Anime Discussion Thread - Page 767

On February 01 2011 01:42 Southlight wrote:
Incoming F/SN rant:

I think Emiya Shirou is wishy-washy for the first two routes, which is a shame because they're the most well-known routes. You know those -desu -uguu -geso videos? You could do that for Saber, stupid asshole. So what you end up seeing is this ridiculous streak where he has incredible plot armor and plot luck to emerge as a survivor each time.

It culminates in Heaven's Feel, though, in which the evolution finally completes (fairy tale -> hero -> reality), and Shirou actually goes out to fight for his belief, and, wow, what a coincidence, this is finally the only time in the entire VN that every character actually fights on (depending on how you look at it) as favorable position as possible to themselves and unleashes their full potential, leading to an actual Grail War instead of the joke of the first two routes.

So let's talk HF. I liked its intricacy, I liked how you got the feeling that so much of it was "set up" (which it was, and is as you'd expect from a routine occurrence tbh). I'm a sucker for bloody, dark stuff so it was right up my alley. I liked THIS Shirou, as I liked many of the characters in this route, as they acted for their own priorities and not as much as dolls in the first two routes. Unfortunately there was a Nasu-esque godmode hax in play (Sakura) but oh well.

So why does it irk me when people rate it 100/100 (as many do, you can look it up)?

To the bitter end, Shirou was never a particularly believable nor likeable character to me. He's one of the most celebrated selfish stubborn worthless idiots I've ever seen.

Folks, this man is whiner and pussier than the much-reviled Ikari Shinji. But unlike Ikari Shinji, aside from the relationship of his love interest to his ideals, he doesn't change. From the start to the end, he only does what he wants, for a coin-flip girl, when he wants. Yet despite not really having the ability (strength/power) to do it, he pulls it off via plot armor and plot luck. He's one of the most undeserved, spoiled brats I've ever seen.

Why does this drag down the VN?

Because it revolves around the ideal of heroism and one stupid, stupid (#*@#$'s quest for it. Or abandoning of it. It's an interesting premise, but unfortunately the central character falls apart. It doesn't help that a major foil to his heroism (Saber) gets sacked in the second and third routes, for the most part, and she's also kind of annoying in her own way.

Incidentally almost all the characters suck as much as Shirou, in that the majority of them seemed to have been treated as "end-of-developmental-cycle slaves" and thus had no real character development. For whatever reason Nasu Kinoko decided that heroes must absolutely be one-dimensional muscle-brains.