The Type-Moon Miscellaneous Thoughts Thread

[RoydGolden]

Rando thinking

I had an epiphany in regards to medusa's magan works
Mats has 2 instances where it said that its resistable with high enough MR or MGI

MR sounds reasonable enough but the MGI thing reminds me about that one part in the VN where it said that having magic energy flowing inside a magus or even just having magic circuit can repel in-progress magic. Im thinking its probably the same, how much maryoku one can handle indirectly affects magic a servant can "repel".

I mean, wasn't that kind of obvious?

[castor212]

Its one of the "old thing that only shows up at the beginning like once and most people forgotten already" sort of trivia

[Laserman]

I learned a lot about Magic Resistance that I didn't know about when I looked into how First Folio affected Jeanne, like how it works for magi and how it works for Saber. Cool stuff.

[Akyuu]

Not sure if it goes here or somewhere else but I was talking with a friend when a thought just came to me so here's a textwall that's not well organized srry4that and also probably was already thought of anyway alsosorry4that

FSN stuff i guess

I've always thought that it was a blessing that HF was a combination of Sakura and bits of Illya's hypothetical route. After all, we get both the moral conflict of wanting to save Sakura who's also the cause of innocent people dying (or at least she was related to it in some way I don't remember) AND Shirou's interactions with the daughter of his savior-slash-father-figure-slash-ideal and that somehow culminates in the best fight scene in the entire VN (the fistfight, not Sparks Liner High, fight me). HF combines the best parts of Shirou's interactions with both heroines.

But consider that Zouken was shafted pretty hard. Like, he's actually pretty interesting if you think about his backstory. Dude has a dream and he's dying on the inside and he's using dick worm magic to sustain himself but that's also killing him on the inside anyway and there's only a glimmer of his dream left but he's still trying to reach it. He could've been a pretty compelling villain for Sakura's story arc, hell, he could've been a decent parallel to HF Shirou whose magic is also killing him on the inside but in a more literal, edgy manner. But instead Zouken is just a creepy old guy. HF as a route is already so jam-packed with things that I can't blame Nasu for it but still. Zouken was boring. He could've been interesting. Now if HF was just Sakura's route and Illya's route was a separate thing, Zouken could've been a much better villain, in HF. He can die in all the other routes for all I care.

That was random thought number one, but that led to number two:

HF was amazing because both Sakura and Illya elements were there. If you remove Illya from HF and strengthen Sakura, can Illya still stand on her own in her route? I didn't think it was possible, at first.

But ignore that Illya is the token loli and that she's Kiritsugu's daughter thus making her directly relevant to Shirou, and imagine what having an actual Illya route could be like. Illya's basic character setting is a person who, even if saved, would die soon because she's a homunculus. Making someone like that, who also isn't actually related to Shirou's everyday life before the main story began, the focus of a route and involve her directly with Shirou's save-everyone mentality and that sounds amazing. It challenges Shirou's ideals in a way that Sakura couldn't. Look at Sakura and HF's setup, it's actually fairly traditional. The main character saves the woman who's a part of his daily life at the face of impossible odds, the twist is just that the heroine herself, her existence violates (at least on a surface level) the ideals that the main character believes in very much. It's still a story of a protagonist who wants to protect his everyday life. Compare that to UBW where if you divorce the characters from their contexts (not sure which one but bear with me) it's basically about the main character whose ideals take solid form and then criticizes him for believing in it. Illya could've been the character whose existence exposes another flaw in Shirou's ideal: divorce her away from the fact that she's Kiritsugu's daughter, she's just a human being who shouldn't be saved because saving her at the expense of someone else (which already goes against what Shirou believes in, yes I know) is counter-intuitive since she will die anyway. From what I remember, this element was already decently touched on(someone call the CP police) in Sakura's route but I think it deserves its own route, it could've been elaborated so much more and could've been made out to be a stronger ideological challenge to Shirou's belief.

Also like, I'm not satisfied with how F/SN ended. I think HF's normal end was perfect, for HF. HF's good end was fine, a little too rose-tinted. And then you get an ending where Shirou reunites with Saber in Avalon after everything else and if I had to be honest, I don't fucking care. Maybe it's just me, but after finishing HF you instead get an emotional conclusion for Shirou and Saber? It's a great way to close off the Fate route, but coming off the emotional intensity of HF it didn't satisfy me. To me, FSN ended with Shirou's fistfight with Kotomine and Illya saving her 'little brother' afterwards. The scenes after that don't really matter to me. Especially that Avalon extra ending. I can't pinpoint why but I think it has to do with how HF Shirou ends up in such a different place from Fate Shirou and the gap between the two hasn't been reconciled so I don't feel true emotional conclusion from it. Now, I don't think HF Shirou seemingly betraying his ideal is actually a betrayal of his character but that's a separate discussion (I imagine it would be a discussion because even I thought so at first). HF Shirou ending F/SN is perfectly fine. With that said, I think a fourth route to bridge that gap, between HF and Fate should exist. Fate route just says Shirou's ideal exists. UBW points out that it's wrong. HF goes further and shows what Shirou should actually do to achieve what he truly desires most instead of believing in his ideal. If you look at it that way, HF is the logical end of the story and that's fine. However, look at it this way instead. Fate route is ideologically irrelevant, it just establishes the narrative baseline for later routes to break from. UBW actually makes Shirou's ideals its subject. HF ''deconstructs'' that ideal (sorry for having to resort to that word). Having a fourth route that ''reconstructs'' what HF criticizes into a stronger whole (ideally without rendering HF's message meaningless) does not sound that farfetched.

I'm aware that's not actually that strong an argument, but I can imagine Nasu actually doing something with that. And that kind of reconstruction would bridge HF Shirou back to Fate Shirou and then I think I'd be able to accept the Avalon end better. Plus it could be a route where Saber becomes relevant again and not as a morally corrupted alternate version, although I'm not sure if she'd be useful to explore Shirou's morality in that hypothetical scenario. It doesn't matter as much. What matters to me here is that at least in my head I can see an idealized form of F/SN with its planned four routes and an even ideologically stronger story and now I feel sad we didn't get that end product.

does this count as misc thoughts or not really

[Deathhappens]

Not sure if it goes here or somewhere else but I was talking with a friend when a thought just came to me so here's a textwall that's not well organized srry4that and also probably was already thought of anyway alsosorry4that

FSN stuff i guess

I've always thought that it was a blessing that HF was a combination of Sakura and bits of Illya's hypothetical route. After all, we get both the moral conflict of wanting to save Sakura who's also the cause of innocent people dying (or at least she was related to it in some way I don't remember) AND Shirou's interactions with the daughter of his savior-slash-father-figure-slash-ideal and that somehow culminates in the best fight scene in the entire VN (the fistfight, not Sparks Liner High, fight me). HF combines the best parts of Shirou's interactions with both heroines.

But consider that Zouken was shafted pretty hard. Like, he's actually pretty interesting if you think about his backstory. Dude has a dream and he's dying on the inside and he's using dick worm magic to sustain himself but that's also killing him on the inside anyway and there's only a glimmer of his dream left but he's still trying to reach it. He could've been a pretty compelling villain for Sakura's story arc, hell, he could've been a decent parallel to HF Shirou whose magic is also killing him on the inside but in a more literal, edgy manner. But instead Zouken is just a creepy old guy. HF as a route is already so jam-packed with things that I can't blame Nasu for it but still. Zouken was boring. He could've been interesting. Now if HF was just Sakura's route and Illya's route was a separate thing, Zouken could've been a much better villain, in HF. He can die in all the other routes for all I care.

That was random thought number one, but that led to number two:

HF was amazing because both Sakura and Illya elements were there. If you remove Illya from HF and strengthen Sakura, can Illya still stand on her own in her route? I didn't think it was possible, at first.

But ignore that Illya is the token loli and that she's Kiritsugu's daughter thus making her directly relevant to Shirou, and imagine what having an actual Illya route could be like. Illya's basic character setting is a person who, even if saved, would die soon because she's a homunculus. Making someone like that, who also isn't actually related to Shirou's everyday life before the main story began, the focus of a route and involve her directly with Shirou's save-everyone mentality and that sounds amazing. It challenges Shirou's ideals in a way that Sakura couldn't. Look at Sakura and HF's setup, it's actually fairly traditional. The main character saves the woman who's a part of his daily life at the face of impossible odds, the twist is just that the heroine herself, her existence violates (at least on a surface level) the ideals that the main character believes in very much. It's still a story of a protagonist who wants to protect his everyday life. Compare that to UBW where if you divorce the characters from their contexts (not sure which one but bear with me) it's basically about the main character whose ideals take solid form and then criticizes him for believing in it. Illya could've been the character whose existence exposes another flaw in Shirou's ideal: divorce her away from the fact that she's Kiritsugu's daughter, she's just a human being who shouldn't be saved because saving her at the expense of someone else (which already goes against what Shirou believes in, yes I know) is counter-intuitive since she will die anyway. From what I remember, this element was already decently touched on(someone call the CP police) in Sakura's route but I think it deserves its own route, it could've been elaborated so much more and could've been made out to be a stronger ideological challenge to Shirou's belief.

Also like, I'm not satisfied with how F/SN ended. I think HF's normal end was perfect, for HF. HF's good end was fine, a little too rose-tinted. And then you get an ending where Shirou reunites with Saber in Avalon after everything else and if I had to be honest, I don't fucking care. Maybe it's just me, but after finishing HF you instead get an emotional conclusion for Shirou and Saber? It's a great way to close off the Fate route, but coming off the emotional intensity of HF it didn't satisfy me. To me, FSN ended with Shirou's fistfight with Kotomine and Illya saving her 'little brother' afterwards. The scenes after that don't really matter to me. Especially that Avalon extra ending. I can't pinpoint why but I think it has to do with how HF Shirou ends up in such a different place from Fate Shirou and the gap between the two hasn't been reconciled so I don't feel true emotional conclusion from it. Now, I don't think HF Shirou seemingly betraying his ideal is actually a betrayal of his character but that's a separate discussion (I imagine it would be a discussion because even I thought so at first). HF Shirou ending F/SN is perfectly fine. With that said, I think a fourth route to bridge that gap, between HF and Fate should exist. Fate route just says Shirou's ideal exists. UBW points out that it's wrong. HF goes further and shows what Shirou should actually do to achieve what he truly desires most instead of believing in his ideal. If you look at it that way, HF is the logical end of the story and that's fine. However, look at it this way instead. Fate route is ideologically irrelevant, it just establishes the narrative baseline for later routes to break from. UBW actually makes Shirou's ideals its subject. HF ''deconstructs'' that ideal (sorry for having to resort to that word). Having a fourth route that ''reconstructs'' what HF criticizes into a stronger whole (ideally without rendering HF's message meaningless) does not sound that farfetched.

I'm aware that's not actually that strong an argument, but I can imagine Nasu actually doing something with that. And that kind of reconstruction would bridge HF Shirou back to Fate Shirou and then I think I'd be able to accept the Avalon end better. Plus it could be a route where Saber becomes relevant again and not as a morally corrupted alternate version, although I'm not sure if she'd be useful to explore Shirou's morality in that hypothetical scenario. It doesn't matter as much. What matters to me here is that at least in my head I can see an idealized form of F/SN with its planned four routes and an even ideologically stronger story and now I feel sad we didn't get that end product.

does this count as misc thoughts or not really

That's actually a pretty interesting stream of thought and I would really like to further explore what a completed Illya route might mean (besides sirens in the distance, natch). It does, however, bring to mind one of my biggest pet peeves about HF: the endings. Specifically, the two non-canon but infamous "Mind of Steel" and "Sparks Liner High". Let's break them down for a bit, shall we?

Mind of Steel: Shirou "fails" to let go of his twisted ideal. He kills Sakura and goes on to "become a superhero" (which, I've found, is subject to interpretation, but I always thought meant he succeeds in destroying the Grail and saving the world,just like a "superhero", albeit at the cost of his humanity).

" Bad End."

Sparks Liner High: Shirou pushes himself to the extremes and manages to eke out a victory against Saber Alter with his dying breath. It's implied that Sakura is saved thanks to his sacrifice, yes, but his personal journey is over. He doesn't save her like he pledged to. He dies in the course f saving her and Rin&Ridah pick up the slack.

"End". (The only one in the VN, if I remember correctly).

Shouldn't these two be reversed?

[Akyuu]

That's actually a pretty interesting stream of thought and I would really like to further explore what a completed Illya route might mean (besides sirens in the distance, natch). It does, however, bring to mind one of my biggest pet peeves about HF: the endings. Specifically, the two non-canon but infamous "Mind of Steel" and "Sparks Liner High". Let's break them down for a bit, shall we?

Mind of Steel: Shirou "fails" to let go of his twisted ideal. He kills Sakura and goes on to "become a superhero" (which, I've found, is subject to interpretation, but I always thought meant he succeeds in destroying the Grail and saving the world,just like a "superhero", albeit at the cost of his humanity).

" Bad End."

Sparks Liner High: Shirou pushes himself to the extremes and manages to eke out a victory against Saber Alter with his dying breath. It's implied that Sakura is saved thanks to his sacrifice, yes, but his personal journey is over. He doesn't save her like he pledged to. He dies in the course f saving her and Rin&Ridah pick up the slack.

"End". (The only one in the VN, if I remember correctly).

Shouldn't these two be reversed?

I don't actually quite get Sparks Liner High's appeal that much, so I'll ignore that for now, but I can absolutely accept Mind of Steel as an alternate end. That said, it's a bad end in the context of HF because holding on to his ideal in HF does not lead him to happiness. All of HF is about teaching Shirou that he holds on to his ideal because he wants to be happy and protect his loved ones (or something along those lines) and that ideal is diverting him away from that goal this time. Whatever happens after he kills Sakura isn't really relevant since he's already resolved himself, his ideals won't waver anymore. The story doesn't have anything else to say, whether he saves the world and destroys the grail or not doesn't really matter.

Using that logic, Sparks Liner High also ends where it needs to. Shirou's ideals won't change again because he's dead. It's not a good end because he doesn't fulfill his promise, but he does achieve the basic objective the route set out to achieve.

[Akyuu]

I risk going into fanwank territory but to add to my earlier post with more loose thoughts:

kireiman

Look at Kirei a bit. Fate route, he's like a pretty shitty, forgettable priest. He's irrelevant in UBW to the point where he's unceremoniously killed off because someone else in that route can already criticize Shirou's ideals (and thus be the villain of the route. protip: it's Shirou's own ideal, aka the redman, aka communism) so much better than he can. If you look at him in HF, he's...a strangely reliable ally and helps out a decent amount? And then comes back near the end to pose as the final challenge for Shirou to overcome. Also he's fucking adorable with the mapo tofu shit. What I'm trying to say though, is that at least to me it feels like Kirei is kinda just thrown into HF (and manages to be the best part of the route anyway). He doesn't have any stake in the conflict of sisters or Zouken's bs, he just cares about birthing the thing inside the grail. He (specifically, the plotline of him wanting to protect the evil being birthed by the Grail) could probably be taken out of HF, and both HF and his part of the plot thrown into a different route altogether would still work at least on a thematic level. So what would happen if Kirei appears in a final, Illya route instead?

It goes back to the idea of bridging the gap between HF and Fate together I brought up earlier, like with Saber possibly serving as Shirou's servant again. Kirei could come back as the main villain again but this time he'd be used so much better than in Fate, and we know this because we've already seen it happen in HF. The contrast between his first appearance as a villain and here is the attempt to bridge HF and Fate, and also a nice callback to when you began reading this VN 50+ hours ago. The only problem I could see with this is that, if memory serves, Sakura being the Shadow actually does relate to the Grail giving birth to the evil being inside it. If I remember wrong, hurray, but if I didn't, that'd be a plot detail that'd have to be resolved somehow. But on a thematic level I think it fits. Something about poetic justice and pattern recognition iunno

Here I'd also like to suggest another possible story element of what Illya's route could've been. Shirou in this route would be closer to his Fate self in term of power level. Why? I actually love the power escalation from Fate to UBW to HF, but where else can you go after HF? Make Shirou as strong as his HF self without the limitations? For what thematic purpose would that have? His HF self having about as much firepower as a servant is because that's the route where he directly takes the mantle(technically, shroud) of being a hero to fight a tangible threat. He needed to be a hero who could fight so he can actually face the dilemma of deciding whether to kill Sakura or fight the rest of the world for her. That's not actually as important in his fistfight with Kirei, because by then he's resolved to kill the thing inside the grail before it could be born. That's a decision he could make as just Emiya Shirou and not an Ally of Justice/Superhero/whatever translation people go with 正義の味方 these days. Actually no, it'd be a decision he makes because he's a 正義の味方, but it wouldn't need him to fill the role of a classical hero that he does in HF, or is saying that just sophistry? I don't know either. Back to the point, Shirou being weak again is well, yet another attempt to bridge HF and Fate Shirou together in a more literal way, but it'd also work as a substitute to the original fistfight. In the final product of HF we did get, it was a fistfight because Shirou pretty much exhausted everything and he's getting torn up inside and could only punch and kick. If he was just a normal human in the first place, weaker than his UBW self, you'd achieve a similar effect, especially if he's injured beforehand. He'd still only be kicking and punching. You'd lose out on the vivid descriptiosn of his body slowly turning into swords but that's a fair trade-off, maybe. In return, Illya route Shirou would be a return to form, back to the original, weak master protagonist we began with, without any empowerment from Archer. When he jumps into that fistfight with Kirei, regardless of the actual hypothetical context, it'd be just him going into that scene. Not the Emiya Shirou who already activated the fuse known as GARcher's arm and was going to die anyway, but the Emiya Shirou who's a dumb uneducated mage and practically just a powerless teenage boy. It'd be that Shirou doing fisticuffs with Kirei, with the life of the evil being in the grail and the rest of the world at stake.

[RoydGolden]

I risk going into fanwank territory but to add to my earlier post with more loose thoughts:

kireiman

Look at Kirei a bit. Fate route, he's like a pretty shitty, forgettable priest. He's irrelevant in UBW to the point where he's unceremoniously killed off because someone else in that route can already criticize Shirou's ideals (and thus be the villain of the route. protip: it's Shirou's own ideal, aka the redman, aka communism) so much better than he can. If you look at him in HF, he's...a strangely reliable ally and helps out a decent amount? And then comes back near the end to pose as the final challenge for Shirou to overcome. Also he's fucking adorable with the mapo tofu shit. What I'm trying to say though, is that at least to me it feels like Kirei is kinda just thrown into HF (and manages to be the best part of the route anyway). He doesn't have any stake in the conflict of sisters or Zouken's bs, he just cares about birthing the thing inside the grail. He (specifically, the plotline of him wanting to protect the evil being birthed by the Grail) could probably be taken out of HF, and both HF and his part of the plot thrown into a different route altogether would still work at least on a thematic level. So what would happen if Kirei appears in a final, Illya route instead?

It goes back to the idea of bridging the gap between HF and Fate together I brought up earlier, like with Saber possibly serving as Shirou's servant again. Kirei could come back as the main villain again but this time he'd be used so much better than in Fate, and we know this because we've already seen it happen in HF. The contrast between his first appearance as a villain and here is the attempt to bridge HF and Fate, and also a nice callback to when you began reading this VN 50+ hours ago. The only problem I could see with this is that, if memory serves, Sakura being the Shadow actually does relate to the Grail giving birth to the evil being inside it. If I remember wrong, hurray, but if I didn't, that'd be a plot detail that'd have to be resolved somehow. But on a thematic level I think it fits. Something about poetic justice and pattern recognition iunno

Here I'd also like to suggest another possible story element of what Illya's route could've been. Shirou in this route would be closer to his Fate self in term of power level. Why? I actually love the power escalation from Fate to UBW to HF, but where else can you go after HF? Make Shirou as strong as his HF self without the limitations? For what thematic purpose would that have? His HF self having about as much firepower as a servant is because that's the route where he directly takes the mantle(technically, shroud) of being a hero to fight a tangible threat. He needed to be a hero who could fight so he can actually face the dilemma of deciding whether to kill Sakura or fight the rest of the world for her. That's not actually as important in his fistfight with Kirei, because by then he's resolved to kill the thing inside the grail before it could be born. That's a decision he could make as just Emiya Shirou and not an Ally of Justice/Superhero/whatever translation people go with 正義の味方 these days. Actually no, it'd be a decision he makes because he's a 正義の味方, but it wouldn't need him to fill the role of a classical hero that he does in HF, or is saying that just sophistry? I don't know either. Back to the point, Shirou being weak again is well, yet another attempt to bridge HF and Fate Shirou together in a more literal way, but it'd also work as a substitute to the original fistfight. In the final product of HF we did get, it was a fistfight because Shirou pretty much exhausted everything and he's getting torn up inside and could only punch and kick. If he was just a normal human in the first place, weaker than his UBW self, you'd achieve a similar effect, especially if he's injured beforehand. He'd still only be kicking and punching. You'd lose out on the vivid descriptiosn of his body slowly turning into swords but that's a fair trade-off, maybe. In return, Illya route Shirou would be a return to form, back to the original, weak master protagonist we began with, without any empowerment from Archer. When he jumps into that fistfight with Kirei, regardless of the actual hypothetical context, it'd be just him going into that scene. Not the Emiya Shirou who already activated the fuse known as GARcher's arm and was going to die anyway, but the Emiya Shirou who's a dumb uneducated mage and practically just a powerless teenage boy. It'd be that Shirou doing fisticuffs with Kirei, with the life of the evil being in the grail and the rest of the world at stake.

I'm pretty sure Shirou's body turning into swords was the main reason Kirei lost, actually, not just a bit of extra visual flavor. Otherwise a random teenager beating a magical martial arts prodigy would be pretty implausible.

[Akyuu]

I'm pretty sure Shirou's body turning into swords was the main reason Kirei lost, actually, not just a bit of extra visual flavor. Otherwise a random teenager beating a magical martial arts prodigy would be pretty implausible.

Shirou's body turning into swords was hurting himself as much as it hurted Kirei. The reason he even stood a chance against Kirei was because the latter faced off against True Assassin earlier and was also about to just collapse and die at any moment from getting Zabaniya'd. If Shirou wasn't dying from swords he might've won more easily actually, which also wouldn't be ideal here.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

Sakura crushed angra pacemaker, Zabaniya didn't do anything. But yes.

[Akyuu]

Sakura crushed angra pacemaker, Zabaniya didn't do anything. But yes.

My bad there. To be fair, the narration describing how every punch Shirou received from Kotomine hurt the guy's hands but also made Shirou heal and only increased his rate of becoming swords is really memorable, but the plot stuff related to worms is not so.

[You]

a magical martial arts prodigy

Actually Kirei definitely isn't a prodigy at Bajiquan. His Bajiquan skill is noted to be lacking because he only sees it and uses it as a "killing art." Risei, who's Bajiquan goes beyond killing, is more skilled.

As a monk, he tried to reach enlightenment through asceticism, and he treated his task of recovering holy relics from around the world as a pilgrim's ordeal. He is a master of baji quan, and as the person responsible for teaching it to Kirei, his skill far outstrips his son's. As for precisely what kind of monster he is, well, just look at his burly, Mas Oyama-like physique and let your imagination run wild. His original design concept was “an older Steven Seagal.”
However, Risei trained his fists solely for the sake of self-discipline and his search for truth. As he was never an “executor,” he has no knowledge of killing arts that focus on the act of battle itself. Consequently, when it comes to things like trading blows with Dead Apostles, his son Kirei is much more accomplished. And of course, he isn't a magus, so superhuman magical martial arts like Kirei's are totally out of the question too.
Nevertheless, Kirei was probably acutely aware that as far as “orthodox Baji Quan” goes, his father was a better fighter than he was. What the old man had sought after all his life had been a realm beyond mere “killing arts,” and through his long and outstanding career he had finally reached it.

[RoydGolden]

Actually Kirei definitely isn't a prodigy at Bajiquan. His Bajiquan skill is noted to be lacking because he only sees it and uses it as a "killing art." Risei, who's Bajiquan goes beyond killing, is more skilled.

Technically speaking, that doesn't say he wasn't a prodigy, just that his father was better than him. But I'll concede your point anyways.

[You]

well the motif here is that in TM you can't really be a prodigy at martial arts if all you're aiming for is using it as a weapon to kill people
you need to be doing I M P O R T A N T stuff like figuring out how to cut down a swallow
then you get unlock the ultimate kill ppl technique in the skill tree

[RoydGolden]

well the motif here is that in TM you can't really be a prodigy at martial arts if all you're aiming for is using it as a weapon to kill people
you need to be doing I M P O R T A N T stuff like figuring out how to cut down a swallow
then you get unlock the ultimate kill ppl technique in the skill tree

Fair enough. Kind of like what William Bennett said about happiness then.

"If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you. It will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing up against your legs and jumping into your lap.”

[Deathhappens]

Actually Kirei definitely isn't a prodigy at Bajiquan. His Bajiquan skill is noted to be lacking because he only sees it and uses it as a "killing art." Risei, who's Bajiquan goes beyond killing, is more skilled.

And yet he got unceremoniously shot in the back by a cripple. What a

Urobutcher

wasteful

thing to do.

[JetKinen]

Actually Kirei definitely isn't a prodigy at Bajiquan. His Bajiquan skill is noted to be lacking because he only sees it and uses it as a "killing art." Risei, who's Bajiquan goes beyond killing, is more skilled.

That's why we need a pulp spin-off about Risei Seagal searching for magical artifacts for the church.
All the other dudes he meet on his adventures also suspiciously look like 70's and 80's action stars

[Deathhappens]

There's probably a better thread for this, but whatever. Happy Birthday Kana Ueda!

[hayate]

I'm pretty sure Shirou's body turning into swords was the main reason Kirei lost, actually, not just a bit of extra visual flavor. Otherwise a random teenager beating a magical martial arts prodigy would be pretty implausible.

And I'm pretty sure Kirei lost his touch in fights when both of those endings happened.

It will just turn into an all out brawl, anyway, with Shirou struggling and Kirei having the upper hand, with only circumstances affecting the fight. Shirou said it himself. He can't defeat the man. All odds are in Kirei's favor, but he only keeps standing because of that something that he has forgotten.

[forumghost]

Yeah, Kirei has let himself go by F/SN and has been too focused on enjoying the suffering of others.

And on top of that, Shirou only beat him via sudden Asspull (Avalon in Fate). In HF he actually lost that fight, Kirei was about to kill him when his body gave out after two days without a heart.