The good news is that that list is all a self-contained continuity with practically no connection to other properties , and it also has some of the most recent entries in Fate. Last Encore aired in , and Extella Link released earlier in Did shirou sleep with Saber? In the visual novel Shiro had sex with Saber, Rin and Sakura.
In the beginning of the anime, she summons Archer for her Servant, although she originally wanted to summon Saber. However, the settings are vaguely different. At the time of writing, there are 14 anime titles in the franchise. Two of which are currently listed as Netflix Originals. Saber to me is the best choice, bias aside.
She actually grows and changes as a result of Shirou, and her relationship with Shirou was very organically development. Sakura is the younger, adopted sister of Shinji Matou and biological sister of Rin Tohsaka.
She has a long-standing and obvious crush on Shirou Emiya , who sees her as family. Shirou falls in love with Sakura and after realizing his feelings are stronger than his ideals comes to this answer. So once that was settled on the easiest thing to do was to just swap the genders, and so bam, female King Arthur is born. Its also established in this ending that they have officially entered into a romantic relationship following the end of the 5th Grail War.
Shirou is not sexist , mysoginistic or anything of the sort. No man wants to see the woman he loves get hurt. In fact, this problem is pretty much only confined to the Fate Route. Naruto leading up to the movie realized that he had always loved Hinata. With this logic, Rin could realize that she loved Obito. However the afterlife scene after Obito died shows a lot.
In my opinion, up until she died she had a crush on Kakashi and believed that she loved him truly. While Rin slept, he reasoned out his situation and realized that he may have the opportunity to achieve his goal.
So if you want to watch the Fate anime series in order you need to follow this:. Ishtar comes from a very early time in the history of complex civilisations, with her cult attested at Uruk as early as the late 4th millennium BCE.
This is a episode anime from Studio Deen that follows the Fate storyline. Other Studio Deen productions you might have heard of are Fruits Basket and Rurouni Kenshin , and more recently, Konosuba Probably its related to the different routes of the game. Shirou at some point of time asks either Rin or Sakura to stay at his house that night to keep them safe. Hence the « stay night » in the name. Overall I rank it among the best series, I have ever seen.
Fate Unlimited Blade Works: Whilst not quite as good as Zero in my opinion, this is still a great series. She further recounts that one of the manors was where she discovered the murder scene of Lancer's original Master. Prompted by this information, Shirou goes to one of the manors to ascertain it as Bazett's hideout.
However, he finds the place to be empty, though he does discover one of Lancer's earrings. Taking the earring with him, Shirou goes to the harbor to get Lancer's assistance against Bazett, using the earring to convince him. Agreeing to kill Bazett, Shirou and Lancer meet up at the church courtyard before midnight, where they encounter Bazett and Avenger. Lancer and Bazett confront each other brieflly, which ends with them giving each other fatal wounds with their Noble Phantasms.
With Bazett's death Shirou believes that both the loop and the restarted war will now end, though he is surprised that Avenger still exists despite his master being dead.
The horde of shades then appears, yet their focus is only on Avenger. Avenger then begins to turn into one of the shades, but he manages to tell Shirou to speak with the Heaven's Cup , imploring Shirou to destroy real him, before his transformation is complete. Realizing what Avenger may mean, Shirou visits Illya to get answers.
She reveals that the Holy Grail that reproduced the war is a true wish granter compared to the Holy Grail of the Einzberns. She further reveals that the Grail is actually Avenger, which is located at the moon. It is also discovered that Shirou is actually Avenger taking his form. Now knowing his true identity, Shirou returns to being Avenger, and with Caren, goes up to the Grail to end the loop.
Outside the loop, the real Shirou is tricked into letting Bazett stay at his house. He often interacts with his love interests, and a large plot deals with him attempting to date them simultaneously in order to make all of them happy when the plan goes awry, Shirou chooses to give priority only to his true love, what arouses the wrath of spurned heroines.
It is also shown that, despite what Nasu has stated, he and Shiki Tohno are very good friends and often collude with each other to keep the girls happy.
A young Shirou also makes an appearance in Episode 6. Shirou's face becomes obscured in episodes that center around Archer , as demonstrated in Episode In Capsule Servant , he appears in his younger appearance as a playable character. He along with Rin are the two main protagonists that the player can choose. A young Shirou journeys throughout the game encountering and defeating several masters and their arsenals of Capsule Servants.
In one route he battles Jeanne d'Arc , assuming her to be King Arthur, which infuriates her. At the end of that route he summons her instead of Saber 10 years later. She wants to become a cash cow like Saber, which both Shirou and Lancer react by constantly telling her to wait. After Shirou defeats her he promises her that in the next Holy Grail War he'll summon her, which 10 years later keeps his promise with her appearing as "Boxer". In the last route Shirou and Rin both face off against a baby Caren who appears to be the source of all the conflicts.
After Shirou and Rin defeat her and take away her powers, Caren decides to fade away which Shirou disagrees with. He informs her to come live with him, stating that he would raise her until she'd grow up stating he'd figure something out with Taiga. She is later adopted by Taiga and raised as Caren Fujimura alongside Shirou.
His personality is a lot closer to his Capsule Servant counterpart. Still having an honest and upright personality, and likely going through days with a love comedy-like tone, along with a twin-tail magic-fist user and her cheerful little sister who laughs like a high-class young lady. It is stated by Nasu and Takeuchi that this form is Shirou's complete magus form.
This design is later on used for Senji Muramasa when he is summoned in Shirou's body. Senji himself has displayed numerous of Shirou's traits and personality described more of a Shirou once he became an old man. False Caster suggests contacting him to assist them in their future battle with Gilgamesh. Reeve vetoes that suggestion, saying since Shirou's Traced weapons are weaker than the originals, he would not stand a chance against Gate of Babylon.
He is working part-time as Luvia's butler. Luvia says that she wanted to use the opportunity while Rin was away from the Clock Tower to lure Shirou "away from that fox", but Shirou was on leave for the week. Reines also mentions the time that Luvia and Rin fell off the Tower of London and were saved by Shirou. He asks if they are in a relationship and Rin denies it, but in a way that makes it clear she wishes they were.
Shirou is a magus trained by Kiritsugu Emiya. Differing from a formal magus, Shirou can instead be called a Spellcaster who does not follow the normal ways of magi. As he was adopted into the Emiya family, he has no way of inheriting Kiritsugu's Magic Crest , and he lacks the innate talent produced through generations of magi striving to develop the best Magic Circuits. His training was informal, as Kiritsugu had no desire to teach him originally, and aside from sparse knowledge, Kiritsugu taught him nothing of magecraft.
He has an Origin of "Sword" and Elemental Affinity of "Sword" as well due to having had Avalon inside him for many years. This leaves him unable to use magic of the five great elements with precision due to lacking any as an alignment, but it does allow for the manifestation of Unlimited Blade Works and the derivative skills in Reinforcement and Projection Magecraft. Despite any more training, even when following Rin to the Mage's Association , he will never leave the level of a magus apprentice.
Should Rin be given a ranking ranging from seventy to one hundred as a magus, Shirou would only rank as a ten. He is an unorthodox magus who makes use of a very specialized version of Projection magecraft. Shirou is initially completely inept as a magus, only able to use Reinforcement and Projection Magecraft with a low level of success.
Reinforcement allows him to analyze the structural composition of an object, and increase its effectiveness, such as making it more durable or its shape more practical, or return it to its original state. He can also use it to improve upon the physical capabilities of his own body, such as his eyesight, allowing him to see as far as four kilometers away.
Shirou is also very skilled in Structural Grasp Magecraft , which allows him to understand the structure and design of objects as if he were viewing a blueprint. Projection , while a high level skill, is generally considered useless compared to Reinforcement due to the higher magical energy cost, and anything that Shirou initially projects is useless and hollow.
Though the objects merely imitate the shape, there are only a few who can identify them as fakes in a first glance. Any practitioner that analyzes composition wouldn't be able to see through them, and even one that works through spiritual mediums would only notice a sense of incongruence. Since only objects with history ever go into the Department of Spiritual Invocation of Clock Tower, there is a low probability of them being discovered.
Shirou's structural analysis is not a type of Mystic Eyes. Shirou is later capable of using Tracing , a higher level version of Projection that completely copies everything regarding the creation and existence of the object. During the Fate scenario, he slowly learns of it on his own by training with Rin and following Archer's advice: "If you can't defeat it, then imagine what can", while in the Unlimited Blade Works scenario, he learns of it through extensive contact with Archer.
He is only effectively able to reproduce swords, other weapons, and armor, but this specialty allows him to faithfully reproduce even legendary weapons. However these weapons always suffer some degradation, as Humans cannot conceptualize an object's existence with a single sense in this case, sight.
He is capable of reproducing any sword that he has seen, though Noble Phantasms are always one rank below their original strength and armor costs three times the amount of magical energy, and he is capable of employing its entire history, allowing him to wield any weapon with the same proficiency of its original owner. He has to see the weapons as how their form as final product actually are with his own eyes to reproduce them, as even the blueprint of Zelretch is not enough to reproduce it, but by seeing it and Caliburn through shared memories of Justeaze Lizrich von Einzbern and Saber, he becomes able to fully trace them afterward.
Ea , as a solely unique existence that can only be wielded by Gilgamesh , cannot be replicated or reproduced in anyway even with Unlimited Blade Works. Rin forming a contract with Shirou in Realta Nua. It is later identified that these abilities and Shirou's affinity with swords are concepts of Shirou's Reality Marble, Unlimited Blade Works.
Rather than simply creating his projections in the real world, he actually reproduces them within the Reality Marble, as if he were loading a gun, and then projects them into the real world as if he were firing it. This allows him to prepare dozens of swords at a time for later use. Shirou is unable to properly deploy or maintain Unlimited Blade Works due to a shortage of magical energy, but with a proper contract with a magus with a suitable level of magical energy, such as Rin, he is capable of using it.
If he were to learn about it normally, unlike the situation in Unlimited Blade Works where he learns of it firsthand from Archer, it would take ten years of training to set the foundations for the ability and another ten years to reach to the point of being able to use it. If Shirou were to fight Shiki Tohno , there would be a high probability of a mutual defeat where Shirou would have his projected Noble Phantasms one-sidedly killed, while Shiki would overuse his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception to the point were he would overload and self-destruct after the battle.
Circumstances would change if Shirou were capable of an Excalibur-like magical energy discharge. Shirou's basic training in Magecraft was extremely lacking, so he was left with the idea that he needs to create a new Magic Circuit with each use of Magecraft. He goes through extremely dangerous training, which he describes as the feeling of inserting a hot iron rod into his spine, where he constantly faces the risk of death in order to develop a new Circuit.
Though his body has twenty-seven natural Magic Circuits , they had been abandoned for his nerves, which he made into makeshift Magic Circuits due to his wrong method of training. Once his real Circuits are awakened, he goes through extreme pain and suffering as his nervous system gets used to the new intake of energy. His newly opened Magic Circuits can barely handle ten units of magical energy each. Shirou has Avalon implanted within his body, which saved his life during the great fire.
This gives him an extremely potent regenerative ability while Saber is summoned due to Excalibur , though it does seem to sustain him even without it as he was able to temporarily survive a fatal blow dealt by Lancer. This allows him to survive numerous fatal wounds though it works against him in bad endings where he is able to be tortured and mutilated without succumbing to his injuries for a long duration of time.
Unlimited Blade Works also seems to protect Shirou by creating blades within his body to reinforce it. He is able to survive a blow to the chest from Rider's dagger, which is repelled as if it is hitting metal, a kick that would have gouged his stomach only knocks him away, and he manages to keep from having his entire body destroyed from an attack by Gilgamesh.
The ability seems to go out of control during a bad ending where numerous swords sprout from his dying body, and while his body is fully breaking down in the Heaven's Feel scenario, they are constantly being created and protruding from his skin. This allows him to damage Kotomine whenever Kotomine hits him even though his "body of swords" still cannot defend against the Bajiquan attacks of Kirei.
He practices basic sword fighting with Saber, though it amounts to little in actual offensive capabilities. While she teaches him, he cannot use her fighting style as a model. He cannot see exactly how she is attacking and their different physiques makes her impossible to copy. During Fate , Shirou only learns the basics of his abilities, leading him to only trace Caliburn and Avalon. He temporarily utilizes a bow during the second battle with Berserker, having imitated Archer's Bow.
It utilizes the same design for the most part, but the arrow rest and grip are amateurish and simple compared to those of Archer's bow. Shirou personally thinks it is ugly and crooked, but it functions properly as a bow. It is also slightly less curved due to Shirou's preference in the Japanese method of shooting.
He is only a practitioner of Japanese archery compared to Archer's Western method, so he subconsciously altered the bow into his preferred shape without realizing it. Shirou and Archer's connection is a large part of his development in the Unlimited Blade Works scenario.
The contradiction of Shirou Emiya and the Heroic Spirit EMIYA existing at once is much like magecraft that allows one to acquire skills from the past by possessing themselves with a previous self. The more they come into contact, the more of his knowledge and techniques flow into him.
The abilities suit him perfectly, as they are Shirou Emiya's optimal technique, perfected over many years of training. It is first noticed after several training sessions with Saber, when he makes a drastic improvement over the previous day. Copying Archer's technique, he begins to make fewer unnecessary movements, allowing him to desperately avoid her counter-attacks rather than become instantly knocked out, and as his body is already fit, just the knowledge of proper techniques can improve his fighting quickly.
He is captivated by Kanshou and Bakuya , and uses it as a basis for a two-sword fighting style. He does not have a basic style, so it is immediately evident that he is copying Archer. The flow of it is so unconscious that he believes that Saber is going easier on him, and his sword is able to automatically parry her strikes even though his body cannot react to them.
The effect greatly magnifies after they recognize each other's identities, causing extreme pain as it flows into him. His body begins to break every time they touch, as he has learned too much of his future self while trying to match him in skill. He even begins to obtain Archer's memories, such as the reason behind his hatred for their shared ideals.
He is hardly capable of competing with Archer even with their connection strengthening him and only once he has passed his limits is he able to take on Archer on what could be called nearly equal grounds, with Archer being perplexed at how the gap between their skills was quickly closed, and even eventually defeat him with his "passion-infused strike", unperceivable even to Archer's Eye of Mind.
Once he learns the true use of Projection, he lacks proper training so even the most basic projections cause him pain and the majority of the swords generated shatter upon impact due to their low quality. He projects both Archer's sword technique and his reproduction ability, but it is flawed because he does not understand that they originate from his Reality Marble. Unlimited Blade Works cannot be utilized without that realization, and even after coming to that conclusion, he does not have the necessary energy to utilize it on his own.
He forms a contract with Rin to have her provide the necessary magical energy to form his Reality Marble. This grants him the ability to finally make use of Projection in battle, allowing him to quickly trace the weapons from the Gate of Babylon while fighting Gilgamesh to duplicate them well enough to counter his barrage of weapons, which Gilgamesh praised him somewhat for.
Upon actually utilizing Unlimited Blade Works, Shirou used the fact that although Gilgamesh wields countless weapons, he has not mastered them all and his greatly increased reproduction speed and constantly ready weapons while in his Reality Marble to completely overwhelm and defeat him.
However, he stated that he would not stand a chance against other Servants who had mastered their weapons to their utmost limit, the ability being only slightly challenging for the likes of them. Shirou does not develop his abilities as he does in the other routes during Heaven's Feel.
He uses his basic Reinforcement magecraft on a stick and wooden sword during the early part of the war without grasping onto Projection. During the first conflict in the Einzbern Forest, he loses his arm while protecting Illya from the Shadow's explosion.
The wound is critical, so Archer, having also suffered a critical wound, tells them to transplant his left arm onto Shirou.
Attaching a spiritual body to a normal human body requires a spiritual doctor like Kotomine because the process it more akin to healing the soul rather than the body. It is a "foreign substance" that should not be there, attached by opposing the natural Providence, and joining two separate spiritual bodies is forbidden magic that cannot normally succeed. The formation of spiritual bodies deals with resurrection and restoration of souls, divine mysteries that cannot be handled with magecraft, so it would normally be that the recipient would die of shock even if the operation was a success in shape.
Kotomine expected the completion of the surgery to result in his death, but Archer and Shirou being the same person makes them an exception to the normal rejection. Not knowing of their exact connection, he states that they are suited for each other and not even two twins would be as similar.
While the arm would have disappeared had Archer faded away while the surgery was in progress, it is now anchored to Shirou and can be called his own limb. Due to being transplanted while Archer was still in the world, it is part of a Heroic Spirit that has been connected to his Magic Circuits, and stays in the world using his own magical energy. While unconscious, the arm grants him knowledge on Archer, the basis of Projection magecraft, battle experience, and battle information.
The sensation feels like his body is burning while countless ants enter the hole in his shoulder that is now sealed with flesh that is not his own. While the sensation tells him to manage these skills, the level of information and power required feel impossible to him. Even if it becomes familiar with his body, he neither has the skills to handle it or the power to use it without destroying his body.
While they are the same person with compatible Magic Circuits, the power of the arm of a Heroic Spirit is not something a human can handle. No matter how suited he is to the arm, he cannot use its abilities without it eventually swallowing him due to his body being spiritually far inferior to the arm. It passively flows Archer's battle experience and physical abilities into Shirou even while inactive. It acts like an overdose of strength-enhancing drugs, letting him demonstrate abilities beyond his limits.
He becomes able to easily leap out of the third story window of the Einzbern Castle, compared to around eight stories for a normal building, with only temporary numbness and pain upon landing. Unable to strengthen his body, he does bring a large amount of magical energy to his feet to lessen the impact and believes that landing on asphalt instead of grass would have broken his legs. Illya mentions that Archer is influencing both his mind and body, making him think that he can easily handle the drop like Archer and toughening his body enough to survive.
He can also run fifty kilometers per hour through the uneven terrain of the Einzbern Forest. It would be possible to cut it off, but that would remove his only possible weapon in defeating Zouken. The arm is treated as a different object even if he uses magecraft, but magical energy still constantly flows through the body even if magecraft is not being used.
Despite the Shroud cutting off the Magic Circuits, he will feel a great deal of pain if he does not concentrate to form a "barrier" to keep the "foreign substance" out of his unstable body when the arm reacts to the energy and tries to activate.
It is easy to do once he figures out where the pain is coming from, and he is able to control it to an extent. Living with it is not quite as easy as Kotomine suggests because the arm randomly flows magical energy into his body.
It constantly becomes hotter each time he moves it, and when it overheats, it sends the excess to the rest of his body. While it first feels like he is being burned, he realizes it is more like he is being cut and stabbed by his own body. Simply undoing part of the binding for even a brief moment causes him to completely lose himself as his nerves and senses are overwhelmed by extreme pain and the feeling of impending death.
He rambles on in his mind about how he is feeling more pain than ever before, "sitting on a mountain of swords", and that he can see all of his cells crumbling apart. He regains his senses a few seconds afterward, and he cannot remember the exact happenings during that period.
Although he can manage at times, he still suffers a great deal of pain in intervals to the point of wishing to simply cut it off, or even risk removing the shroud to stop the pain. Its existence brings him true fear of an unavoidable death and utter obliteration, making it the first he has felt such since the fire ten years before. His ability to suppress the infringement from the arm even with the Shroud is limited to a certain extent, with Kotomine noting that the arm will consume him within ten years, but the Shroud is still able to hold it long enough to make it not an imminent threat and give Shirou time to train himself to become a magus worthy of matching the arm to seal it without the Shroud to allow him to live to an old age.
Rin also shares part of her Magic Crest with him as a Warding Sign. She is able to transplant a small part of her Crest by placing her left hand on his body, comprehending it, and sharing her warding crest.
While she was planning on giving him the capability to use a "switch" for his Magic Circuit, being able to turn it on and off is too dangerous in his current state. She instead performs it to suppress the magical energy by placing needles in his left shoulder, belly button, and throat so that the arm won't be connected to him unless he wishes for it.
It also grants a resistance to magical energy, so that something that passively absorbs energy like the Shadow will have less of an effect on him. Her crest cannot familiarize itself with someone not from the Tohsaka family, so it is a makeshift that won't even last a week. Shirou is currently observing Archer's magecraft rather than his own magecraft, so he cannot use Projection in his current state without invoking the abilities of the arm.
Illya states that he will eventually obtain his own usage of Projection magecraft, but it is still only a possibility at his current level. His own Projection is still at the level where it will fail constantly due to his misunderstandings, but drawing on Archer's knowledge without invoking the arm can force him to "level up" quickly. He can loosen the Shroud slightly in order to practice retrieving Archer's knowledge without breaking the seal and only getting a small reaction.
With help from Rin's Magic Crest to increase his Magic Resistance and Illya to protect his consciousness, he can experience Archer's Projection by interacting with the arm like opening a Magic Circuit safely. The knowledge is like poison, but the arm will continuously flow its experience into him. It is similar to pouring one hundred units of fuel into a container that can only hold ten, and he will likely only gain from less than a tenth of the agony he will endure.
The knowledge disrupts his memories and leaves him with a large blank space after replacing the Shroud. Projecting directly with Archer's abilities requires the removal of the Shroud, and although potentially able to recall the activation spell gained from Archer's knowledge, his body would be destroyed if he tried using it.
It can easily be removed at any time for instant access to the full extent of Archer's power. It is not something that lessens his life with each use, but the activation of a time bomb that will ultimately lead to his death the second he removes the Shroud. Archer's Magic Circuits will be activated if he uses the arm even once, and while he may last while using its abilities, his body will break down due to being unable to withstand Archer's magic.
He will eventually be consumed, or more correctly "blown away", by the arm after the first activation. Once it is removed, Shirou instantly gains access to Archer's Magic Circuits, battle experience, and techniques, making him capable of matching and potentially even defeating Servants in direct combat, but he cannot deploy Unlimited Blade Works because Archer's inner world is different from his.
While claiming he can only reproduce what he himself has learned and the Noble Phantasms that he has personally recorded, he is revealed to be quite capable of using Archer's records to project weapons he had never personally witnessed before, as he was able to project Caladbolg II and Rho Aias. He is able to trace " Nine Lives " to kill Black Berserker nine times with a single maneuver called "Nine Lives Blade Works" and later defeat Saber Alter with the Overedge technique of Kanshou and Bakuya at the cost of his mind during a bad ending.
Using these abilities comes with a heavy penalty as Archer's circuits overload Shirou's body leading to his mind slowly eroding, the decay of his memories, and eventual death as his body and soul break down from being invaded by Archer's Unlimited Blade Works.
Due to Archer's arm and his overuse of Projection, his Magic Circuit is broken into pieces, and his death is one that even the Holy Grail could not reverse. He is resurrected by Illya's imperfect usage of the Third Magic , reviving his soul and giving him a body free of wounds by preserving his soul and inserting it into a container.
It would normally be that giving the soul a container or body would allow it to take perfect form by utilizing the "genes of the soul" rather than those of the body. His body is reconstructed from a portion of Illya's body, which she mentions is a bit cheap as a container, so it is nowhere near his original form in terms of size.
Its shape afterward is not that of a human, but as he mentions reaching his hands out and grasping onto Rin's pendant, it is at least vaguely humanoid. He is able to be found due to Rider using the pendant as a landmark to locate him, and while his exact form is left unknown, it is small enough to be "plucked" from the river by Rider. He is not a true product of the Third Magic, a high-dimensional planar being, but it instead re-anchored his soul to a vessel.
They decide to experiment with various ideas for a proper body during the first six months, as he cannot simply grow in his current state. They do not have the resources to make a homunculus body, so they instead sell the books of the Matou household to obtain a puppet body left by Touko Aozaki.
He is perfectly human even in this state, but Rin notes his soul is actually remotely controlling the body. He can receive surgery at hospitals, drink cold medicines, be killed, and eventually grow old and die of old age.
The soul is fixed to the body, so he can be likened to a Servant that can operate without a Master. He has some issues because the body is used, but even other good puppet makers cannot match up to it. Rin wishes to find and consult Touko about it, but her Sealing Designation makes that a hard prospect. The magical energy does not flow well, but Shirou is fine with it because all other aspects are better than his original body. The soul will overwrite the body no matter its quality, so there will likely always be places that won't function properly.
Sakura supplements his very weak Magic Circuit with her own overflowing amount in order to keep him from returning to his prior state. Despite the setbacks, Rin believes that he should be able to utilize Unlimited Blade Works with training, and that his being a successful example of the Third Magic is an extraordinary trait in itself. Kinoko Nasu 's original story of Fate, Saber and Shirou were opposite gender to now. Ayaka Sajyou was the original main protagonist until Takashi Takeuchi convinced to Nasu to change the setting but the essential theme had not been changed, it's the story about legendary heroes and "a boy meets a girl.
Nasu describes his writing of Shirou is based on novels written after the 90s, where the main character suffers from trying to come to terms with his problems in their own narrow perspectives. In the original concept there were three additional routes that were meant to be implemented for Shirou each with different heroines, but were never implemented due to time constraints on the title release.
She was an attempted inclusion in the Anime and the Movie as well but was never fully implemented. We hadn't gotten around to doing the whole "fighting against yourself" theme that we wanted to do with "Tsukihime", so we figured this would be a great opportunity to do that and blend it with the "hero of justice" concept we wanted to explore.
Takeuchi: Though Shirou's concept went through at least a couple of revisions. Nasu: Initially, Gilgamesh was the 8th Servant, and he was a [gate] keeper instead of an Archer.
The heirloom artifact was supposed to be the key. Early on, we laid out a few plot twists with certain route branches and red herrings that made the player think Gilgamesh might be Shirou. Since the surname Emiya can be defined as the protector [keeper] of the "miya", it would have been interesting at the very least.
That was going to be Shirou's link with Gilgamesh. Despite the various colourful concepts we considered for Shirou, he ended up being a pretty simplistic "hero of justice" who felt bound by fate when he survived a terrible situation. Takeuchi: The character's basic concept didn't change much from the first draft, red hair, a prominent scowl, stubborn, and a steady gaze.
We were aiming for an orthodox shonen manga hero, but we knew that alone would be far too dull, so we gave him an extra touch of mystique by adding extra lines to his eyes.
I didn't think too hard about it when I first started drawing him, but I think I did a pretty good job of designing a character with elements that compensated for the somewhat unusual foundation of his design. Nasu: He's the kind of guy who knows what his goal is and shows very little interest in anything that doesn't somehow relate to him achieving that goal.
It's not that he doesn't take interest in other things, but more that he can't. I suppose you could say he's more "serious" than "stubborn". He can be quite insensitive when it comes to human happiness, but again, that is because it is his nature and not a result of him being heartless.
Nasu: Yeah, I find it's difficult to write for him too. Takeuchi: I'm sure, but I'm talking specifically about drawing him. His facial expressions in particular always give me trouble. That's why I have so much respect for the people handling him for the anime.
Nasu: Maybe we should have designed him to be more like an archetypical hero Would that have made him easier to draw, in a manner of speaking? Takeuchi: That's possible. His eyebrows are so unique that they're hard to work around when forming different facial expressions. Scowling and yelling are easy enough, but the more subtle expressions prove quite tricky. We basically created a monster in terms of design.
Nasu: One thing we can say is that Shirou's outfits were designed under one of Type-Moon's most constant rules, which is that the main character is never overly accesorised. When I create a main character, I usually focus on their inner aspects, so we try to leave the character's exterior as plain as possible to ensure that the player can envision him however they like.
That was a result of Type-Moon's approach to "gal games" being centered around the idea that the main character shouldn't be visually represented very often. We only showed his standing pose image when we were seeing him from Rin's point of view, and there were very few event illustrations in which Shirou made an appearance.
Nasu: There's one where he's holding Sakura Most of the important scenes were drawn with the focus on the sword. Takeuchi: He also showed up in the generic combat illustrations, I did draw him quite a bit for the PS2 game "Realta Nua" though. Since "stay night" was technically designed to be a bishojo game, we did our best to avoid giving the main character a face. The PS2 game, on the other hand, didn't have any graphic scenes so we didn't have to worry about that as much.
But when I had to draw him for the first time in a while, I experienced difficulties in getting him right. I had a terrible time trying to make him look like the standing pose image I drew of him.
Nasu: laughs Takeuchi: That standing pose image is what I consider to be the epitome of everything Shirou should be, visually speaking. Nasu: I remember when we debated quite a bit over Shirou's facial expression because I kept insisting that he needed to look more stubborn. Takeuchi: Did we? I don't remember, but that sounds about right. Nasu: Shirou's the kind of main character who wants to save as many people as possible and make them all happy, in contrast, Shiki from "Tsukihime" is the kind of person who only cares about those closest to him and their happiness.
Takeuchi: Shiki was the guy I wanted to be when I grew up, back when I was in middle school and first learned about otaku culture. Rin was the classmate he admired, and Sakura was someone he felt he needed to protect.
Shirou is a self-sacrificing idealist who was essentially guided through life by the things he believed in, but Sakura was an exception for him. Only when dealing with Sakura was the idealistic and profound Shirou Emiya reduced to a mere human being with more mundane thoughts and emotions. As a side note, Shirou's heart was always racing when it came to Rin. Takeuchi: I never considered Shirou to be particularly dense or indecisive.
He's the kind of guy who would be very careful about his choices when it came to matters of the heart. Nasu: I definitely wouldn't say he's dense; he just has his priorities straight and doesn't try to hide it.
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