Originally Posted by
celsius
That kinda stuff's pretty common in Japanese light novels from what I've seen. Repeating certain points for emphasis, 'telling' pasts instead of 'showing'...
From what I can tell, a lot of Japanese light novel authors prefer to show things almost entirely from the protagonist's viewpoint, and only show what the protagonist him/herself is experiencing. So we won't get to know a certain character's past until the protagonist is told about it.
Nasu's the same. I haven't seen Mahoyo yet, but the majority of his stories were shown almost entirely from the point of view of the protagonist, so all the information we're given is fed through the protagonist's viewpoint. It's basically sacrificing the other characters for the sake of detailing the protagonist's thoughts and emotions. Which I guess isn't wrong, but non-protagonists like Sakura will inevitably get shafted.
Then again, there are ways to get around that. For instance, Shirou was shown glimpses of Saber's past through their connection. However, I guess he couldn't be bothered to come up with a convenient plot device like that for Sakura. As a result, Shirou has to be physically told everything about Sakura's situation, and that's how we receive all our information concerning her.