11

At the beginning of Ufotable's UBW adaptation, on the day Rin was going to summon Archer, the clocks happened to have moved backwards by one hour. She considered that it may have been her father's doing.

Why did the clocks move one hour backwards?

Saturn
  • 4,242
  • 5
  • 32
  • 68
  • I've been playing the visual novel, and this also seems to happen regardless of which route is taken, since this is in the prologue which comes before any possible path choices. – Maroon May 28 '15 at 19:41

1 Answers1

12

The explanation is kind of dumb.

The day before Rin summoned Archer, she was rummaging through her father's effects in hopes of finding stuff that would be useful for the summoning. One of the things she found was the box containing the pendant (and, at least per the depiction in UBW 2014, the catalyst for Gilgamesh), protected by a magical MacGuffin that, when activated, makes clocks go wonky and apparently rewind by one hour. She activated the MacGuffin. The clocks rewound in two half-hour increments. She only noticed one of the half-hour increments. The end.

Nasu later stated in an interview (in Complete Material 3) that this was apparently an intentional "test"-of-sorts on Tokiomi's part, the idea being that if she couldn't handle a minor issue like this, she wasn't cut out to be in the war.

This makes no chronological sense, because Tokiomi likely never expected Rin to be in the war in the first place (Tokiomi would have expected the fifth war to take place around 2060 or so, by which time Rin would have had descendants rather more sprightly than she), but there you have it.

senshin
  • 35,088
  • 25
  • 142
  • 247
  • Bizarrely enough, I didn't know bit about Gilgamesh, despite watching both the film and current anime adaptation . . . – Maroon May 28 '15 at 19:45
  • 1
    @Maroon You probably wouldn't notice it unless you've seen Fate/Zero (it's just an amusing callback, really; it doesn't appear in the visual novel). The catalyst for Gilgamesh doesn't appear in the 2010 film, presumably because Fate/Zero hadn't been animated yet, meaning there wouldn't be anything to call back _to_. – senshin May 28 '15 at 19:53
  • 1
    the trick could have also been for any Tohsaka Master, Tokiomi probably had faith that Rin, despite being in her late 60's early 70's (Fate/Stay Night's disclaimer does say that all character depicted having sex are 18 year or older) that she would still be chosen and remember there are skilled Mages who can extend their life without being Dead Apostles (ie Jubstacheit). aside from that Rin would still need to be made aware of it in the chance her [daughter/granddaughter/relative](http://typemoon.wikia.com/wiki/Rin_Tohsaka_%28Fate/Extra%29) was made one – Memor-X May 28 '15 at 22:33
  • 1
    Also in Tokiomi's [Wikia Page](http://typemoon.wikia.com/wiki/Tokiomi_Tohsaka#Fate.2Fstay_night) which has the citation to the Q&A you mention, it says Rin was aware of the clocks change but thought it was 30 minutes and i am quite sure she accounted for those 30 minutes during the summoning (remembering it from when she met with Ayako in the morning at school) – Memor-X May 28 '15 at 22:38
  • @Memor-X Thanks for catching that error; I edited my answer. – senshin May 29 '15 at 10:06