mibuchiha wrote...
@Poki: Well, What you said is true but...to me it's not important whether Zouken has backup plan or not. It's just that ethically Shirou's decision was selfish, that's all.
That's the whole point. Yes, it was selfish. He knows it. But really, this isn't a "one over many" anymore, it's "someone you love over strangers". It's not a case of calculating risk and reward anymore when you bring feelings into the mix, and that's what tor him apart inside, because he wasn't ready for it.
Hypothetically, if we where in a similar situation, if we could save a few strangers for the price of our loved one, would any of us do it? Would you be able to hurt the most precious thing you have? Shirou doesn't care about himself, but he cared for Sakura. Harming yourself is easy, harming others is not.
mibuchiha wrote...
Btw how come you said UBW is the worst among the three? You sure you didn't skip any of the Shirou's conflicts?
[size=7]And also Lancer and Assassin's GARness?[/h]
Worst among the three - yes, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Far from it.
Personally, I like spears, and I thought Assassin was cool. UBW has more Lancer and Assassin then the other scenarios.
I can't really say why I like UBW the least. Maybe it's because it sets the romance subplot to the backburner (Rin don't do much more then usual). Maybe it's because I don't find Shirou nearly as interesting as Saber or Sakura. I really don't know.
And no, it's not because the lack of sex scenes, I'm not that low. I though HF had way to much. That Tohsaka/Rider dream was just stupid and an obvious "we have to have at least 2 scenes with every heroine" maneuver. I liked that the last scene was just glanced through though.
Let me talk a bit about the endings though, because maybe that has something to do with it.
Fate's ending caught me completely and utterly off guard. Saber disappeared. I kind of expected it, but I though that somehow, some way she would come back to him. Cliche? I don't care.
But no. We see Shirou going about his normal life, never forgetting about Saber, because he loves her. He'll probably turn old and die never loving anyone else again. And if that wasn't enough, they had THE NERVE to show us Saber's last hour. That was a very low blow and I was down for the count for a whole day after that. However the fact that it stirred up those emotions in me is probably why I like the scenario. I got used to seeing happy endings at the conclusion of my stories, but here I was deprived of that and it threw salt into the wound to boot. I admire the writer for that.
Now, Fate was a love story, but UBW was a journey of self discovery, and a pretty big change of pace. Maybe that's why I was disappointed in it. I was expecting to be moved by something else, but for the most part it's straightforward. The battles, and the fights Shirou has are probably the best (maybe excluding the fight with Kotomine at the end of HF) but it didn't move me overall.
The endings, like I said are mostly happy. Rin goes to London to polish her skills, Shirou probably goes with her and they live happy. The Good ending is nice, because Saber is there, and I think that fact alone makes me like it more then the True one, but on the other hand, Rin probably won't be able to train magic, because of the strain Saber is putting on her. Saber also can't really fight for the same reason, so their happiness is kind of shallow.
Also, in hindsight, Shinji is still alive, and that rubs me the wrong way after what I saw in the 3rd scenario. The fact that one one will notice Sakura's suffering in both the Fate and UBW storylines is always at the back of my head...
Am I a sucker for love stories? I don't know, maybe...
And speaking of love stories, HF is basically a return to the original concept, but with a much bigger tragedy and darker story. The amount of "WTF?" moments is staggering.
The good ending... isn't a good ending at all. It's almost like a rehash of Fate's ending, but with Shirou in place of Saber and Sakura in place of Shirou. It's horrible. I hate it. I don't care that we hear Rin's (great)(grand) douther.
The true ending is as close to a real true ending to the story as we can get. I am worried about Shirou though. His Magic Circut is busted since he... well... died. Rin says something that maybe with training he'll be able to use his Reality Marble... I somehow doubt that. His memories too. We don't know what's going on in his head during the Epilogue. How much memories are in his soul, and how much where in his body? How much was destroyed by the Projections? We know he had to miss a whole school year to get better so it's very serious... In any case, Shirou (and Ilya) sacrificed themselves to save others. (PS: Sakura still gets energy as a Holy Grail. Why didn't this happen in the good ending? Is it because Shirou destroys the Grail in that one, and Ilya just sort of closes the Grail here? This worries me that there might be another Holy Grail War someday. We can only assume what happened to Ilya. We don't know if there are any Eizbern (sp) descendent's left to make another vessel, nor if anything will happen to Sakura.)
But there's always a catch. Saber. I'm not worried about the other heroic spirits, because they're just "copies", but Saber was, more or less, the real thing. God only knows what that corruption did to her. It was probably her worst fate out of all the stories.
So yeah, overall, maybe it's because I'm totally not used to downer endings and they shock me? I had a similar feeling when I played Call of Duty 4 for instance (nuke scene and the ending). A lot of people don't like downer endings, and I kind of don't like them too, but they make me think about the characters and the fact, that not everything is OK yet, and that they still have more struggles ahead of them.
Wow, look at me go on with the rambling... sigh, since I'm here, let me talk a bit about the Pendant and Shirou's fate.
In HF Rin notes that the pendant that Archer gave her has no magical energy, but the one that she used on Shirou has a bit left. Shirou probably used the remaining energy subconsciously to get out of the water during the True Sakura ending, and that would mean that Archer probably comes from that time line. It's never explained what sort of tragedy happened that caused Shirou to make a pact with the world. I was kind of expecting to see that contract happen in this story. There where points where I though, that Shirou will do it in that storyline, and save the people that Sakura killed. But the story never did go where I wanted it to so... Sequel material... It does create a paradox though, because Shirou is alive because of Archer's arm... Not that I have anything against paradoxes. Oh, and Archer did warn Shirou about throwing away his beliefs. Maybe because he experienced it himself, like I said? Or maybe I'm just thinking too hard, and Archer is from a totally different timeline.
Then there's that
Last Episode patch.
And that just messes with your head. I don't get it. It's a continuation of the Fate story, that's for sure but... the only way I can explain it is that they both reunited in heaven after they died. Really... that just creates some plot holes with the whole "reincarnation" and "heroic spirit repository" thing (unless that's that, and Shirou became a heroic spirit too) and doesn't calm me at all. Anyone have a better suggestion?
Pheww... Sorry for making you read all that ^^;