Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Orange Wizard]

Also, I've mentioned this before, but I just started the second season of Unlimited Budget Works, and I still think that the show would be vastly improved if Shirou were hit by a bus, impaled, or something. Pretty sure I was told that I need to play the game to understand why he is the way he is, but gosh it just drives me crazy every time I watch. Rin for the Win. Also, I'm really hoping that this season doesn't turn into a

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Repeat of the "Save Rukia from the Soul Society" Bleach Arc. Get Saber back in the next few episodes because I miss her :/

There is a law: It doesn't matter how justified something is, if it just gets on the nerves of its audience.

For example Sasuke from Naruto is perfectly justified in whining all the dang time, but it tires the audience.

A lot of the time excuses are just... well... excuses for making a better character. I've seen enough cheap characters in my lifetime thanks to my obsession with interesting/great premises instead of just seeking out commonly known great animes.

---

But more specifically if they couldn't fit in the scenes required to make you understand a character... they should have toned them down.

IIRC ufotable is making the anime for people who have played the VN, so lots of stuff is poorly/briefly explained. Shirou's character actually isn't terrible, it's just that he comes across as a total asswipe at first glance.

[majikero]

Alot of Shirou's character is in his internal monologue and mental snark. The things that don't get to be shown in animation. 

[NullForceOmega]

Foreign anime

We're reaching dangerous levels of meta

Oh, come on, everyone knows that Japan is part of the U.S. 

[Flying Dice]

Alot of Shirou's character is in his internal monologue and mental snark. The things that don't get to be shown in animation.

That, and his dialogue is easy to take out of context. Like the now-infamous line about how people are supposed to die when they're killed--folks just go LOL SO DUMB when it makes perfect sense in context.

[Reelya]

That, and it's also a wordplay on a Japanese idiom, which translates loosely as "he's so tough he wouldn't die if he was killed". Shirou's comment was negating that idiom: nobody's that tough. That's not something that's going to directly translate.

[Neonivek]

Ok wow...

So Wixoss isn't over apparently. I mean I know "I" said that they hinted at a larger force at play but I thought they were going to leave that part of the plot open to interpretation.

[Flying Dice]

That, and it's also a wordplay on a Japanese idiom, which translates loosely as "he's so tough he wouldn't die if he was killed". Shirou's comment was negating that idiom: nobody's that tough. That's not something that's going to directly translate.

Oh yeah! I remember reading that somewhere now. Really, it's a shame how little of the wordplay and punnery can be accurately translated without paragraph-length notes.

[Hawkfrost]

Also, I've mentioned this before, but I just started the second season of Unlimited Budget Works, and I still think that the show would be vastly improved if Shirou were hit by a bus, impaled, or something. Pretty sure I was told that I need to play the game to understand why he is the way he is, but gosh it just drives me crazy every time I watch. Rin for the Win. Also, I'm really hoping that this season doesn't turn into a

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Repeat of the "Save Rukia from the Soul Society" Bleach Arc. Get Saber back in the next few episodes because I miss her :/

There is a law: It doesn't matter how justified something is, if it just gets on the nerves of its audience.

For example Sasuke from Naruto is perfectly justified in whining all the dang time, but it tires the audience.

A lot of the time excuses are just... well... excuses for making a better character. I've seen enough cheap characters in my lifetime thanks to my obsession with interesting/great premises instead of just seeking out commonly known great animes.

---

But more specifically if they couldn't fit in the scenes required to make you understand a character... they should have toned them down.

IIRC ufotable is making the anime for people who have played the VN, so lots of stuff is poorly/briefly explained. Shirou's character actually isn't terrible, it's just that he comes across as a total asswipe at first glance.

I disagree, he IS terrible, and having to listen to all his internal monologues is even worse. (Especially his two page eyefucking of every female character whenever they come on screen; which is annoying for being boring as sin to read, over and over again, more than just for being sexist.)

Shirou is, by far, the least interesting and most aggravating character in the entire series, and this makes an otherwise intriguing (though badly established and inconsistent) setting painful to experience solely because the point of view is anchored to the most boring thing in a forty mile radius.

He's bad tempered, misogynistic, stupid, impulsive, and yet refuses to kill anyone in a to-the-death melee. The very fact that he doesn't get instantly off'ed by a Servant two seconds into every engagement is both insulting to the characters he is fighting (which are supposed to be legendary heroes that can slay armies and dragons, but can't handle a teenage boy with a rolled up newspaper), and completely devalues the entire setting. Shirou is the very example of an incompetent character that only succeeds because the plot decides that he must, despite all evidence to the contrary.

He is just barely above Shinji Ikari for the title of shittiest protagonist, who himself sits comfortably above Tatsuya Our Lord And Savior.

[Leafsnail]

He was also at that point discarding an ability that allowed him to recover from fatal injuries.

[Trapezohedron]

Shirou is the single biggest reason for me why I haven't continued watching any of the Fate/Whatever series, excluding Fate/Zero. His suicidal tendencies and general lack of any form of... pride irritates me so much I stopped watching UBW from episodes 1-4

[Leafsnail]

To be fair both of those things are very much the "point" of his character.

[Bauglir]

I actually found him tolerable in the UBW anime, but this comes with a caveat - I really like his development in that one more than I like him. He starts out pretty shitty but the lessons he learns over the course of it are ones I think are really good ones, even if they don't actually wind up making him particularly great as an overall character. He was a lot less awful about "I should protect you because you're a girl" (compared with the Studio Deen adaptation, anyway, but considering the plot of that route the adapters can't be entirely to blame), and in general just came off as extremely stupid in exactly the ways the plot insists that he is. But they never explain the magic item protecting him, if I remember correctly, which is something they needed to do considering how many times he should have died and was saved only by its miraculous intervention - without it, the part where it seems insulting to the people he's fighting is a pretty valid criticism. It's frustrating because they have foreshadowing for it, too.

He at least seems pretty willing to kill his final boss in UBW, though.

never did read the vn and never plan to, though

[ToonyMan]

never did read the vn and never plan to, though

you're missing out

[Frumple]

It's a Korean novel + Manhwa not an anime.

Easily one of the best video-game-thing type whatsits I'm aware of, as well. Just starting to check out some of the illustrated bits, but I've read through the translated parts of the novel... two or three times, now, though obviously it was at different lengths at the time, ha. Fun stuff. Definitely has a different feel to it, compared to most japanese based stuff of similar nature.

Anyone looking for something pretty similar might check out Ark. They're fairly distinct, but definitely running off more or less the same tropes.

[Hawkfrost]

if I remember correctly, which is something they needed to do considering how many times he should have died and was saved only by its miraculous intervention - without it, the part where it seems insulting to the people he's fighting is a pretty valid criticism.

It's not even just that; almost every fight Shirou engages in turns into sixty different ways of saying "Shirou parried desperately" and his opponent being surprised that he managed to knock their weapon away. Despite fighting against people who can swing so quick it becomes invisible to the human eye, can blow a hole through a wall with their bare hands or annihilate a tank with a single arrow, and literally have abilities such as "an unblockable attack that never misses and always kills the target".