+1Originally Posted by Trubo
+1
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
Fate Shirou, just because I liked Fate's romance arc overall better than UBW's (despite Rin being the superior waifu). It's not like his character changes that much- he's still stupidly stubborn and willful, he's just contrasted against someone just as stubborn as he is, and in the end he manages to find a way to let go. I especially liked the fact that he was tempted, even unto the very last moment, to command Saber to remain, to wish for her to stay there with him; but he manages to let her go and even greet her with a smile. It's not as dramatic as fighting the manifestation of your ideals gone wrong or abandoning your entire life's path for one person's sake, but it was still some tremendous character growth.
UBW Shirou, though I had conflicted feelings about HF Shirou but...
I was reading the best fate heroine thread which then spiraled into me binge reading this one instead, and this thread got necro'd in 2015 and then 2018 so I guess this brings it full circle.
The most enlightening parts were relating to HF and Sakura (the main reason I decided to check out this thread was because discussing HF Shirou in the other thread derailed it enough for another thread to be made.)
I wasn't sure how I feel about HF Shirou and Sakura's relationship but the various arguments kind of helped me mentally bounce off of people's opinions and try to dig more into what I felt or thought.
I kind of find myself agreeing with the people that think HF Neutral End is good because Shirou and Sakura don't get to be together. Also generally not appreciating their romance, and mostly liking Shirou's character relating to Illya and Kotomine in HF, and mirroring that I liked Sakura and Rin's part of the story relating to each other.
I feel like the thing worth saying for me is that I get they improve each other by loving each other, but to overwrite something that's been built up and explored for two whole routes like Shirou's ideals you need something of equal exchange if the reader genuinely is emotionally resonant with that specific part of Shirou's character. Shirou x Sakura is mostly based on them liking each other as normal people pre-FSN and it kind of just flourishes because Shirou doesn't bang Saber or Rin in this route. What I'm trying to say is we don't see them fall for each other from scratch throughout a struggle, but the struggle happens because they already love each other pretty quick. And that's a lot to skip over, though not "illogical" by any means because they've known each other for a while now and they're attracted to each other.
While it might not be illogical, it's heavily relying on the reader to either not be hung up on Shirou's previous incarnations/ideal, or if they are hung up on them then for the reader to simply believe Shirou being in love with Sakura is worth that sacrifice.
The thing is that's a pretty strong gamble and would require delicate handling, because creating dissonance from the reader and the protagonist over the romantic partner is a pretty common thing. It's also pretty common for readers to self insert in a protagonist because of a romantic partner. Take for example (idk if it's very well known) Re;Zero where a shit ton of the fandom became outraged with the protagonist and hated him for rejecting a fan favorite character at the time. (Personally he's justified LOL!)
To me it seemed like Nasu's crutch, for fixing the fact that he wants to focus on how their relationship compels them to move forward rather than how they got there in the first place (I suppose because focusing on how they change each other is more compelling than how they decided to love each other), is simply making Sakura sympathetic.
So essentially if you're not particularly interested in Sakura and Shirou as a pairing at face value, then the next boss fight for your investment in Shirou's ideal is how much can you sympathize with Sakura. The problem is it's not uncommon to be disillusioned with a sympathetic character. Sympathizing with a real life situation is kind of natural instinct, but sympathizing with a fictional character might be a harder pill to swallow if you're invested with another element that is directly contradictory to the character.
So if Shirou in your eyes going down the Fate or UBW path is a cathartic or emotional version of the character and you've not invested in Sakura x Shirou as a romantic pairing, then even if you like a lot of the elements in HF, or like Sakura herself (isolated from her influence on Shirou), you're kind of cornered into you either sympathize with her (to justify Shirou's actions if you do not care for their romantic pairing) or you'll naturally be opposed to the series of events because you don't want to see Shirou develop into 'this' which might simply overpower the level of sympathy you do have for her and cause you to become well like I said disillusioned.
I think Shirou sticking to his ideals because of their meaning rather than their results in UBW is a pretty special thing that puts him above a lot of protagonists, and delicately separates him from protagonists who are just stubborn for the lulz (or because they're shonen protags). And I honestly think he automatically becomes less special when we switch to a character arc that is about putting your loved ones first, which has been done to death in any 'guy with a girlfriend or daughter' action story you can think of.
Essentially, stalking old threads has helped me seriously chug a lot of copium to come to terms with liking Sakura but not liking her as Shirou's partner nor their path together. It's way easier to just dismiss her entire character and shit on her (I am fighting the urge pretty often ironically) but it's worth it to try and understand the nuances a little better even if I don't get them all entirely.
PS: Rin still managing to be one of the best things about a route that isn't hers is honestly quite ironic.
UBW shirou makes heavens feel more interesting. Heavens feel shirou for me is essentially an extension of UBW shirou. Because ubw shirou is just fleshed out and all the distortion was laid out. Essentially heavens feel is that same shirou but you know what happens.
I honestly don't see it that way. We already "know what happens" with UBW Shirou, he either truly doesn't give in and never becomes Archer (Nasu has said none of the 3 routes become Archer but I digress) or he does become Archer and then his younger self motivates him to believe again. The emotional core of UBW is that Shirou doesn't give up. That completely contradicts the relationship between routes that you're suggesting. That's honestly just dismissing a lot of what makes the UBW route unique in the first place, otherwise we could've just skipped it entirely and gone from Fate to HF.
I was gonna make a post quoting an old reply I made to this thread but then I looked and I actually never posted in this thread, what the hell.
But there's probably been arguments of similar character all across the board anyways, so what I was actually doing was mixing things up.
ANYWAYS.
This isn't really the thematic of Heaven's Feel anyways. This is certainly how things pan out but I'm someone who likes to see the totality of Shirou's character over the three routes as the more important factor in analyzing him.I think Shirou sticking to his ideals because of their meaning rather than their results in UBW is a pretty special thing that puts him above a lot of protagonists, and delicately separates him from protagonists who are just stubborn for the lulz (or because they're shonen protags). And I honestly think he automatically becomes less special when we switch to a character arc that is about putting your loved ones first, which has been done to death in any 'guy with a girlfriend or daughter' action story you can think of.
Shirou is a person who has essentially been 'poisoned' by Kiritsugu's ideals. At the outset of the story he doesn't really understand what it is about those ideals that make them challenging, or perhaps even dangerous, and the Fate route doesn't particularly challenge them. Kirei is evil, Gilgamesh is evil. Good prevails, love prevails. Of course there are other parts of Fate route that makes it compelling, especially is you find Artoria and Shirou's relationship fulfilling, but that's not in the scope of this post.
It is only in UBW that we really get to witness what the problem with Kiritsugu's ideals are. Not just in the form of Archer, but we get some more exposition about what kind of person Kiritsugu was (though there was some of that in Fate too). The pure image of Kiritsugu, who is the idealized form of Shirou's ideals gradually starts getting warped. He's a murderer, a ruthless assassin who'd stop at nothing to get at his goals.
Thus we start to understand that what is fundamentally 'wrong' about Shirou is that which Kiritsugu has burdened him with, and it is not something that's good for him, personally. Shirou's ideals of wanting to save everyone else comes at the cost of his own happiness. This is exemplified in Archer who is bitter and completely fallen to despair. In order for Shirou to achieve happiness he has no other choice but to set himself free from the poison Kiritsugu gave him. Obviously, in this route he still chooses the happiness of others over himself, and that's an admirable decision, because unlike in Fate, he actually understands the sacrifice of doing so. Either way, this still means Shirou's arc is yet to be resolved. He still hasn't found himself. He still only clings onto the pieces of something Kiritsugu handed to him.
In Heaven's Feel, Shirou goes through both a fall and and ascent. Sakura and Shirou's relationship is extremely unhealthy. Shirou feels both an immense lust towards her, and an almost disgust at his own actions whenever they interact sexually. It's like he's destroying part of himself. I think this is meant to signal that yes, this is uncomfortable, this is destructive. But ultimately, this is a story of destruction and rebirth. It is only through that destruction that he's able to build himself up again.
The person who symbolizes the 'good' part (or the rebirth) of this process is Illya, not Sakura. Whenever things are going to shit because of his relationship with Sakura, Illya is the one who picks him up and convinces him to keep fighting, and guides him away from the path of Kiritsugu. She is hope, the guiding star who more so than anyone else wishes to see Shirou saved. Illya understands (and she is in many ways the most 'wise' person in F/SN, playing the same role in F/HA even) more so than anyone what will happen if you follow the path of Kiritsugu, and what that would mean for Shirou. So despite the 'destructive' nature of Sakura and Shirou's relationship, Illya convinces him to keep at it.
So when at the end of Heaven's Feel, Illya asks 'Do you want to live?', because of course she would. Shirou tearfully cries out that he would, and so a miracle occurs. This miracle in-story is the Heaven's Feel, the Third Magic. But for us readers, it is in a meta-sense, the miracle of seeing Shirou finally become a person in his own right, instead of a shadow born from Kiritsugu's ideals. With this action, Shirou is saved, for the very first time.
Would've probably been more clear had TYPE-MOON had the time to actually work out an Illya route instead of compacting this double arc into Sakura's route, but it is what it is.
So anyways, the totality is Shirou's character is much better than just 'x route' Shirou, because honestly that doesn't capture the entire thematic beauty of the game.
While that is a pretty good interpretation, Shirou understanding what his ideal means in UBW and deciding to approach it selfessly anyways isn't a lesser path than being 'reborn' as you phrased into someone who is selfish enough to prioritize his life at the end of HF. I don't think sacrificing himself like he does in UBW particularly means his arc is yet to be resolved it's just that he has taken the conscious decision to do it while knowing the consequences. He might not be 'saved' in the same sense you put across but his UBW version isn't exactly fooled or delusional either.
I would've loved if I could've seen the three routes as a puzzle with three pieces fitting together to portray Shirou's full character but I just can't. The answer he finds in UBW and the decision he makes there is far more compelling to me than the decision he comes to in HF, and even ignoring that it doesn't feel like it's unable to stand on its own merits or anything. Even if others are able to see the total package like you do.
Well, you can come to whatever answer you want to. That's fine, and even intended.
But denying the final part of the Shirou's character because you like one ending more than the other is just turning a blind eye. It is only with Heaven's Feel that his character is complete, but that doesn't mean the conclusions from the other routes are illegitimate. Rather, they're all necessary parts of the his totality.
Should Shirou prioritize his ideals or others, despite their flaws?
Should Shirou find his own happiness, even if that means he has to hurt others?
You can give whatever answer you want, but you can't ignore the other question. The fact that both questions exist is what gives weight to the answer.
I wasn't disagreeing or ignoring the questions Heaven's Feel asks or even the answer it gives I was mainly criticizing the execution and why it might not have landed for someone like myself etc. I do think it serves a purpose for his character even if I don't prefer it's outcome.
Shirou was already in that path. It's as you said shirou never gave up when he was faced with horror and stuff that could make anyone have in. But he didn't. It shows his resolve to his ideal. UBW was an hurdle that is a big ass bump but essentially it towards same thing as what he originally transpired to be. It's as he said I lost somethings and I gained somethings in the end of ubw anime.
For me what makes HF so good is because of "what it means to him" shown by UBW.
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I didn't dismiss UBW either. It's really good. it characterises shirou and what's real important.
Well, you were the one who implied that I considered something 'lesser'. I don't consider any part of Fate/stay night lesser to the other. It is only all together that you get a good view of what it is trying to say.
I do think that the climax of Heaven's Feel comes together better than any other ending emotionally because of said factors, but that is ultimately just because that's how I feel about it. At the end of the day, that's why its the climax of the game. It wasn't put there by chance. All the arcs from the other routes converge and end at Heaven's Feel.
That said I don't actually feel very strongly about any of the actual 'answers' to Shirou's dilemma. They're all valid and interesting in their own right to me. The fact that the game goes out of its way to show you all the ways in which his ideals would interact with the world is the interesting part.
I didn't mean 'lesser' in the sense of you looking down on UBW or anything, I meant that him not abandoning his ideals doesn't necessarily correlate to his arc being unresolved. (Which I guess you'd expect the protagonist to have his character arc in a route to be addressed so I immediately thought of it as a route's ending being incomplete hence lesser but now in how you've described it I guess it's not a fitting word since you consider all three routes as a package.) But yeah I didn't mean anything personal by it.
And I don't disagree about the strength of Heaven's Feel's climax in particular, again I was mainly criticizing the execution of Shirou and Sakura which is the main contender with Shirou's ideal in terms of 'what defines his motivations' between UBW and HF.
Even if I feel pretty strongly about a specific answer from a specific route I can agree that seeing the way his ideals interact with the world in different situations is one of the most interesting things throughout the novel.
Remember that what I responded to was this:
Because I think it's an unfair statement and ignores the subtleties introduced throughout Heaven's Feel in regards to Shirou's development and how that reflect across the game.I think Shirou sticking to his ideals because of their meaning rather than their results in UBW is a pretty special thing that puts him above a lot of protagonists, and delicately separates him from protagonists who are just stubborn for the lulz (or because they're shonen protags). And I honestly think he automatically becomes less special when we switch to a character arc that is about putting your loved ones first, which has been done to death in any 'guy with a girlfriend or daughter' action story you can think of.
Because "a hero can't save everybody, but will keep trying" is a theme that has been done to death as well. In fact, most serious Superman stories tend to entirely revolve around this. The amount of angles this has been examined in Superhero stuff in general is basically all-encompassing. The Dark Knight (2008) asks many of the same questions, though it is far blunter about it than Fate/stay night is. If I wanted to be unfair, I would simply drag UBW under the same kind of criticism.
So yes, this is why I tried to explain what I feel is the real take-aways from Heaven's Feel regarding Shirou's character.
I think focusing too much on Sakura in Heaven's Feel makes you lose sight of what the route actually is, which is the conclusion of Fate/stay night as a whole. If taken in isolation, Heaven's Feel is almost incomprehensible. No emotional beats would hit at all.
The same is somewhat true of UBW, but Heaven's Feel is by far the most bound to Fate/stay night's ongoing themes, for the simple reason that in coming to it there was most build-up towards it (that is to say, it is simply last). It is not just Sakura's story, that's absurdly reductive.
Sakura has her role to play in terms of Shirou's development, but quite honestly, so does a lot of characters in Heaven's Feel. We can actually somewhat gauge who the most tied towards this goal by looking at the climax.
First, he confronts Saber and confirms that his ideals are dead by piercing them in chest.
Second, he confronts Sakura, confirms his love for her and saves her, despite her sins.
Third, he confronts Kirei, the evil reflection of the kind of man he himself has become.
Fourth, he is confronted by Illya, the one who has guided him throughout the route, and leads him towards his ultimate salvation (both literally and figuratively).
Putting it like that, it's quite clear, don't you think?
Last edited by Petrikow; February 16th, 2022 at 09:57 AM.
I like HF Shirou the most because the whole sacrificing your mind and body to achieve your goals is pretty based.
Overall I'd say HF > Fate > UBW for Shirou, speaking specifically about the journey he goes through and what he's striving for. But UBW Shirou's personality is the most fun, probably because bantering with Rin makes any character more likeable.
I get that there's plenty of factors from different characters influencing Shirou in HF but one can't dismiss that Sakura's role is directly connected to his motivations. I don't disagree that there's way more to HF than just Sakura.
About UBW and superhero stories like TDK I think the execution in UBW where Shirou has to directly face his ideal incarnate in Archer is what elevates the concept to an all new height.
It might be reductive to tunnel vision on Shirou's ideal in relation to HF, but just because I understand the themes logically doesn't mean that emotionally they'll magically start working for me. Most of them do, but some of them just don't.
About HF, and Shirou's relationship with Sakura, it would probably be nothing special when it comes to other people. Personally, what makes it hit different is when you consider what kind of person Shirou is, or rather was, before playing HF's route. As detailed better by Petri, the guy is nothing more than a reflection of Kiritsugu's ideal, after the disaster from previous HGW practically wiped his personality empty. He had nothing else going but following and continuing Kiritsugu's vision, who himself was a shell of his former self. Throughout FSN, we see changes of Shirou's standpoint based on heroines he interacted with.
In Fate, the beginning, Saber has the most similar line of thinking to him compared to other heroines, being a king who wants to save her subjects and country from inevitable destruction through whatever it takes. And their time together pretty much reinforces his ideal, and the only thing that's changed that prevented him from being too far down was he fell in love, willing to let her go, which in turn made him accept that some things just inevitable.
In UBW, the more rational Rin helped questioning how problematic his way of thinking was, with the addition of Archer further muddled the matter and he had to struggle with it. He came to accept the flaws of his ideals, but persevering nonetheless because he sees the beauty in that ideal. Rin is supportive of his decision, but would then guide him in a way that keeps him from going too far, thus hurting himself. She acts as the voice of reason for Shirou as he strives for that path.
In HF, it comes to a head. Sakura is someone he has been close with ever since childhood. She's been with him all the time, unaware of the burden he carried. Shirou cares for her, but only at superficial level, while keeping the ideal to himself. As the story progresses, he starts to learn about her, and what burden she came to bear. This is the moment of truth, he comes to genuinely care about her so much, that he's conflicted to choose whether it's the lives of the many or of her. The difference with other heroines, Sakura won't judge or argue with Shirou, at least not openly, so he needs to make the decision himself. The fact that he chose Sakura means he's willing to discard the ideal he inherited from Kiritsugu, and it was at his own volition makes it really noteworthy since in UBW Archer tried his darndest to make Shirou abandon that ideal.
In short, HF Shirou marks the moment a shadow becomes a new person, free from the ideal that haunts him all this time and willing to engage with others with newfound perspective. He might still think Kiritsugu's ideal is not wrong, but he no longer embraces it as if it's a gospel.
But at the end of the day, yes, to each their own.
Good one. This is why overall HF is my fav rute , waifu discussions aside
Again, my issue is that I can't buy into choosing Sakura over the ideal because of the way his emotions for her are executed.
And I honestly think UBW is pretty heavy on Shirou making the decision for himself, Rin is a partner in his path sure, but his conflict with Archer is entirely within his own hands and his decision is from within himself. She might want to help him not take things too far as they live their lives together, sure. But her actual influence on his decision is minimal at best, it's pretty personal and primarily between himself and Archer.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the concept of someone who has held onto Kiritsugu's dream having something meaningful challenge his priorities and for him to choose that meaningful thing instead, it's a beautiful thought on paper. It just never felt more beautiful than the ideals Shirou saw in UBW and that's mostly up to execution rather than the concept on paper. I never meant to discredit from things like Illya, Kirei, or even Salter's thematic role in HF but rather place more attention on the fact that the most delicate part of all of these dynamics in the story is Shirou's ideals and they're delicately handled by every relationship and dynamic in the game except the catalyst of Shirou's entire character arc in that route which is his love for Sakura.
The other dynamics treat things with utmost care to feel fulfilling and convince you they're worth existing, but his love for Sakura operates under an assumption that you'll care rather than make you care. And after it assumes that you'll care about the fact that they like each other it'll actually put in the effort to make you care about Sakura's struggles. That first step of assumption never clicked for me, so I ended up caring for Sakura's struggles but not particularly caring about their love for each other, and as a result, Shirou's decision to put that love above his ideals.
I don't think I'm very good at explaining what I'm thinking, even earlier I completely missed which part Petri was specifically responding to, but I hope I've clarified that I have mixed feelings about Shirou's path in HF with most of the positive feelings coming from other characters but a key missing cog in the machine is the cause of the lack of feeling so his path ends up only partially connecting with me, while the other part of it rings hollow to me.
Last edited by Escavalien; February 16th, 2022 at 08:25 PM.
Other good post. Sakura didnt judged him or pushed him , at some point she was ready to die, he made the choice himself
But yes, to each their own.
Edit: Whoops, sniped.
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