I get the idea that Shirou's supposed to be this self righteous blank slate and moral compass so that the audience can self insert as him and he differentiates himself from the other Masters, but I just find him incredibly boring.
I get the idea that Shirou's supposed to be this self righteous blank slate and moral compass so that the audience can...
Brody White
Matthew Moore
>self righteous blank slate and moral compass so that the audience can self insert as him
The audience is supposed to think Shirou is a nutjob. It's a big part of why the bad ends exist in the VN; to reinforce the idea that you should be thinking like Shirou instead of thinking like yourself. Because doing the rational thing often gets you a game over.
William Hughes
Really? How come doing the rational thing gives you a game over?
Jeremiah Rivera
if shirou was in charge of the trolley problem he'd jump into the trolley's path to slow it down, die, get everyone killed, and still believe he did what was right.
Ian Kelly
>self righteous blank slate
So he's not a blank slate then.
Hudson Wright
Let's examine that question.
Brandon Wood
read the fucking VN
Robert Martin
>trace on brain off
Gets me every time.
Christian Myers
Because Shirou is fucked in the head and so are mages, its just Shirou is a different kind of fucked. Rationality doesnt exist in mage society or in Shirous head
Grayson Clark
No, the series constantly underlines that Shirou is fucked in the head. His beliefs and extremist and kills you to death having done zero. Zip. Lawfags in principle are fucked in the head anyways, they have no moral compass whatsoever, in principle.
Ian Lopez
He's shit in the first two routes so that him finally growing up and becoming a good character in Heaven's Feel is all the more rewarding.
Ian Allen
>The audience is supposed to think Shirou is a nutjob.
Nasu did a crap job at conveying that then. Most people except Shirou is an asshole in the series, which means most non-sociopaths will sympathize with his situation. (Never mind that he's literally the vehicle for the player and we see everything from his perspective in the VN.)
FSN just creates this really silly false dichotomy that there are just two types of people in the world: Retarded good people and smart callous people. (And then adds the requisite "good wins, because that's how shounen works!")
My impression of Shirou is that he's a good kid with good morals, but is unfortunately extremely dumb. He's not a "nutjob", he's just an idiot. Being kind to others isn't a flaw, thinking you can stop a 8 foot sword with your body is.
I can't really relate to any of the characters as a consequence, because I'm not a complete idiot, but I'm not an asshole either. For most anime/manga, I can deal with this because it's not meant to be taken super-seriously. But FSN fans have this idea that the series is extremely deep and that anyone who didn't like it just doesn't understand. This is why it deserves such sharp criticism.
Shirou is simply your average shounen knuclehead protagonist, he's not at all unique. The only difference between him and Goku is that the latter is more cheery.
Jaxon Morales
I don't get it; what's the big deal?
Lucas Mitchell
Shirou has it but Rin also has it, despite the fact there is only one of them.
Julian Diaz
Because you're unironically throwing the term self-insert, that means you're not judging the character, but yourself as the character. So you're incredibly boring. What does it feel like being gloriously dull.
Ethan Ramirez
you can't self insert as shirou unless you're clinically insane just like him.
Charles Torres
The VN literally has you insert as Shirou throughout the whole story. You pick the choices for him, you read his thoughts.
Ian Davis
Jesus are all secondaries actually retarded
Jayden Sullivan
>Nasu did a crap job at conveying that then.
Nasu can explain things to you but he can't understand them for you.
The vast majority of people on Yas Forums who read the VN or watched the anime have absolutely no trouble understanding Shirou is a psycho.
Here's a .gif of Shirou having a mental breakdown because Rin is stopping him from throwing himself between Illya and Gilgamesh.
It's up to you to piece shit together.
Jason Martinez
>Ilya route is bad end
stopped playing there
Owen Fisher
Illya route is half the Heaven's Feel route.
The HF movies removed a few Illya scenes in the first two movies though.
Matthew Fisher
Nasu has literally stated that Shirou is a self insert character and he wins because he's the protagonist.
Isaiah Kelly
How am I supposed to selfinsert into a guy who hates alarm clocks?
Christopher Cruz
The story is told through his eyes so yes you're supposed to insert yourself into the first person perspective and analyze him and his surroundings through his thoughts. If you can relate to Shirou for real, you may need therapy.
Cooper Peterson
>Most people except Shirou is an asshole in the series, which means most non-sociopaths will sympathize with his situation
>I can't really relate to any of the characters as a consequence
Sounds like you can't enjoy media without someone to self-insert into and blame author for it.
>FSN just creates this really silly false dichotomy that there are just two types of people in the world: Retarded good people and smart callous people.
Yeah, how completely outrages that in a setting of life-or-death ancient ritual you're most likely going to be surrounded by either assholes or people who don't know better than to get into it.
>(And then adds the requisite "good wins, because that's how shounen works!")
Except in 40 bad ends where it doesn't.
>My impression of Shirou is that he's a good kid with good morals, but is unfortunately extremely dumb. He's not a "nutjob", he's just an idiot. Being kind to others isn't a flaw, thinking you can stop a 8 foot sword with your body is.
An impression most common to someone who doesn't understand the character or how other people make logical decisions in general. His kindness is exactly that, jumping in front of a falling sword if there's at least some chance it will save someone. The fact that there's a chance like that is enough to outweigh all the cons for him therefore it's a natural thought-out logical conclusion. Most people wouldn't even be able to react in split seconds while that was happening, not to mention actually stop it from happening in any other way.
And this is actually only a starting point. Different routes provide different evolutions of that ideal, by the end of which Shirou may become a different person at his core.
>sharp criticism
that you can't even provide. Posts like your only further reinforce the idea that FSN has layers most people never going to get, because most people can't abandon their system of values or actually properly imagine themselves in situations happening in fiction.
Blake Jackson
Oh, what the fuck is this shit?
Cameron Myers
Please don't watch apocrypha. The only thing it'll give you is a bitter taste of regret and wasted time.
Josiah Martinez
>trace on
>brain off
Dylan Gray
10m tall Hercules is fighting against King Arthur in a battle so explosive you can't even comprehend whats going on.
You have 3 choices:
1. Get the fuck outta there.
2. Watch from a save distance.
3. Push King Arthur away and engage Hercules
Only one of those choices doesn't lead to a bad ending. Guess which one.
Christopher Parker
3. It's not the rational choice froman IRL perspective but you'd have to be completely new to fictional storytelling to not know it's the right answer.
Jacob Murphy
40 years can pass and people will still questioning FSN. It will outlive all of us. Nasu is genius.
Christopher Garcia
>choosing 1 or 2
wew, Shirouhaters turned out to be soilent chuggers all along. Leaving their woman to fight off big black herc on her own. Imagine Illya's sheer disappointment seeing her big bro being a lil bitch. No wonder it leads to a bad end.
Jeremiah Bell
I love how terrifying Berserker is.
Jackson Wright
>wew, Shirouhaters turned out to be soilent chuggers all along. Leaving their woman to fight off big black herc on her own.
Nah. It's death situation for anyone except Shirou.
Anthony King
The situation there was "Push Saber away" or "Just let her get murdered there and then". If you think rationally, pushing her away is the better choice, because she has a chance to do something, while you have no chance to run away if Saber is dead. Now, that wasn't why Shirou made his choice, but in retrospective, it was a reasonable one.
Aiden Anderson
They're gonna die if they choose other options either way. At least this way you'll go out like a man.
Camden Thomas
>it was a reasonable one.
No. Saber told "you" to not interfere in the battle because its dangerous and she can deal with Berserker. But pushing her away means you will get hit and die. Only Shirou survive this because of obvious reason. Anyone else will die. It's honestly Saber's fault. She can't stop jobbing. If it was different VN such action would mean bad end.
Nathan Thompson
>Spoiler
Not her fault she's up against Hercules alone in the Fate route, which makes Shirou lose faith in Saber's abilities immediately, then gets fed up with her Master's attitude and rushes to the temple to fight an Assassin servant who's peer or surpasses almost any swordsman and gets her ass handed to her, then has to use her Noble Phantasm to save Shirou from Rider, weakening herself to almost death.
The events of Fate were specifically told this way to make her appear weak due to situation.
In UBW, Saber gets back-up from Archer and matches Hercules for a while.
Then you get this screen almost immediately after.
Aiden King
>Saber told "you" to not interfere in the battle because its dangerous and she can deal with Berserker
>she can deal with Berserker
And that's why you never listen to what a woman has to say.
Joseph Bell
>In UBW, Saber gets back-up from Archer and matches Hercules for a while.
You would expect Saber better in such situation. Especially with her instincts. She should have instantly recognize Berserker as big threat and change battlefield. It's her ahoge.
Levi Turner
>Saber told "you" to not interfere in the battle because its dangerous and she can deal with Berserker.
Sure, but she clearly fucked up and is about to die. Now, you have two choices:
A) You run away, Saber dies, and you have what, five second headstart against the guy who moves so fast you can barely track him with naked eye? Clearly you won't be able to run away, and you obviously can't fight, so that's just death.
B) You intervene and push Saber out of the way. Yes, she was getting her ass kicked, but she was still holding much better than you would. Given a chance, she might find some way to counter, or at least hold out longer and give you more time to run away. Now, there's a large chance that you will be too late and either she dies or you get cut in half, but that's not certain.
Clearly, when option A is 100% death and option B is 99% death, you should choose option B.
Caleb Russell
>It's her ahoge.
Holy shit. Her ahoge is like a feline's whiskers.
Evan Rivera
How were these two ever friends? Just because they belonged in an archery club in the past?
Wyatt Gomez
Shinji probably wasn't as much of shitter before puberty.
Ryder Stewart
>How were these two ever friends?
Shirou aims to please, and Shinji likes to be pleased. He probably took advantage of Shirou's good will more than once and started calling him "friend" to try and justify it.
Shirou never once thought of Shinji as a decent human being. In his internal monologues he's always tolerating him, or apologizing to other people on behalf of Shinji's behavior like his mom. If anything, Shirou just doesn't wanna cause trouble for Sakura.
Isaiah Clark
Doesn't Shirou have a history of beating the fuck out of bullies and saving the weak at the playground?
I'm guessing Shirou saved Shinji from getting an atomic wedgie like fifteen times and Shinji started acting friendly towards him. Then Sakura grew BIG FAT TITS and he started raping her worm cave with his pubescent little chode and that turned him into a faggot.
Camden Lopez
So, if acting like Shirou gets you killed 99.9999999999% of the time, how on Earth is he still alive? Is this what they call a "plot hole"?
Dominic Fisher
Avalon. Redman.
Colton Rodriguez
Nasu called him and Shiki self inserts.
Make sense, he has a harem, kill heroic spirits and fuck bitches. That's al self inserters need.
Justin Perry
>a fairly interesting idea for a character
>a somewhat generic personality
At his worst (aka "Fate route Shirou") he is pretty irritating with all his self sacrifice ideals, his relationship with Saber and with those insufferable dinner scenes, I can actually understand why someone would be annoyed with his character, but to say that he is a blank slate, that's really not real. I mean, the whole point with Shirou's character is that he feels so guilty with the fact that he was the only person to be saved in the Fuyuki tragedy, that he copes with someone else's dream of being a hero to compensate for that fact, that's what differentiate him from just a blank slate, as other anons previously stated here, he is a nutjob, someone so broken that the prospect of being selfish is something inconceivable, that is what make him so interesting to see. not to mention that when his ideals are challenged in HF, and he actually sacrifice them for Sakura, he becomes a very kino character
Carson Ortiz
Best post
Joshua Myers
Also remember there was guy who charged with sword and bow at enemy lines during WW2. He's alive despite all odds.
Landon Martinez
The grail war is the first time his life has ever been in danger since the fire.
He has Saber's sheath in him which recovers his wounds quickly from anything except a sure death blow and it saves him several times throughout the VN.
During the grail war he learns to project weapons and fight.
Afterwards, he travels the world saving people and dabbling in magi shit, dies in his mid 30's and he saves someone who shouldn't be saved who then gets him lynched.
Shirou lived a short, sweet life.
Gavin Walker
lol FSN is the Naruto of VN
Jack Mitchell
Jack Churchill. Don't forget the bagpipes.
Colton Hill
Its really only the first couple of the early, major decisions that you get killed for thinking like a regular person. The decisions shirou makes at the end of each route showcase his changes in his mindset. Take the final choice in UBW, you either jump into the hole Gil is in or you stand your ground and even be prepared to rip your arm off. Early shirou would have most likely jumped because he wouldn't take such a massive risk of allowing gil to survive, but the shirou at the end of UBW decided to value his life a bit more and avoids taking the most logical choice by his previous standards.
Adam Taylor
>but that's not certain
How is it not certain? Any person would die if hit by Herc. The player has no way of knowing about Shirou's body or Avalon by that point.
Carter Scott
The UBW route is so much better written than the Fate route. HF was good too but UBW feels like the definitive soul of the VN.
Levi Thomas
Because even Shirou himself wasn't planning on getting hit by Herc, he wanted to push away Saber and evade the strike, which is not impossible, even if not likely.
Carter Johnson
Kiritsugu is 10x the retard Shirou is at any given moment.
Luis James
>Shirou aims to please, and Shinji likes to be pleased. He probably took advantage of Shirou's good will more than once and started calling him "friend" to try and justify it.
>Shirou never once thought of Shinji as a decent human being. In his internal monologues he's always tolerating him, or apologizing to other people on behalf of Shinji's behavior like his mom. If anything, Shirou just doesn't wanna cause trouble for Sakura.
I need (you) to read the fucking VN. Shirou always held Shinji in high regard, even after the HGW
Carson Lee
Bad example. Any shounen protagonist would act like that. Being heroic and brave to the point of suicidal is a typical MC trait.
Nicholas Sullivan
>Posts a screen from Hollow Ataraxia
Maybe read F/SN instead?
Adrian Hughes
Telling a story from a first person perspective != self inserting
Aiden Stewart
Fucker
Andrew Parker
>Being heroic and brave to the point of suicidal is a typical MC trait.
And Nasu takes that trope and goes nuts deep into it, creating a character that on the surface looks like a "generic typical selfless MC" and then takes away the rationality and optimistic parts and gives us a main character with legitimate trauma and psychological issues where he is incapable of self-preservation for a long ass time.
The kind of guy who sees a bunch of corpses and goes "ah, this again" and calmly assesses the situation while the twintailed tsundere is trying not to vomit seeing people's faces melt off.
The kind of guy who learns of his future fate, gets the absolute shit beaten out of him by his future self repeatedly and logically shredding apart his entire way of life and still decides to go through with it because he doesn't think he's capable of any other way of living and knows even though he'll be a miserable machine, it'll fulfill him like a software program.
Wyatt Johnson
HA is part of FSN and shines light on the backstory of some characters. Shinji and Shirou were real friends until HGW and even after it
Read the VN
Jeremiah Long
this. Shirou at the worst moments of retardation at least never had utopian delusions.
Colton Russell
Imagine thinking this shit is deep and sucking Nasu off this much. Fate is a series for coomers through and through and that "ideals" shit is just a facade.
Brandon Turner
Imagine dismissing legitimately good writing because you're incapable of reading and then typing a meme like it makes your point have any weight.
Christopher Jenkins
>dismissing legitimately good writing
Aiden Moore
So the argument's come to a stand-still.
You can leave now, you've run out of shit to say.
Thomas Barnes
>shirou
>self-insert
>screencap from the awful UBW anime that ripped out all of his characterization
>>>>>dual audio
jej
Caleb Brown
Shirou is a just another self-insert harem protag that wins all the time. The only difference is he has an excuse with his "sociopathy"
Matthew Gray
>he's still trying to bait
Eli Flores
Imagine taking low quality bait from a cross-boarder.
Caleb Green
>it's the anti-shirou autist having a spergout again
/u/fag or F/zero babby?
Brayden Gray
This is NOT how you properly disinfect a wound. You'll get diseases like that.
Kayden Adams
>>screencap from the awful UBW anime that ripped out all of his characterization
Take it back. The UBW anime was the best thing to happen to Fate.
Charles Green
Reminder that Taiga is canonically stronger than Ciel, Kotomine, Kiritsugu, Bazett and Souchiro. It's all according to WoG
David Price
>The UBW anime was the best thing to happen to Fate
Even DEEN/Stay Night was better.
Jonathan Robinson
>Even DEEN/Stay Night was better.
OVER THE LINE 1V1 ME IRL