“Bad hair day? Well, I would have never expected that from Little Miss Perfect!”
“Shaddup, Shirou, this is all your fault to start with…”
“Hurry up and get your mojo back. I mean… I love hitting the sack with Saber-chan and all but… she’s just… *insatiable* … I’m so.. sooo tired… zzzz…”
“Skipping school today? To do ‘homework’ with Saber-chan!?
Is that what you kids are calling it these days?”
“Actually, Fujimura-sensei, Sakura, there’s really nothing to worry about since Shirou…”
“Tohsaka! I don’t like having my err problem advertised!”
“To change the topic completely, wouldn’t it be really funny if Shirou ending up choosing a girl that no one expected, at the start, to win? Kinda like SHUFFLE! with Asa?”
“I. AM. FRUSTRATED, SHIROU.”
“Loli-’onii-chan’-love cannot solve your problem?”
“Well, Ilya, I’m not Stripey, you see…” (;^_^)
“Please don’t be upset, Saber. I’ll definitely be able to do it tonight!”
“Promises. Promises…” *sniffle*
“Yeah, well, Shirou may have problems getting it up but I still prefer him over you, Shinji.
And I would prefer sleeping with Saber over you too. And I am! Nyaaa!”
“Curses! Failed again.”
“What’s this? It’s VEE-AHH-GAH-RAH, Shirou.
Enough with the macho shit and take the magical meds already!”
“The girls’ complaints I can handle but don’t you start on me too, Archer…”
There was rather less harem fun than I expected in this episode but I’m a little more optimistic since Shirou is getting a grounding in being less useless with Saber training him in swordplay and Rin training him in magic. Hopefully he’ll become less cocky and stubborn after he realizes how useless he really is.
Right now, I’m wondering if you and I saw the same raw. I’ll readily admit that my Japanese skills are nothing compared to yours, but I’ve seen more sexual tension in fishing programs than in Fate/Stay Night in general.
Or maybe my hentai goggles are busted. Maybe if I re-watch it in slo-mo… [shrug]
And I’m glad I’m not the only one who entertained a Shirou/Taiga pairing. ^_^
W4 - Witness the ecchi goggle power of my imperfect imitation of the Moyism Ero-Caption no~~~ Jutsu~~~!!! (in Onsokumaru voice) Well, actually I’d much prefer a Zyl/Taiga-nee pairing. LOL
If Ilya-loli-love can’t solve Shirou’s ‘problem’, it’s time for a sex change. :) And for the love of my Sg bottom, I’m staying off loli :)
You must admit it was cute to watch Ilya go ‘onii-chan’ and glomp Shirou in the park… and then not let go until Shirou handed her some taiyaki. She’s horribly ‘kawaii’ when she’s not plotting to kill Shirou right that very moment… and gets to Shirou VERY quickly that way.
More fool, he. :D
She’ll probably save him for last. You gotta wonder what her motive is for the grail. On Anime-source.com they claim this anime to be a harem show. I kinda expected Illya to try to move in with Shirou.
Stripey - Taiga-nee >> Ilya for me. Oneesama-type 4tw! And speaking of which, maybe it’s time for you to visit Japan. LOL
Haesslich - Yes, Ilya definitely scored on the kawaii meter but she’s so much more interesting because of the implied threat of Berserker. Shirou the Stupid - I fear that this is going to be another one of those anime clichés where the lead character’s idiotic idealism transforms the rest of the cast rather than him coming to his senses after a good shafting by reality.
Crymic - Ilya is definitely playing the loli in Shirou’s harem for now. LOL Perhaps she will move in with Shirou esp if one of the game scenarios come to pass?
Zyl: I think it’s the contrast between her cuteness and the ruthlessness implied by her behavior in previous appearances which provides the contrast that you find more interesting. In some senses, she’s very much an innocent little girl… but in other areas, she’s anything but innocent - and she’s apparently fairly manipulative to boot, since she managed to get a lot out of Shirou without providing too much compromising information in turn (the only thing that might have been of real use is that she’s not a mage the way Rin is), while satisfying her need for human contact.
Shirou needs a Kira moment or three to develop his own backbone. As he is, he’s an idiot and a hypocrite - like I’ve said elsewhere, he professes to want to be a hero of justice but he’s unwilling to ACT when given the ability to do so.. and is more than happy to let people he doesn’t know die as a result of his non-action regarding the ‘Servant going about killing people’ incients about town, because he doesn’t want Saber hurt… or to hurt anyone else for that matter, even if they’re bloody-handed murderers or worse. The death of an innocent close to him as the result of his non-actions, or because he was unwilling or unable to fight would probably change this, assuming that Archer, Rin, and Saber don’t beat some sense into his head first.
Say… for example.. Taiga-sensei dies because she gets kidnapped by Shinji, and then when confronted with the demand that Shirou and Saber fight him or the teacher dies, he chooses not to fight and trusts that Shinji won’t go through with his threat… only to see Fuji-nee’s blood splatter all over him and Saber, while Saber curses him for forcing her to violate her oaths to protect the innocent in standing idly by while one died. Or Sakura dying because Lancer skewered her on his blade to regain mana, after he gets away from Saber and Shirou when the latter orders Saber not to intercept him when he’s escaping a battle.
Things like that might do it… maybe. Or Archer could beat the living daylights out of him, cut off Shirou’s arm, and then show him that force IS necessary for Good and Justice to prevail. Or, to paraphrase another source, “Without power, good intentions are useless”. Or, perhaps another quote would be more applicable: “But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.”. In other words, to have power and to stand idly by to stop something ‘bad’ (like murder) from happening is not justice… a point which Archer seems to be trying to lead Shirou into understanding, at least indirectly.
“to not stop something bad” even. Granted, it’s not a license to be a vigilante… but at the same time, it’s not exactly serving the cause of justice to let someone, for example, get raped about 10 feet away from you because you’re unwilling to hurt anyone or restrict someone else’s ability to decide what they want to do… which is the position Shirou seems to be taking. Constant pre-emptive attacks aren’t exactly the right thing to do either… but at the same time, neither can inaction in the face of evil be considered ‘good’ or just.
Rin’s face just looks *awkward* in that penultimate picture…
Haesslich - Thanks for dissecting Shirou’s possible future motivations. The Taiga-in-danger scenario looks likely based on the preview of this episode. Something like that would be like Kira’s Toelle moment? However Kira was also strongly shaped by the women in his life, so depending on the situation it was either Flay, Cagalli or ultimately Lacus. I’m not entirely sure if any of the girls can influence Shirou so strongly unless we have a Heaven’s Feel scenario.
As for the necessity of force (or power) for goodness/justice to prevail, there’s still the thorny problem of whether the ends can always justify the means. Normally such issues can be weighed up with the harm principle in liberal thought as well as various measures like having a just cause, using force as a last resort, exercising proportionality in using force and so on. Essentially your classic Judeo-Christian just war theory. Unfortunately Shirou doesn’t seem to exhibit much sophistication in his thinking. ;)
Cephas- The production values seem to drop from time to time. Not as bad as in Suzuka but still, I think we really had our expectations raised by the curtain raiser.
Well, having Taiga in danger would either get him to do one of two things - fight to free her, or surrender his command seals to Shinji if the latter asked, so that he could exchange them for Taiga.. in which case, Shinji seems ruthless enough to order Saber to kill Taiga and then Shirou in order to demonstrate his newfound power. I actually kinda hope this happens, even if we lose the comedy relief - it’d punish Shirou for being an idiot and maybe force some character development on him only a third of the way into the series… rather than at the very end of the series the way Rozen Maiden Traumend did or how Mai Otome/Hime did, which completely screwed up their pacing. They need to do something before the halfway mark, IMO, to avoid that sort of problem.
Kira was shaped by the other women in his life, this is true, but ultimately it wasn’t the women so much as the questions posed to him that he ended up finding an answer to - the question being “Why do you fight?”. With Fllay, the answer was “Because you need to protect me”. She also provided physical release and some emotional support after he got heartbroken in the wake if Yzak’s attack on the fleeing refugee transport, since that was yet ANOTHER failure on his part… and one which drove him pretty much right up till when he met Lacus.
With Cagalli, the answer to that question was “We fight to protect our friends.” This was his original motivation for taking over Strike all the way back in Episode 2, and one which he’d been using throughout the series… again, up till he met Lacus. The failures here almost always broke him - Tolle was just one of many, since the first failure was Heliopolis itself. A similar failure at the end of the series, when one of the funnels blew up the last of the Dominion’s fleeing shuttles sent him back into the same ‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” fugue moment he suffered when Heliopolis spun apart at the end of episode 3… although either Fllay herself or his own image of her pulled him out of the gap.
Lacus Clyne… now there’s the kicker. Her philosophy was contaminated, as it were, by Marukio’s own - she’s not exactly a pacifist, although she was such during the middle part of the series. The answer that she gave Kira through conversations, and ultimately Freedom, was this: “We fight to stop the senseless killings, and for a future where this sort of war will NOT happen again. We’re fighting for ourselves, and our hopes for tomorrow.” Slight difference there - previously, he fought for others to either protect them or to stop them from doing something else. Now he fought for his and Lacus’ vision of tomorrow, and while he would not shrink from killing, would try to restrain the level of violence when he could in order to avoid the waves of deaths which would result in a desire for revenge… the same desire which drove him and Athrun to destroy their own Gundams while battling one another.
Ultimately, it wasn’t those girls who changed him, so much as the answers they embodied - Fllay wanted Kira killing to protect her, Cagalli ended up watching Kira fight because they had to do so to protect the people they cared about, and Lacus ended up getting Kira fighting beside her in order to try to create a better tomorrow than the ones that either Blue Cosmos or Patrick Zala had in mind.
Now, in Shirou’s case, the problem is that NOBODY (not just the girls) has any influence over him. The one who’s got the most influence, at the moment, is probably Rin… and that’s not much more. Shirou, unlike Kira, is a lot more self-centered and doesn’t appear to be as emotionally wimpy as Kira could be… which means that he’s harder to manipulate in that sense. With Kira, you only needed to frown at him and he’d get somewhat emo and apologetic; Shirou needs to be stabbed repeatedly with a sword (physically or mentally) before he starts thinking, or snuggled into submission by a loli manipulator, before he’ll think of anything other than his own views. Kotomine only got his attention during Episode 3 by mentioning what happened during the LAST Holy Grail War, which hit Shirou in his self-centered/selfish shell by remininding him of how he’d become orphaned… with the thousands of deaths that occured about him being a rather distant second in the ‘this is the thing I have to stop’ attitude he adopted at that point. Even if one can argue his thoughts were altruistic… they’re ultimately not, since his opinions and beliefs matter far more than the reality, sometimes - witness how he keeps telling Saber she shouldn’t fight. The reason is not because she’s his Servant and he doesn’t want to draw the attention of the other Masters, but rather that because she looks like a beautiful young girl, he has to ‘protect’ her from danger. The reality, that she’s a summoned spirit and a far deadlier combatant in her own right (as witnessed when she fought Lancer and Berserker) doesn’t matter as much as his preconceptions of how girls ‘ought to behave’.
You can see this again in Episode 10, since he says (after RIn relates her tale of how she dealt with Shinji) that Rin needs to ‘be more gentle’ instead of the aggressive personality that she tends to display, 90% of the time she’s onscreen. Because Shirou believes Shinji is ultimately a nice guy, he ignores the fact that Shinji states he is Rider’s Master, and that Rider was found near a drained body of a student… even though anyone with half a brain would at least get suspicious by the sheer level of coincidence required to believe that Shinji was completely innocent. For this reality to be true, you’d have to ignore several things: 1) Servants need mana, and can get it either from their Masters or by killing others to harvest their mana and lifeforce; 2) When a body’s relatively ‘fresh’, the killing or harvesting didn’t take place all that long ago; 3) Rider was rather close to the body at the time it was found; 4) Shinji is Rider’s Master; 5) Shinji is from a family of Mages but admits he can’t cast worth a damn - which means he can’t keep Rider nourished the way even Shirou can; 6) that Shinji has nothing to do with the killings and disappearances around school, even though he’s a self-professed Master, was nearby when the ‘killing’ took place, and can’t provide for his Servant who needs the mana to live and fight. At the very least, one would get suspicious, especially with Shinji’s attitude towards people… and IIRC, he had a bit of a grudge against the Captain of the archery team too. He had the motivation, the means, and was nearby when this occurred. It’s all circumstantial evidence, but it does hang together somewhat… which again shows that Shirou is very capable of ignoring anything that conflicts with his beliefs.
And this is a problem - it means that Shirou would have to be hit in a very selfish area (his friends) for him to do anything, unless Archer or RIn or someone else can open his thinking up a bit. And Archer’s last attempt got Shirou angry at Archer.
Regarding the use of force and necessity of it, one has to balance ends and means BEFORE going to fight - it’s no good to try to fight and save someone if you’ve nuked the whole area in the process, destroying both the people you were trying to save, as well as causing problems for the people who live by the area you nuked. Nor does it make sense to send a small task force into a warzone to fight a limited action against one person, when the problem there is due to the political and military situation… and the removal of that one faction will do nothing to fix the underlying political problem. In Shirou’s situation, the issues are (fortunately) rather simple; he’s in the Holy Grail War to prevent a repeat of the firestorm 10 years ago which destroyed part of the city and orphaned him, which means fighting other Masters. The fact that at least one of the other Masters is killing innocents to power up his Servant (thus the wave of gas leaks, serial killings, and disappearances) makes this somewhat simpler still; by fighting the other Masters, he can protect other innocents from being drained or killed the way many have already been drained. The side of ‘justice’ demands that he at least bring the criminal down, or that he protects people who aren’t involved in the War from sharing his fate (being killed)… and it was only through Rin’s intervention that he survived this at all, since he has already been informed that the protocol is usually to kill innocent bystandards if they should have the misfortune to witness some of this going on.
What does he do instead? He does anything BUT fight, and nearly gets himself killed in almost every encounter with a Servant he rushes into. He ran into Lancer and died; he ran into Archer, and would’ve died if Rin hadn’t called him back; he ran (alone) into Rider and would’ve died if he wasn’t necessary for the story’s continuance; he ran into Assassin and would’ve died if Lancer hadn’t shown up, which kept Assassin from trying to finish the fight (and probably Shirou) as there was an unexpected variable that he didn’t want there during their battle… and so was content to let Saber leave as she came, since he was enjoying the one-on-one and could afford the delay. He even went off alone to talk with Shinji, who was found near a body and who was a Master without the ability to cast or draw on as much Mana as Shirou can… and didn’t even let Rin know what was happening, in a situation that could’ve easily ended with his death and disposal, if this wasn’t a harem series in which he was the main character. Only that thin plot armor saved him from a quick death, one which he’s tempted again and again.
For someone who professes to believe in fighting for Justice, he has an odd idea of what it means to ‘fight’ - he’s not even on a debating commitee, or apparently in any volunteer activities around the community. His service of Justice is mere lip-service, and I’m glad that Archer’s been poking him with the metaphorical prod to try and jostle his thinking out of the ‘me, and only me’ mode that it currently is locked into. I REALLY hope Taiga dies or gets molested by Shinji… or both. Either that, or something from Heaven’s Fate happens so that Shirou gets something to regret for the rest of his life. I never thought I’d say I’d rather see a RinxSaber pairing, but I agree with Rin now - Saber SHOULD have been hers… and Shirou should have been left a bloody corpse; the series would’ve been so much more interesting with him buried six feet under. He’s almost singlehandedly responsible for the lack of plot development, with his disinterest in the War except as an abstract concept, and the series’ need to focus on him and his life (as he is the main character) due to his role as a main character.
I forgot to indicate he ran into Berserker and literally died, or half-died.. which rounds out the Servants-who-have-met-Shirou list. Honestly, though - Shirou’s the worst ’servant of Justice’ that I’ve ever seen - he does NOTHING socially helpful, as far as we can tell; he works at a bar as a stockboy and he works on things at home, with the occasional job at school that the Student’s Association rep Issei directs him towards. He doesn’t help the homeless, he doesn’t volunteer at a soup kitchen, daycare, or protest the conditions that Koreans in Japan face… heck, for all we know, he doesn’t even donate money to charities. His idea of ‘justice’ is probably to watch TV, shake his head at the actions of others, and then switch the channel to watch sports. Now he’s involved in the Holy Grail War, supposedly to stop other unworthy Masters from getting the Grail… and he just sits there, forcing his Servant to disobey standing orders so she can actually fight the War without him. If it wasn’t for Rin and Ilya’s mercy (they don’t want to kill him; they may kill his Servant, but they’ll probably leave him alive), he’d have been a dead man at least twice over. Shinji, Lancer’s Master, Caster, and all the others shown so far probably have far fewer qualms than Rin or Ilya ever will regarding whether it’d be better to leave Shirou alive or to just kill him (and neutralize Saber) and then go back to seeing who gets the Grail.
The way he’s going, I’d expect that Berserker could walk up to Sakura, beat her badly, then rape her to death and Shirou would just stand to one side and protest that he didn’t need to do that… saying “would he please get off Sakura?” Even if Sakura was calling for Shirou, I doubt he’d do anything besides protest, and maybe walk slowly in that direction before backing off. Saber, in a similar situation, would probably have leaped over there and started slashing at Berserker with her best Noble Phantasm before Berserker had landed the first or second blow in Sakura.
I mean, the guy’s like SHINJI IKARI - except Shinji Ikari actually fought now and then to save others.
>>or protest the conditions that Koreans in Japan face…
My comment didn’t go through. What I was saying that 1. We can’t fault Shirou for not protesting the treatment of Koreans in Japan because the Japanese don’t conform to the same moral standards that the West does, and perhaps Shirou himself would wish all the Koreans to go to hell (I doubt this, however). 2. The rest of Haesslich’s indictment of Shirou is simply unfair.
a.)As for Shirou forbidding Saber to attack Ryudoji temple, remember that his reasoning was that it was probably a trap and even Rin agreed that attacking there at that time was probably a bad idea. I think we can all agree that Rin has a bit more material between her ears than Shirou does, so anything she agrees with must be sensible.
b.) There isn’t any evidence to point that Shirou would ignore anyone he saw was in distress or in danger. Your complaint about him not participating in cookie-cutter style social programs condemns Shirou for not being God or some omnipotent nanny. I think if Shirou had the power to save everyone on earth, he would. Even if saving someone is NOT in his power, he would still take a hit for someone (i.e. in episode 4).
Heaven’s Feel even. Bah!
One more thing to note - while it MIGHT be smart to hide and let the other Masters and Servants fight it out ahead of time in the Holy Grail War… it’s not exactly a smart thing to do when your enemy knows where you’re hiding. Lancer hunted down Shirou, and Shinji no doubt knows where Shirou lives. This means that Shirou is far more vulnerable than Lancer’s Master, since none of the other Servants or Masters have yet to track down where he even is, much less piece together his identity. And in Episode 10, Shirou gives his name to Ilya, which means she too could hunt down information on him…
Oops. And all he does is sit there, bothering Rin, Archer, and Saber. This man is the most pathetic example of a main character in a harem I have had the misfortune to see. At least Keiichi and Harou have their redeeming qualities.
Cephas: My complaints about Shirou stem more from his damned inability to do anything, or to act on something. My suggestions above were just that - suggestions. He doesn’t seem any better than the other Masters in the Holy Grail War, so far as his ethics are concerned. They’re self-serving at best, and hypocritical at worst - he’s risked others’ lives (Saber’s especially) by throwing himself into a situation without support or backup (charging in after Rider, following Shinji home). If you need evidence that he would ignore people in danger, then witness the first several episodes of the series. Rin and Archer were out there hunting down signs of the Servant, who was covering his or her tracks by turning on gas lines and the like which would’ve killed the victims he’d already harvested if they’d been left in the gas long enough. When watching TV, and then the news flashes another story on such things, he shrugs his shoulders even though he KNOWS that a Servant is doing this; remember that he asked Saber if she’d go out harvesting people as the other Servants are.
So what does he do? He does nothing, except nearly get his ass killed. The Temple situation may well have been a trap.. and it was, in a way, although Rider was the one who walked into it, while Saber and Assassin were doing their duel on the stairs. My point was that he’s selfish and self-centered - unless he knows you, he won’t apparently lift a hand to help you. He’s involved in the Holy Grail War, with other Masters who are choosing to fight one another and risk death in order to gain the Grail. He chose to enter this, of his own free will, to avoid another incident like the explosion which orphaned him… and knowing that there’s at least one other Servant out there harvesting people (well, there’s two we can be certain of: Lancer and Rider)… and he doesn’t even do what Rin and Archer did, up till Rin moved in with him to keep him alive, from what I can tell.
He doesn’t have to be omniscient to know that a Servant’s been on a rampage out there - he’s been told that already, and he ignores the situation since it doesn’t directly affect him.. even though he has the abilty now to do something about it (let his Servant fight this other Servant), and a duty to do so (to keep said Servant gathering enough mana and energy to overpower the others, thus winning the War). The way he’s going, I WOULD believe he’d sit there and watch Sakura die, and only complain that the other person should ’stop doing that’, because he is apparently unwilling to act for the cause of Justice which he believes so strongly in, and which he told his adoptive father that he’d pursue when he grew powerful enough.
Well, he’s got the power now. Where’s the pursuit?
Still, when you get down to it, there are many ways to fight for justice. You don’t have to don a cape and go out acting as a vigilante, nor do you have to go out hunting monsters every night… much less become a superhero and save the world. And, as far as we can tell, Shirou doesn’t even do the small things which fight for justice on an everyday level. He doesn’t even make the pretense of it, by throwing money at an agency which could probably use it to feed someone, or to help rape victims, or whatever. He just sits there, spouting various things like “Girls shouldn’t fight” and “You shouldn’t be fighting” and “You’re evil” or “What?”.
About the only sign he was interested in what his Servant wanted showed up when he asked Saber what her goals were, should she win the Holy Grail War… That’s about the only time he’s expressed any real interest in the War, or in the thought of winning it. Otherwise, he just says he’s a part of it, then does nothing unless pushed or prodded into action.. which is probably why Rin’s trying to train him up some, since he’s been relatively helpless to date.
It’s ironic too, considering some of the game’s plot-points, how he behaves here. Archer, for example, really did fight for Justice, once upon a time, as did several of the other Servants.
Jeez.
All that from a simple made up, and if I do say so myself, very funny and good interpretations of the episode..
Jeez!!
But Rin’s hair looks a lot more better than someone who has been sleeping. Maybe she really WAS up all night doing it with Saber-chan.
But I don’t like the way this anime is ONLY put foward in Shirou’s POV. They haven’t showed any thing that has nothing to do with him yet.
All the Saber/Rin interractions without Shirou are not shown. Wherever I look he’s is there like a shadow.
He even wakes up from dreams just so he can be in those important scenes.
It annoys me how they find ways to make him BE there. I mean, JESUS. DATING SIM much?
I just wanna see one fight scene that isn’t interrupted by his No-Sex-Knowledge ass.
Make the loli go for him. Make Fuji-Nee go for him. You can even make*Sniffs* Saber go for him.
BUT for NEKO-MIMI’s sakes don’t even thing of making him shack up with Rin-hime.
She’s waay above his worthness. He’s unworth.