Chapter 55: Ratings and Banned Words

                                 

Chapter 55: Ratings and Banned Words

About thirty minutes later, Iskandar finally landed back on solid ground with his bull-drawn chariot.

“Hmmm… if this thing were real, I’d really want one,” the King of Conquerors muttered, eyes sparkling as he gazed at the fighter jet prop. “We didn’t have anything this handy in my era—this would’ve crushed a phalanx formation like it was made of paper!”

“That’s not happening. Absolutely not,” came Waver’s weak voice from inside the chariot, slumped against the side like he’d just come back from the dead.

“Modern fighter jets aren’t something individuals can afford to own, you know? The maintenance alone would bankrupt you.”

Whack!

Waver’s forehead snapped back as Iskandar flicked him—hard.

“Hey, what was that for!?”

Clutching the red mark on his head, Waver practically had tears in his eyes.

But Iskandar just burst into booming laughter, clapping him on the shoulder like they were war buddies.

“Bwahahaha! You say the stupidest things, kid! I’m a king, remember?! Once I return to Macedonia, there’ll be an empire waiting for me!”

“…Let’s just see you get out of Fuyuki first, Your Majesty,” Waver grumbled, arms crossed. “What kind of king can’t even get into his own kingdom?”

Iskandar’s mouth opened and closed a few times, then he cast a sidelong glance at Shinji.

“Hmph. If I can connect the leylines little by little, you'll be able to go back to Europe!”

[Insert: Waver’s extremely unimpressed face]

“Exactly! That’s the plan!” Iskandar smacked his fist into his palm, his voice practically vibrating with energy. “Help my Master expand his empire—connect all the world’s leylines! Then, the entire planet shall become the territory of Iskandar, King of Conquerors!”

[Insert: Waver’s deeply concerned face for the mentally unstable]

“HAHAHA! I’m a genius! That’s it! I’ve decided on my next conquest!”

The giant man drew his sword and roared, “My new campaign begins now! I’ll march from the Far East—and conquer the world all the way back to Macedonia!!”

“…Wow. You’re the real cause of global warming, aren’t you?”

Waver had completely given up by this point. 

Meanwhile, Lancelot was climbing off the fighter jet model… in tears.

“S-so pathetic! Because of my mistake, I forced the King to take the controls… I am a disgrace! The most shameful of knights…!”

His grief-stricken expression was so over-the-top it was practically cosplay. Shinji half-expected him to whip out a tissue and start sobbing into it like some rejected drama actor.

This is the strongest of the Round Table?

Why does he feel more like some terminally online fanboy?

Shinji’s foot itched with the overwhelming urge to kick the man in the backside.

“Don’t worry about it, Sir Lancelot,” came Arturia’s gentle voice.

She was positively glowing as she hopped off the plane prop. Her cheeks were pink with excitement—like a kid who’d just stepped off their first roller coaster.

“I couldn’t quite control it in midair, but piloting this strange contraption was exhilarating.”

She affectionately patted the jet’s sleek outer shell.

But Lancelot just shook his head violently, hair flying.

“No, my King—please, say no more! It is all my fault! I must atone—by death if necessary!”

“You shut it right now!” Shinji snapped.

“One more word out of you and I’m pairing you up with Diarmuid to seduce every middle-aged housewife in Japan.”

He swore, if he had known this camel was such a drama queen, he would’ve summoned Gawain instead. At least the Knight of the Sun came with a "mute" setting.

“Let it go, Master,” Arturia said, raising a hand in a calming gesture. “I’m sure Sir Lancelot didn’t mean any harm. You should be a bit more forgiving.”

Shinji sighed, defeated.

He was already thinking ahead—and the future didn’t look pretty.

If Lancelot, arguably the most normal of the Knights of the Round Table, was this much trouble, then what kind of weirdos were the rest of them going to be?

“Arturia,” he muttered. “You really have it rough, huh? Babysitting all these problem children by yourself... Wait—what are you doing?”

Shinji turned around just in time to see Arturia unfastening the support frame on the fighter jet model.

With a bright, innocent smile on her face, she said,

“Master, I was thinking of taking this little one out for a spin.”

“You can’t drive that thing on public roads! Are you trying to get pulled over by traffic police!?”

Shinji’s eye twitched violently.

Even though Japan had slightly more relaxed laws when it came to custom vehicles, a motorbike turned into a jet fighter was still a no-go in any properly functioning legal system.

Let’s not forget—this thing was armed! With live magical ordnance!

What did she plan to do, reenact the Anglo-Japanese War!?

“Look, Arturia, if you really want to ride a motorbike, just take the one you used in the movie. That one was pretty slick…”

“But Master,” Arturia interrupted, a glimmer in her eye. “What do you think of the name ‘Llamrei II’?”

“DON’T NAME IT!!”

THWACK!

Shinji smacked her lightly on the head with a textbook karate chop.

In the end, her dream of cruising through downtown on Llamrei II was crushed under the weight of reality.

As for the fighter jet model, Shinji planned to dismantle the unnecessary parts and auction it off after filming was complete.

Sure, the model cost a fortune to build, but this world had no shortage of rich lunatics with money to burn. Shinji wouldn’t be surprised if it sold for way more than its original production cost.

Of course, this was all thanks to the miracle-worker herself—Touko Aozaki.

Without her, there was no way they could’ve built something this realistic so quickly.

By now, Shinji had completely handed off prop creation to her.

He just had to describe what he wanted and wait for Touko to deliver. It was best to leave professional work to professionals.

And if anything defined professionalism… it was someone like Touko.

But to make use of professionals, sometimes you had to work with some… less-than-savory individuals.

For instance—if Shinji wanted Fate/Zero to pass the Western film rating systems, he had no choice but to ask Time Group to send over an advisor to help navigate the labyrinthine approval process.

Don’t be fooled by how Shinji had already cut out all the scenes involving children, the Western rating system wasn’t that simple.

Take blood, for example. 

There were strict rules on how much you could show in a PG-13 film versus an R-rated one. Even where the blood appeared on the body made a difference.

Sometimes, Shinji would think, “This much blood should be fine,” only to have the advisor veto it:

“Too much bleeding from a vital organ. Instant R-rating.”

This wasn’t something Shinji had faced with Fate/Stay Night, because back then, to simplify approvals, he had just skipped blood altogether.

Most injuries were depicted with some light bruising and clever lighting tricks. Even when Shirou was on the brink of death, Shinji had relied on camera angles and suggestion to get the message across.

But Fate/Zero was different.

This was a film about war. Blood wasn’t optional—it was a necessity.

Which made navigating ratings… a pain in the ass.

Western review boards were infamous for being both cryptic and picky.

They always made it sound great on paper: “As long as the law doesn’t forbid it, you can film whatever you want.”

But if you wanted to actually screen your movie in theaters, you had to go through a formal review.

Skipping it wasn’t impossible, but good luck getting any major theater chain to show an unrated indie film.

As for the MPAA’s rating guidelines?

They were about as consistent as Sir Humphrey Appleby’s moral compass—fluid, murky, and subject to “interpretation.”

Most of their rules were written in vague, meaningless jargon. Unless it was an obvious no-no that everyone already knew, you’d have to be an insider to even guess where the lines were drawn.

Frankly, if a clueless amateur tried to make a movie with no guidance, there was a good chance it would accidentally end up slapped with an R-18 rating.

Not because it was lewd or gory—just because the director had unknowingly stepped on some hidden landmine.

Well… unless that director was some eccentric Brit who decided to make a movie like Paint Drying. Then all bets were off.

Compared to Shinji, the complete rating-system newbie, the Time Group’s consultant was clearly a pro.

Not only did they help with the visual review, they also redesigned several character lines, screening for potentially problematic words that might trigger stricter ratings.

This included not just slurs or discriminatory language, but also the degree and type of swearing in the script—which became a major focus of the consultant’s work.

When people think of English profanity, they usually go straight to that infamous "F" word.

But in truth, English has a whole arsenal of curse words, each carrying a different weight in the rating process.

Even the same word could trigger different ratings depending on its context or usage.

Take "dick" for example.

Used as a name, it’s perfectly innocent.

But the moment it refers to a certain body part, it’s flagged.

Interestingly, when used metaphorically—like calling someone “a dick”—it’s usually not flagged.

So if someone said:

“Dick’s dick is dick,” out of the three "dicks," only the second one would actually trigger a warning.

More annoyingly, the criteria for these flags keep changing, depending on social climate and film industry interests.

What passed yesterday might be blocked today.

Take dick again—Before the 1980s, it was a mild slang, mostly whispered among women behind closed doors. 

But after that slippery rat Nixon took office (and got dunked on by everyone and their grandma), the term exploded in the media. “Dick” became shorthand for a corrupt jerk, thanks to Nixon's nickname being… well, Dick.

Once Watergate hit the fan, not even Americans could resist spamming the word.

Eventually, it was pushed into the “offensive” column of official media vocabulary.

From then on, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone under 40 in the West still naming their kid “Dick.” It became an endangered name used only by grumpy white boomers.

Extreme case? Sure. But it shows just how messy and arbitrary rating standards can be—and why Shinji was damn glad he brought in a consultant.

Word filtering was still the easy part. You could always replace a phrase or two. But things got trickier with Ryunosuke Uryu and Caster’s murder scenes.

Even if the screen showed zero blood, those scenes were never going to pass as PG-13 material.

So instead of showing, Shinji used a trick he had learned back in Fate/Stay Night:

Imply, don’t show.

In Fate/Stay Night, when Shirou got sliced nearly in half by Heracles, Shinji didn’t show the gore.

Instead, he used subtle lighting, indirect camera angles, and sound design to trigger the viewer’s imagination.

The result? Way more chilling than any splatterfest.

Same trick here.

Instead of filming Ryunosuke gleefully stabbing victims, the camera panned over his lair, showing disturbing props, itemized kill lists, and just a few murders carefully engineered to stay below the censorship line.

The imagination is a powerful thing.

Even with the visible violence toned down, the unspoken horror remained. Enough to send shivers down anyone’s spine.

Would this traumatize the viewers?

Shinji’s guess: probably not.

This world’s filmgoers, baptized by decades of so-called “art cinema,” had iron stomachs and morbid curiosities.

If he really shot this movie as an R-rated gore-fest, most of the audience would just order popcorn and enjoy it as a snack.

◆◇◆◇◆

With the aerial battle shoot wrapped, Shinji moved the team back to the soundstage.

He had previously paused studio filming to allow the set crew time to rebuild the scene.

Now that the new layout was finished, filming resumed.

Inside the soundstage, the set had been dressed up to look like the rooftop of a city building.

This was the location for the battle between Kariya Matou and Tokiomi Tohsaka—a duel that, like many things in this war, was more personal than practical.

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