[Nerroth]

Originally Posted by Keroko

I can't exactly pin down the day, but there was a scene in the basement talking about 'rotting worms' and such. Pretty much suggesting the geezer bit the bullet. Zouken did say he was on his last legs in Heavens Feel.

Is that in only one route, or both - and even so, what of the worms already implanted within Sakura?

Of course, there's also the fact that he never appeared, much less did anything, in any of the other routes. Even though this was the last chance for the Matou to do anything.

One of the aspects of both routes which is somewhat bothersome to not have resolved - which makes sense if the intent was to maximise the impact in HF, but is troubling when explaining the absence of such otherwise.

(Although, given that the 5th War was much earlier than expected, Zouken might have had some contingency planned to let him stick around until he had his next chance... unless he somehow knew it was going to happen five decades early?)

Considering she is very much suggested to lead a normal life -or at least not a worse life- in the other two endings despite Shinji being dead in one and a good brother in the other, I'd say that solved itself somehow.

From the point of view of people who never found out what she had been going through, and didn't realise how much she was hiding from the outset.

Had they known she was worm-infested, and being abused by Shinji and Zouken, and then been able to say 'yeah, that's all taken care off, well done' then fair enough...

...but, sadly, it's likely that they seeing her as 'fine' just means that her mask had still not slipped.


(Look, I am the last person to want to see her have to wait for liberation post-Fate and -UBW, but I'm not convinced that this is truly the case.)

Nor should they. However I am a vocal supporter of atonement above death. He spend much of his life making Sakura's miserable, now he can spend the remainder of his life making up for it.

Quite frankly, I wouldn't want him to have any further role in her life at all.

This pretty much nullifies your earlier 'years of exposure' claim.

She did have years of exposure - but while that 'treatment' was horrific, it was at a level she was able to, somehow, learn to cope with, after a fashion.

Low, in this case, is not an absolute, but relative to the truly awful levels of exposure she underwent as the Shadow.

Which again brings us back to the knowledge that out of all characters exposed to the Grail's evil, Sakura was the only one to succumb to it. Every other character either resisted or canceled it's influence. Add to that that unlike those characters, Sakura had yet to be exposed to the full power of the grail, and it becomes obvious that it was not so much a matter of strength, but more a matter of choice.

Leaving aside the part about the evil being enough to turn both Saber and Berserker, I will still say that the issue of choice is not as clear-cut as you make it out to be.


I suspect we may have to agree to disagree on this, however.