later reveal herself as Assassin and take out her enemies. While not a talent as such, the use of such a sleeper agent would be an invaluable tool to someone like Assassin.
As the nature of the Assassin's Noble Phantasm is "division," the sum of his iterations did not exceed his original existence in strength or capacity; that is to say, each independent fragment was far weaker than his original whole—and owing to the generally weak starting attributes of his class, he definitively became the weakest Servant of the 4th War. However, the class ability.