Fate/stay night Game discussion (Warning: Spoilers)

[Alaya]

Originally Posted by Terminator98

I'd call it more like fully embracing Kiritsugu's personality. His ideals in Fate and UBW are rather different from Kiristugu's, in the fact thta he calls sacrifice rather bu**sh**, and wants to save everyone (and thus do the impossible). He's still largely clinging to that idea, although knowing that it's impossible. (That's what drove Counter Guardian EMIYA insane after all)

The road he adopts in mind of steel has him become much more Kiritsugu alike where he makes compromises.

Shirou's and Kiritsugu's ideals are the same. Kiritsugu just had been betrayed by his ideal that he became despaired and willing to sacrifice the few to save many.
That's the reason why Kiritsugu participate in the 4th Holy Grail War, to wish for a way to save everyone because he just want to save everyone but he just can't by his own power.

Shirou on the other hand has not reached that point yet but will and become Archer when he is also betrayed by the impossible ideal. There will be time that "saving everyone or as many as he can" and "saving the one he loves" conflict with each other.

Originally Posted by Cherry_Lover

Because his ideal is to save people, and killing an innocent girl in cold blood goes explicitly against that.

Note that he avoids killing people like Shinji and Ilya who were just as dangerous as Sakura (to his knowledge, anyway) and had far more intent.



Exactly. His ideal is to save everyone. In compromising that, he therefore discards his ideal.

Originally Posted by Cherry_Lover

Kotomine is directly acting to destroy the world through his own free will. Sakura was not....



Exactly. He had to stop Kotomine, because he was in the process of attempting to destroy the world (and kill Ilya in the process...), and he couldn't risk not going all-out because Kotomine was too strong. Sakura was different because he had an alternative, and also because she didn't really choose to become what she became.

Originally Posted by careph

Interesting idea. Shirou's ideal explicitly is saving everybody. Kotomine is somebody, thus part of everybody. By killing somebody, he cannot save everybody anymore. Thus, he has effectively betrayed his ideal.
But so long as he doesn't realize what he has done, so long as he isn't aware of the fact, it doesn't matter - he can maintain his ideal while betraying it.
And as DragoZero said, he arranges his ideology around his emotional inclinations.

It just shows the impossibility and hypocrisy of his ideal and the concept of "hero who can save everyone". There is no way to save everyone, he can only save those who he sides with. If the hero can save everyone, then he must also save Kotomine too but he just cannot. In Fate and Unlimited Blade Works, Shirou was lucky that he did not have to choose between sacrificing the one who he loves to protect people. So he did not have to introspect his ideal. In HF, the person he must sacrificed is the one he loved so he realize how naive he was.

And Kotomine did not want to destroy the world. He just wanted Angra Manyu to be born so he could obtain his answer that "if there is any worth for a being who born defect (i.e. born evil)." The destroying part of the world is just a by product from Angra Manyu.

Originally Posted by Terminator98

No, this isn't the problem. The one person that made Gil go through his descent in darkness was Gilgamesh. He was an empty, but nice guy before that. Why would his wife commit suicide to try to awaken his emotions if she didn't love him?

He also talks about his daughter in a fatherly tone IIRC, so Kotomine was no monster before Gil drew him in to the dark side.

He is defect from birth. He is a person who could only enjoy himself in other people's suffering. I am not so sure if he can be called evil but he definitely born in the dark side. He just try to deny it and find a way to enjoy his life by pursuing every other field. He is hollowed because he is conflicted inside and because of his father's teaching as a priest mold him to try not to enjoy other people's suffering.

Oh, and the first thought when he found his wife committed suicide was "if she's gonna commit suicide, I should just kill her by myself".

[Cherry_Lover]

Originally Posted by Alaya

It just shows the impossibility and hypocrisy of his ideal and the concept of "hero who can save everyone". There is no way to save everyone, he can only save those who he sides with. If the hero can save everyone, then he must also save Kotomine too but he just cannot. In Fate and Unlimited Blade Works, Shirou was lucky that he did not have to choose between sacrificing the one who he loves to protect people. So he did not have to introspect his ideal. In HF, the person he must sacrificed is the one he loved so he realize how naive he was.

Well, yes, exactly. The difference between Fate/UBW and HF is not necessarily that no-one gets "sacrificed", or even that Shirou isn't forced to kill, it's that the people Shirou are forced to kill are villains, in his mind at least. In HF, the person he is considering killing is an innocent girl and, further, one he loves. It makes the problem with his ideal much more explicit.

Having said that, there are plenty of occasions in Fate and UBW where Kiritsugu would have acted very differently from Shirou. There's no way he'd have spared Ilya, for one (if you ignore the fact that Ilya is his daughter, I mean...), and he most certainly would have killed Shinji at the first opportunity. Both of them had a significant chance of killing many others if he did not stop them, and in Ilya's case destroying her would have stopped the entire war dead.

Whilst HF Shirou is the only one who explicitly protects the ones he loves (and those in his sight) over others, Fate and UBW Shirou do it too, just without really thinking about it. He goes to great lengths to save Ilya in Fate, and does some of the things he does to protect Saber are just plain idiotic if you're thinking of saving as many as you can (after all, it's hard to save people when you're dead).

[mAc Chaos]

Well, you can't save anyone if you're dead, so that would apply to HF too.

[Cherry_Lover]

Originally Posted by mAc Chaos

Well, you can't save anyone if you're dead, so that would apply to HF too.

Well, yeah, but Sakura is saved already....

The point I'm making is that Shirou always prioritises those in front of him over the faceless masses. If one person is dying in front of him and he has the option of chasing down the culprit (and, thus, preventing them doing it again) or acting to save their life, he'll save the one person every time. He simply can't stand by and ignore someone suffering, even when there is a greater threat to deal with.

[Altima of the Gates]

Originally Posted by Cherry_Lover

Well, yeah, but Sakura is saved already....

The point I'm making is that Shirou always prioritises those in front of him over the faceless masses. If one person is dying in front of him and he has the option of chasing down the culprit (and, thus, preventing them doing it again) or acting to save their life, he'll save the one person every time. He simply can't stand by and ignore someone suffering, even when there is a greater threat to deal with.

Pretty much. He even says in the church after he makes the first "kill Sakura or not" choice, that he wants to protect Sakura and the townpeople, but that he won't sacrifice her for that purpose. It's still classic Shirou, taking the hardest road out of everything else he could do. But like the other guy was saying CL, Shirou can't do it if he's dead, and like the rest of the game, he takes risks that could doom his chances to save Sakura as well, to save someone else. It's in a sense stupid all around, but it's part of his character.

It honestly just goes to show you what a lack of information and cooperation can actually do, when you compare the other routes. In the other routes, he always had the cooperation and knowledge of the situation from people he could trust. In HF, Rin was dead set on doing her "duty" despite her feelings and wasn't thinking properly the whole time until the *very* end, and Ilya, until she was entirely committed to Shirou, was set on carrying out the ritual no matter what the consequences, and didn't tell them until later the true nature of the Grail War and Avenger.

Thus, he couldn't count on his allies totally, as they had separate agendas which ran in direct conflict with his own, and the people who did freely give him information (Zouken and Kotomine) were deliberately misleading and pretty much trying to troll him into making the worst possible choices for their own goals. Ironically, the last two knew the most about the situation. Didn't help that the hero and heroine's minds were being turned into mashed potatoes slowly.

So, more than the evolution of Shirou's ideals, I find that the big difference between the routes was the huuuge contrast in the situation and how the characters interacted.

[Allium]

Not sure where to put this, but I'll just leave it here for the moment:

A 10-year Anniversary interview with Nasu Kinoko, Takeuchi Takashi, and Urobuchi Gen from TYPE-MOON Ace 7.

[DragoZERO]

That's excellent, thanks. I'll wait til after Fate-Zero is over to read it all. Can't risk any spoilers, lol.

[Haak]

Can anyone confirm whether the interview has Fate/Zero spoilers, please?

[Nayrael]

Only if you never checked FSN.

[mAc Chaos]

Originally Posted by Haak

Can anyone confirm whether the interview has Fate/Zero spoilers, please?

It does. At least about Kariya.

[Ringil]

Originally Posted by Allium

Not sure where to put this, but I'll just leave it here for the moment:

A 10-year Anniversary interview with Nasu Kinoko, Takeuchi Takashi, and Urobuchi Gen from TYPE-MOON Ace 7.

That was a pretty good interview haha. Thanks for the link

[Haak]

Originally Posted by mAc Chaos

It does. At least about Kariya.

If it simply gives his fate then that's fine. Anyone who's played the game and has half a brain could figure that out.

[FlavoryFantasy]

Originally Posted by Allium

Not sure where to put this, but I'll just leave it here for the moment:

A 10-year Anniversary interview with Nasu Kinoko, Takeuchi Takashi, and Urobuchi Gen from TYPE-MOON Ace 7.

That was a fun and interesting read.

Urobuchi's response to Saber Alter & Saber Lily.
Or as Nasu stated "you crazy bastard, you did it again..."

and this...

Spoiler:

Uro: Really?! Lily looked like a villain to me from the moment I saw her. Imagine her appearing from behind Caster, really working those heels! Just thinking of it gets me excited!

Originally Posted by Haak

If it simply gives his fate then that's fine. Anyone who's played the game and has half a brain could figure that out.

Yeah there's like a one line mention of how his life ends, from Kariya's perspective that is.

[Nayrael]

Ah yeah right, his final moment...

[Haak]

...

I suppose that's enough of spoiler...

Really tempting though...

[Reckoner]

Man that interview was a lot of fun. IT really puts into perspective some of the aspects of each story. I found Nasu's comments regarding Shirou's and Saber's romance enlightening personally. It was an idealogical romance more so than your typical boy girl one since Saber was more like a boy than a girl, so he had Shirou constantly say things like a girl shoudln't fight to make her more like a girl (So Nasu isn't being chauvinistic just a limited writer! ).

All in all a good read.

[GDB]

I liked it. I liked their takes on the girls, especially Urobuchi saying that Rin was a more true heroine than Saber (for the reason Reckoner said above). Also loved Urobuchi's take on Saber Lily, though I don't really get his idea of Saber Alter.

As for the Zero spoilers... it's not really a spoiler as far as I can tell. It's incredibly vague, and knowing that he isn't around in FSN tells you as much as this interview would. At least, I didn't feel like it was a spoiler and I haven't read Zero, so...

[Ithekro]

It sounds like that take on Saber Alter would be like Archer in a way.

[mAc Chaos]

Originally Posted by GDB

I liked it. I liked their takes on the girls, especially Urobuchi saying that Rin was a more true heroine than Saber (for the reason Reckoner said above). Also loved Urobuchi's take on Saber Lily, though I don't really get his idea of Saber Alter.

As for the Zero spoilers... it's not really a spoiler as far as I can tell. It's incredibly vague, and knowing that he isn't around in FSN tells you as much as this interview would. At least, I didn't feel like it was a spoiler and I haven't read Zero, so...

It sounded like he was imagining Saber Alter as more of a Kenshiro "You are already dead" type of hero than one worried about avoiding bloodshed and stuff.

[Haak]

You know what? I decided to read it. Yeah it was a bit of spoiler but I don't care. It was totally worth it:

Some funny stuff (No spoilers):

Spoiler for space:

Urobuchi Gen: And it's exactly because of the circumstances of the age we're in now that I want more young people to experience Fate/stay night. Unlike Fate/Zero, where all the main characters are older, this one has lots of cute heroines!

WTF???

Nasu: Then after defeating Lily in battle, Alter would jump on a motorbike in the last scene and ride off into the sunset. Then the narration would come in: "She is a modern knight, who lives in a world of darkness!"

Lol, they just compared Alter Saber to Batman.

I find it hilarious though that Lily turned out to be the evil one and Alter turned out to be the good one. I can see actually see Alter as a dark hero but Lily as evil is a bit much...

Urobuchi Gen: Thanks for letting it scare you so much. I wanted all the users to enjoy it that way. Yet, I got so many comments like "I could go for that," and "Saya-tan is so cute"... I was stunned by the broad-minded and profound nature of my users. I thought I was firing a bazooka at users who only embraced imaginary love, but just like Matsuda-san in Black Angels, they caught my bullet with their bare hands!

Well that's one way to describe them...

Some thoughts (No spoilers also).

We all know it but it's pretty much confirmed in this interview that Nasu sees Shirou's relationship with Sakura as genuine love whilst the others were more idealistic romance. It's interesting though that Urobuchi sees differently. Death of the Author at play here, I guess.

Nasu's thought about main characters with actual goals from the offset was pretty interesting. I guess the reason they don't usually work nowadays is that we'd find them too pretentious and that's why they're dying.

When they were talking about the fanfiction, I couldn't help but think they were pretty tolerant of it. The only other opinion I've seen of fanfiction from an author is Megan Lindholm who absolutely abhors it because she says it's as if they've taken a sweet gesture meant for them and tried to make it better instead. But they obviously don't see it that way.

And like Reckoner said, it's nice to have a confirmation that some things Shirou said to Saber were just poorly worded and that the other less than favourable aspects of the story were simply due to it being bishojo game which he even acknowledges as limiting.