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* There will be spoilers in the main part of “FGO”, so please be careful if you want to avoid spoilers.

In anime and manga, characters’ popularity and topics tend to be biased toward the main character side and heroes. However, “light” looks bright and shining only because “shadow” exists.
The 14th part of “Villians Retsuden: What is Their Aesthetics?”, which focuses on enemy characters, approaches the charm of Solomon, King of Magic, from “Fate / Grand Order”.
The movie adaptation of the smartphone RPG game “Fate / Grand Order (FGO)”, “Fate/Grand Order Final Singularity – Grand Temple of Time: Solomon” has been released on July 30.

“FGO” is an app game with a huge amount of text, and the anime adaptation is produced by picking up popular stories from all episodes. This “Solomon” depicts the final boss in the final battle of the first part.

“FGO” is a story of reviving human history after being burnt. The final boss, Solomon, King of Magic, is a person who re-questions the way humans and human history should be. He can be called the fully complete character, who perfectly shows if humans are worth living, and if so, why they are worth living.

Here, let’s briefly summarize the footsteps of the main character and Solomon so that even those who have not played the game will understand.

Finis Chaldea, a human resources continuity guarantee agency that aims to perpetuate the history of humankind, finds out that people will be extinct in 2016 for some reason. The cause is the seven Holy Grail sent by the King of Magic Solomon in the past. By using the Holy Grail and sending them to a turning point of human history, Solomon plans to create a singularity that disturbs human history to change all human history.

The protagonist makes a ray shift in the past to regain history as it is and challenges the battle to collect the Holy Grail with many spirits. And the hero who finished collecting the seven Holy Grail will finally confront Solomon, at The Grand Time Temple, which is the home of Solomon.

From here on, spoilers for the main part of “FGO” start, so please be careful if you want to avoid spoilers.

Solomon possesses abilities of clairvoyance. It allows him to see into every past and future. With the abilities, he witnessed all tragedies and stupid despairs of human history. However, it is said that Solomon himself did not have human sensibility because he was a creature who was appointed as a king from the time he was born. If he actually is such an existence, he cannot fall into despair no matter what he sees.

The true identity of Solomon, King of Magic, is Goetia, King of Demon Gods who is controlling 72 demons. Goetia calls himself “Solomon’s alter ego”, with who he shared his consciousness with the clairvoyant, so he saw the past and future of humankind. And although Solomon has no human heart, he is different. Overwhelmed by the tragedy and despair of human history, he mourned and started to think that people are imperfect and could never overcome their stupid acts, and decided to rebuild the planet of mankind.

Goetia’s purpose is not to eliminate humankind. Its purpose is to recreate the entire history of mankind and create a world without the concept of death. It’s a very grand plan and the motives are easy to understand. In short, he came up with the idea that “people are stupid.” If you can’t overcome the stupidity through reviewing everything from the past to the future, you have to recreate everything from scratch.

The “Fate” series is based on the idea of summoning and using heroes of past as your heroes. There are various reasons why someone is called a hero, but it is not uncommon for a hero to have a plethora of blood behind his success. Charlie Chaplin said in the movie “Monsieur Verdoux”, “If you kill one, you’re a murderer, if you kill a million, you’re a hero.”, and there are many of the heroes in history who are certainly those who were active on the battlefield.

It seems that Goetia has a grudge against those who have suffered behind the success of such heroes’ actions. The main character of “FGO” summons and fights with the hero, which is why he deserves to be the last enemy of this story. The story is questioning, are heroes really valuable? and doesn’t the horrifying tragedy of human history will never disappear because of that?

Saying that one hero costs the lives of one million people is certainly pushes the inequality of life. The new world that Goetia is trying to create is a world without this inequality. The story of “FGO” has a structure in which the purpose is to lead and destroy the spirit, which is exactly the product of inequality (from Goetia’s point of view).

So how can we affirm this world with heroes and so many tragedies? This is the question of this battle. True Solomon, who confronts Goetia, tells him:

“Life has the end. Life is a pilgrimage that accumulates suffering. But it is not a story of death and severance. It is a thing that confronts death and severance with a limited life. It is a thing that repeats farewell and encounters while knowing the end. A brilliant, twinkling, momentary journey. This is called the story of love and hope. ”

Goetia says that human life without a way to avoid death is scary at all costs, but Solomon says that human life is beautiful because it has the end.

The last thing that beats Goetia is the hero’s willingness to live his finite life to the fullest, the desire to “just live for himself.” It is said that because the genre d’Arc is a spirit of soul, he is trapped in his greed and cannot bend his belief.

Then, Goetia himself awakens to that desire and changes from ” King of Demon Gods” to “Human King Goetia”. At that point, he knew that his life was running out and he couldn’t help at all. Nevertheless, he challenges the hero to the final game.

The game has no rational meaning. It is a desire to fight with nothing but a will.

The appearance of Goetia at this time is beautiful. It is exactly what Solomon said, “A moment of a blinking star.” And the beauty of that moment is completed by being defeated by the main character.

Human history is a series of such finite tragedy and beauty of life. Goetia proved it by being defeated by the main character. It’s a wonderful way to draw a curtain.

“Villians Retsuden: What is Their Aesthetics?” Click here for past articles