More seriously--not that I'm
not serious about a main character's gut feelings trumping the world's greatest detective--the subject of Olga probably needs to be addressed since I've given plenty of attention to Taylor. Olga hasn't had much coverage, not that she's gotten much in FGO either, but as an important character, there's a fair bit to be said. She is Taylor's Master, after all. Unfortunately, it's a rather complicated subject, in the sense that...
Look, I love the Nasuverse, I actually really do, but it's a relentless bitch to get into. Not so much in the sense of all the weird setting terminology and specific nonsense--although there is a lot of that--but more in the sense that it scatters things across different mediums as much as Kingdom Fucking Hearts, and then proceeds to plant those setting details in obscure places down long-winded roads, such that it's entirely feasible to think you know what's going on with a character, have a conversation, and end up in a situation where the person you're talking to goes 'Oh, have you not read the fourth spin-off manga of the fighting game? Did you read the translation of the first opening song from the fourth year of the mobile game? Did you read the guidebook, the
physical guidebook, that came with the anime spinoff one-shot of the mobile game? No, not that one, the other one. The
other one. Did you read the specially released profiles that came with the anime taking place in an alternate universe featuring a different version of this character that has implications for this completely different version or about that other version from that fourteen year old magazine?'
I'm that guy, by the way. I'm the guy saying that. Those aren't random examples or exaggerations, they're actually what we're about to talk about?
So let's talk about the weirdness surrounding Olga. You might think you have a general idea from the game, wherein she's around just to die, and that's a big chunk of everything we really know in fact, but of course there's more too it than that. I'm not 100% sure about the chronological order of these, entirely because I don't feel like looking it up, so I'm just going down the list as the mood takes me. To start with, we got a profile with El Melloi Case Files anime, one of which featured
Olga, who has an alternate self that appears in that series. There's some general stuff to note from that, like her Magic Circuit Quality (EX) and Quantity (E-)*, but the most important part is the underlined bit. Every profile had a section labeled ' day of decisive battle' without any further explanation. Waver's was “to stand alongside the king at that sea,” Reines’ was “the Lord’s crown.” Olga’s, however, was listed as “outside the cosmos.” Similarly, in the Lostroom Guidebook, there's a weird category for character's dreams, described in vague terms--Lev's dream is described as 'dead.' Ritsuka's dream is described as 'alive.' But
Olga's dream is called 'absent.'
Pretty weird all it's own, but as it happens, she seems to show up in another place besides Case Files, at least arguably--in DDD, a story Nasu published irregularly in a magazine in 2007. DDD is...fucking weird, mostly, but kind of relevant here, because a big aspect of the story is demonic possession, specifically Agonist Disorder, a 'disease' that started developing in Japan where people started going crazy and developing superpowers, from disintegration claws and highly corrosive stomach acid and sweat, to the ability to make other people's heads rotate when you turn yours...which you can turn 360 degrees, naturally. Going into that would be its own thing, but a major part of the setting is the Origa Memorial Institute, a hospital specialized in dealing with the demonically possessed, from the normal and mundanely treatable patients in Ward A to the guarded by men with machine guns and kept dark Ward D. There is, or rather was, a single Ward E patient, however, named '
Marine Origa**,' which sounds very similar to Olga Marie--which would be a minor coincidence at best, except a lot of names from here have been showing up lately, like the Ward D patient Heartless and a doctor called Dr. Roman. That'll come up later, I assure you.
Odd, but whatever. Minor stuff, no apparent bearing on anything.
And then you have--of course--Melty Blood Back Alley Alliance Nightmare, the spin off of the fighting game that suddenly crossed over with FGO from five years ago where Olga Marie was, uh--
checks notes--a magical dimension crossing ghost girl being hunted down by Lev who was attempting to destroy Chaldea, which existed specifically in another dimension***. Olga appeared repeatedly to say 'The future will not change' to Sion, and it's noted repeatedly that 'Olga Marie is dead' and they 'couldn't tamper with the original cause.' Also, Sion's sister from another dimension where she died deploys Rani from Extra because something is causing world-class space-time fractures that are devastating things. In the course of her time therein, she seemingly pimpslaps the Dust of Osiris, one of the final bosses of Melty Blood, and during the course of what happens, an attempt by Atlas to simulate Chaldea results in a simulated Olga that started breaking the simulation, recognizing what should have been an invisible outsider to it, and eventually, seemingly, making the simulation real****. Of course this isn't even fully translated, missing the chapter where a version of Olga convinces Lev to spare her, and he leaves with the ominous statement that it's 2000 years to early to change the future, or where child and adult Olga are asked by Archetype Earth what they really want and say a future with a blue sky, while also filled with lore bits. Again, this was five years ago.
And then there's the fucking song, Gyakko, which is pretty heavily implied to be from Olga's perspective*****. The lyrics in question?
...Yeah. Anyway, while Olga was being sucked into Chaldeas, her theme song began to play and Taylor heard it, sighed really hard, and summoned herself. That's how the Olga's keep her in line, by the way; they just play their themesong at her agressively until she obeys.
*Her likes are well-structured and logical synpopses, her father, adventure novels. Her dislikes, naturally, are 'people who fall asleep right in front of her at their first meeting.'
**Kanata describes her as already dead in a special room and labels her power as, uh, Fuck-slut Dreamy Siesta, but Kanata's kind of just like that. Again, DDD is weird. Credit to junktheeater, by the way.
***Part of the plan to take it out was the ICBMeow Muscle Supergun which can shoot/Rayshift people anywhere they want to go in the Multiverse, provided by Neko-Arc.
****Also, there's, like, a shitton of lore in this fighting game spin-off manga crossover episode, it kind of sucks. Not the lore or even the manga, which are fun, but the placement, because this shit is what I'm talking about. There's a theoretical world where the Nasuverse is easily accessible and the major lore is presented to you lenierly, in the main series or whatever, but its all over the goddamn place.
*****From Maaya Sakamoto and Nasu, credit to Synthetic Travelogue:
