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While the original fan-made video was incredibly shocking and featured a dazzling array of recognizable character models, it was also undeniably awkward in its pacing—clearly made by passionate amateurs rather than professional editors.
So Max's approach became simple: cut corners wherever humanly possible.
After inserting some additional plot-relevant dialogue to smooth out the transitions and fill narrative gaps, a brand-new promotional video was ready to go.
You heard that right—Max wanted to kill two birds with one stone.
This video would serve double duty: both as the opening cinematic for the updated "Holy Grail War" and as the official promotional trailer to be uploaded across social media platforms.
One could only say that humans are truly capable of anything when it comes to being efficiently lazy.
Sometimes, Max genuinely terrified himself with his own talent for strategic corner-cutting.
But getting back to the main topic—under the epic musical accompaniment of the Hunger Games: Catching Fire soundtrack, the cinematic scene shifted.
On a tropical island where a bright full moon had risen over the ocean, beneath shimmering moonlit waves, a brown-skinned girl turned to look at the young boy in a white tank top standing behind her.
She asked a simple question that would fundamentally reshape the course of history:
"Kerry... what kind of person do you want to be when you grow up?"
The girl's name was Shirley, and she was Emiya Kiritsugu's first love—the woman who changed his entire life trajectory and philosophical worldview.
Shirley was gentle, talented, and kind to her core.
She had been a ray of pure light in Kiritsugu's otherwise dark childhood. With her patient help and genuine friendship, young Kiritsugu had finally integrated into the island community and stopped being bullied by the other children his age.
During their time together, Kiritsugu had fallen deeply in love with this girl who was four years his senior—his first experience with something resembling happiness.
However, kindness ultimately only invited disaster.
Because Shirley's natural talent for magecraft was recognized by Kiritsugu's father, who selected her as his research assistant for extremely dangerous experiments.
And to prove the validity of Kiritsugu's father's research hypothesis, Shirley had secretly stolen a vial of experimental serum and consumed it herself, voluntarily becoming the test subject.
The outcome was, naturally, utterly tragic.
After all, this was a character written by that author. Happy endings weren't really his style.
Thus, in an abandoned chicken coop on the island, young Kiritsugu discovered Shirley—transformed into a blood-crazed ghoul, her humanity completely stripped away.
At that moment, Shirley had begged Kiritsugu to kill her. To end her suffering before she hurt anyone else.
But Kiritsugu, blinded by his feelings and unable to accept losing her, had refused her desperate plea.
The entire island was destroyed as a direct result of that single moment of weakness.
That's right—humans transformed into ghouls instinctively craved blood and attacked others on sight. And those who were attacked would also turn, creating an exponential cascade of violence.
Because of his momentary soft-heartedness, his inability to kill the person he loved, every single resident on that island had suffered and died horribly.
And so, young Emiya Kiritsugu found his answer to the trolley problem that had plagued philosophers for generations.
The answer was to sacrifice the few to save the many.
Even if "the few" included his own loved ones, his friends, his family—to save the world, to save humanity as a whole, Emiya Kiritsugu would sacrifice them without hesitation or regret.
The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few.
Always.
However, as the saying goes: human joys and sorrows are fundamentally incompatible.
The story was genuinely good—players who'd actually experienced the story mode would definitely understand the emotional weight and tragic beauty of Kiritsugu's backstory.
But most of the chat viewers were casuals who'd skipped straight to multiplayer, so...
[NewWife]: Holy shit, is this a new waifu character?!
[FeetGuy]: I'M GOING TO THE BEACH RIGHT NOW! SANDALS! Those feet probably smell amazing and taste a little salty, I need to lick them immediately!
[Begging]: Max, don't make me get on my knees and BEG you to release female playable characters! This one's perfect!
[Pilot]: Unit 001 Ace Pilot requesting permission to sortie!
[Judgment]: Are you degenerates seriously getting aroused by a tragic backstory scene? What is WRONG with you people?
[Philosophical]: Do wise men always speak this boldly nowadays?
[Lore]: Are your minds full of nothing but horny thoughts? This is SHIRLEY! Haven't any of you actually played story mode?!
[Meme]: Rei! Where is Rei?!
The chat comments demonstrated the incredible diversity of the human species—and not always in flattering ways.
As the chat continued scrolling with increasingly unhinged takes, the cinematic scene shifted once again.
The girl beneath the waves smiled peacefully, while the boy standing on the shore watching her had confusion mixed with a hint of shy affection in his young eyes.
As the camera slowly zoomed in on his face, the boy's dilated pupils reflected a completely different scene—Artoria, soaked by torrential rain, kneeling alone on Camlann Hill surrounded by the corpses of her fallen knights.
"Perhaps this is... a punishment inflicted upon a king who never understood the human heart!"
Rain streamed down Artoria's face in rivulets. A bitter smile appeared on her lips—but beneath that smile lay nothing but endless regret and soul-crushing loneliness.
But just as the broken king knelt in complete despair, as if a miracle was descending from heaven itself, a beam of pure white light suddenly shone down upon her from the storm clouds above.
The summoning had begun.
Then the scene shifted dramatically—cutting to that familiar ritual circle, where the familiar figure of Emiya Kiritsugu completed his Servant summoning with mechanical precision.
But at this moment in his life, Kiritsugu's eyes were utterly numb. Dead. Empty of anything resembling hope or joy.
The instant he saw Artoria materialize before him, he didn't stay to greet her or explain the situation. He simply stood up and walked out of the summoning room without a word.
And so the cinematic returned to the original story opening sequence.
Emiya Kiritsugu walked forward through the snow with three women following behind him—Irisviel, Maiya, and Saber. The remaining six Master-Servant pairs appeared one by one as the cinematic progressed, establishing the full roster of combatants.
However, as Kiritsugu continued walking forward through the desolate winter landscape, the screen finally froze on a single, empty frame.
Behind him, there was no one left following anymore.
Instead, the camera revealed a snow-covered ancient castle looming in the background. Within this gloomy, oppressive atmosphere stood a hauntingly beautiful woman with white hair and blood-red eyes.
Irisviel.
Or rather—something wearing Irisviel's face.
"My wish... how will the Holy Grail fulfill it?" Kiritsugu's voice was barely above a whisper, trembling with suppressed emotion.
"This kind of thing... Kerry... shouldn't you know better than anyone else?" The woman's voice was gentle. Comforting. Loving.
At this moment, Emiya Kiritsugu's expression was still numb, still dead.
But what dominated his eyes even more was unbelievable sadness and boundless pain—so overwhelming that even his voice shook from the sheer agony of it.
However, facing Kiritsugu's trembling question, the woman before him responded like a gentle, caring wife trying to comfort her suffering husband.
She walked slowly from her position by the window to Kiritsugu's side near the door, placing one pale hand tenderly on his shoulder.
She opened her mouth to speak—
But as if to reflect that a critical turning point in destiny was about to occur, the background music suddenly trembled and distorted.
And the woman's expression shifted in an instant.
That gentle, loving smile transformed into something else entirely—an eerie, unsettling grin that was wrong on a fundamental level.
It could be said that this single moment stirred up an absolute hornet's nest of chat reactions.
[Interrupted]: HOLY FUCK! I was literally about to type "wife" and you hit me with THAT?!
[Defeated]: My boner, my boner, my boner just died instantly. Max you OLD BASTARD, you owe me compensation!
[Spiritual]: That word "compensate" has some very spiritual implications.
[Closet]: My closet is moving. I'm not watching this anymore. Nope.
[Doctor]: You guys keep chatting, I need to take my boyfriend to the ER. I got too excited and grabbed something I shouldn't have grabbed.
[Redefining]: Redefining the phrase "grabbed something."
[Aesthetic]: Red eyes and white hair have always been peak aesthetic design!
[Bait]: This is BAIT! This is CRUEL BAIT AND SWITCH!
Red eyes and white hair had always been an extremely popular aesthetic combination—especially in anime and gaming communities.
But the woman's dramatic transformation from gentle wife to something wrong instantly turned the uniform "new waifu" spam into horrified "OH MY GOD" reactions.
However, just as everyone was desperately curious about what would happen next between Kiritsugu and this mysterious woman, Max extended his restless, absolutely sinful hand toward the screen.
And clicked "SKIP" in the upper right corner.
The cinematic abruptly cut to black.
"This video is actually the new promotional trailer," Max explained with an innocent smile. "If you want to watch the full thing, you can experience it in-game or check it out on the official website. We're not going to waste stream time on it right now."
The chat exploded.
[Broadsword]: WHERE'S MY BROADSWORD?! WHERE IS IT?!
[Bastard]: YOU CLIFFHANGER-LOVING BASTARD!
[NeverAgain]: I'll NEVER call you "babe" again! You're just an old thief! A SCAMMER! I finally got invested and wanted to see what happens next, and you tell me we're not watching it?!
[ThreatLevel]: Max, I strongly suggest you lock your doors at night. Otherwise I'm definitely breaking in to steal your mom!
[Specific]: Not his mom, steal his WIFI ROUTER. That's the real pain.
[Chaos]: I'M GOING TO YOUR HOUSE RIGHT NOW—
[Banned]: [User has been timed out for 10 minutes]
Max couldn't help but grin at the absolute chaos he'd unleashed.
Yeah, he thought to himself. This is going exactly according to plan.
Hook them with an amazing opening, then leave them desperate for more.
Marketing 101.
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