Archived Discussion Characters / FateStayNight

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

I'm cutting the following series of edits, because it is both a serious case of Take It To The Forums and TL;DR

• Shallow Love Interest - Sakura is hated for reasons other than the above, this being one of them. Shiro and Sakura get together rather early in Heaven's Feel. This isn't a problem at first, but the tragedy happens soon after it and we aren't given enough development to genuinely care and think that Shiro is actually throwing away his ideals for something worth it. So most are going to naturally go with the "Mind of Steel" ending since it's more the believable choice that Shiro would take rather than a girl we're supposed to feel for that hasn't had enough time for us to develop a strong opinion of this pair. Although to be honest, when most chose to keep his ideals we didn't think we'd end up with that kind of ending.
  • Really though, Shirou has been together with Sakura for faaar longer (years?) than either Saber or Rin. So it's First Girl Wins.
  • Yeah, this is rubbish. If you look at the start of HF, it's clear (to me, anyway), that he's already in love with her. He's just in denial (because she's his friend's sister, supposedly, and he feels that it is wrong). Plus, even if he isn't genuinely in love with her at that point, he obviously cares about her like a family member. Plus, after what he hears about her past, he's bound to feel bad. Once he's decided to kill someone who is so sympathetic, and who he clearly cares for more than anyone else, he's pretty much guarenteed to go down that route. Plus, with what he knew at the time, killing Sakura wasn't really the right thing to do in any case. She hadn't done anything yet (as far as he knew), and it wasn't certain that she would. Going for that approach makes him exactly like Kiritsugu. As far as Rin and Ilya go, killing her sister in such a way is bound to send Rin totally nuts, and in getting the ending, you totally alienate Ilya (who certainly doesn't accept the "Greater Good" argument), and now that Shirou's become like Kiritsugu, she's going to go after him with a vengeance. He's bound to end up killing both of them, if he is going to uphold his ideals (and, once he's killed Sakura, he can't really change his mind later without being crushed by the guilt).
  • Here's the skinny: if you don't choose Sakura, she continues to get raped by worms for the rest of her life and eventually get tossed aside, unless of course future Shirou were to find out and do something about it. So what's his reward for choosing to save The Woobie at this place and time? Well, he gets his body obliterated, his mind broken, his future abilities crippled, his memories erased, he has to kill his Servant, forgo his ideals, and gets a wife that's an unstable Eldritch Abomination. But hey, he gets to keep Medusa. Fuck you, Nasu. Fuck you. It's entirely viable for Shirou to save her after any other route (though more likely UBW, as he has access to Rule Breaker), which would allow him to not get nerfed and save the slut.

• The Atoner - Although she forgets this until reminded after a freak-out near the end of HA, she originally decided to become Sakura's Servant in order to prevent her from becoming a man eating monster like she did when she was alive.

This line is ambiguous. Does the "her" in "prevent her" refer to Rider herself, or to Sakura? Can someone who has played HA please clarify this.

Uh, I wrote that, but I'm not sure how to rephrase it..kind of complicated and there's a lot of personal pronouns lol. Essentially, Rider turned into the Medusa we all know after her sisters' constant taunting made her lose any confidence, so she dedicated herself to "protecting" them (her sisters) by killing any men who approached their island (and eating the men as well, if I remember correctly). After she got killed, Avenger comes to her in the Throne of Heroes when the 5th grail war is starting and shows her Sakura, who Rider recognizes as a ticking time bomb, so she (Rider) resolves to save Sakura from becoming a monster like she (Rider) did in the past. Is that more clear? I don't want to have so many parentheticals in the actual article though so if you have a better way to phrase it, feel free.

• Ah, OK. How does that work, though? How could she tell that Sakura was a "ticking time bomb", especially when she didn't seemingly notice it at all in two routes (and, indeed, Sakura never became one), and in HF, she actually ended up pushing Sakura firmly towards becoming a monster, by attempting to kill Shirou and Rin (against Sakura's express wishes) to supply her with prana, amongst other things.
  • Intuition? It's not exactly clear how much of Sakura's situation she saw, but she might have seen the abuse that Sakura was going through because of the Matou family, and saw that as analogous to what her older sisters put her through in the past. If she at least had a bit of knowledge about it, she might have seen that Sakura was also a potential holy grail as well, which gives Sakura both the motive and the ability to...well, pretty much turn into what she did in HF. As far as her not noticing, you might say that it's not that so far as fanatical loyalty to Sakura above all else. Keep in mind that, when Rider attacked Shirou and Rin, Sakura was basically like a fish out of water, struggling to "breathe" in desperation for more prana. This also explains why it's not apparent in the first two routes, since she endured Shinji's abuse and incompetence because it would keep Sakura from the potential catalyst of the grail war (as well as the danger, obviously). Even after she's fallen in love with Shirou by HA, she still makes it very clear that she will off him in a second if Sakura wished it . However, she knows Sakura's in love with Shirou so she's fortunately not being forced into that situation, but instead the conflict of her loyalty to Sakura with her love for Shirou, and again loyalty wins out. Of course, you can just call it a retcon by Nasu if you're not feeling as generous as I am, but i think there's enough wiggle room and emotional thinking for it to fit.

Removed this from Sakura's character profile:

• The Scrappy - Some don't like her because of her (entirely understandable, due to her insecurities) Clingy Jealous Girl tendencies and the fact that not pursuing her is seemingly dooming her to a horrible future, but a lot of this can be attributed to Heaven's Feel being a lot more brutal and dark a route than the others. Her relative lack of popularity is lampshaded in the character poll results wallpaper included in HA, where she's shown hanging herself in chibi-form with Ilya and Taiga hanging onto her feet. This isn't to say she doesn't have her partisans, but she's not quite as popular as Saber or Rin (but still more popular than Shirou, funnily enough).

I don't think she really is a scrappy. She's a lot more popular amongst the fandom than 4chan trolls would have you believe, and in all honestly, if you asked the average non-Sakura fan (who had played the VN), you'd get a lot more saying "I don't care" than you would saying "I hate her". And, of course, most of the anime fans couldn't care less, because they don't know her story.

• Well, I don't visit 4chan at all, I'm basing this off the official Type Moon popularity poll included with HA as well as other popularity polls I've seen conducted on various anime themed sites. Sakura has her own fandom, yes, but she's not as popular as any of the other heroines. Scrappy is the closest trope to "not as popular as one would think," since I do think it's worth mentioning. I actually quite like Sakura personally, but at the same time I'm against the idea of censoring the page because one of her fans doesn't like the characterization. After all, I think listing perceived character flaws should be a part of the character's page, and putting it under one trope heading makes it seem less anti-Sakura as opposed to separating and listing all of them. Well, for now I'll leave it off until you respond.
  • The problem is that not being many people's favourite character /= being The Scrappy. Plus, you're taking polls from anime-themed sites. In the anime, Sakura is a pretty minor character, and so it's not remotely surprising that, on sites where most of the voters won't have played the game, she's not very popular. What actually made me decide to remove the entry, actually, was looking at one of the "favourite Type-Moon character" polls on Beast's Lair (which is an actual FSN fan forum). Sakura was second favourite out of all Type-Moon characters, only one behind Rin (and, I haven't even voted yet...). True, it's only one forum, but it's a genuine fan forum rather than an anime site, and I don't think a character who is listed in second place in such a poll can really be considered to be a scrappy. Whilst I can see your point about character flaws, this isn't wikipedia. Shoe-horning a character into a trope that they don't really fit into so that you can put the details of their character flaws on the page defeats the point of the site, really. If there was a "not as popular as you might think" trope, then Sakura would probably fit into it, yes. But, that isn't what being a Scrappy is. Being a Scrappy means that you have very few fans and virtually everyone else hates you, not that you have a smaller fanbase than the other main characters and most of the rest don't really care either way. Even the Shirou entry is a bit dubious, but I think that one is OK because in the anime, he probably is a scrappy, and the entry makes it clear that he's not generally considered one outside of the anime and (to some extent) the Fate route of the game. The same justification doesn't apply to Sakura because amongst anime fans, she has few fans, but even fewer haters, and amongst VN players she has some fans and a few haters.
  • Oh, BTW, I have no problem whatsoever with the HA edit. What you've written seems perfectly reasonable (I haven't played HA, so I don't know exactly what has been mentioned).

Well, I do think if usage of Scrappy is subject to that kind of scrutiny, Shirou should also have it taken off of his entry, among others. As we know from this site and others, people who watched the anime HATED Shirou (and anime shirou got on my nerves too), but HF and especially UBW Shirou were much more palatable to me because he doesn't act like quite so much of an idiot. However, the anime fandom is still a valid fandom, however much us VN fans may want to deny it (god knows how much the apologists for the Valkyria Chronicles anime bug the fans of the game sometimes, but their opinions are valid too). There are actually quite a few instances of "scrappies" on the scrappy main page that I personally liked, but I didn't edit them out because I can acknowledge that they have qualities many people may dislike. Although I was referring to some anime forum polls (for instance, at anime-suki it's Saber and Rin at a few hundred votes and Sakura doesn't even break triple digits), I was primarily basing it on the official type moon poll with HA, which is how fans of the VN thought of the characters since the anime hadn't even come out at that point. Regardless, perhaps the existing entry under Sakura is enough and the individual properties can get separate entries, but it would be good to discuss them without them dominating her entry by showing up all over the place. I personally like Sakura's character, but didn't care much for large portions of HF's storyline (Shirou getting superhuman abilities was awesome, for instance, but the entire feel of the route, and Saber getting dispatched without much of any response on her part, grated on me). I think part of the reason she's not as popular is because people blame her for the issues they had with HF. As I added under Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming under Sakura though, she's just adorable in HA and you might want to look into the translation project in progress at http://tsukuru.info/tlwiki/index.php?title=Fate/Hollow_Ataraxia , I'm doing what I can to help that project along even if it's only little anonymous lines here and there, and there's a good amount of Sakura scenes at least partially translated.

Well, you've explained the fundamental difference there. Anime Shirou is a scrappy, and as you said, as much as I dislike the anime, it still counts. As for Shirou not being a scrappy in UBW and HF, I entirely agree, but the entry for Shirou makes this quite clear anyway, in my view. Sakura, on the other hand, is not a scrappy at all in the anime. In the VN, some people think she is, but not enough, in my view, to fit the trope. Not being popular doesn't make you a scrappy, you have to be actively hated. And, like I said, people who have only watched the anime have no reason to like Sakura anyway, really, at least not as their favourite. As for the Japanese poll, I don't speak Japanese, and thus I don't know what is going on there, but I suppose it's possible that she is genuinely a scrappy over there. To me, Sakura is adorable enough in HF, actually, although I certainly intend to play HA when it's translated (and, yes, I know about the translation, because I'm on Beast's Lair, where the idea first came up).

• Well, "enough" people hating her is a matter of opinion, and just because Beast's Lair likes her doesn't mean other groups of fans do...and in fact you mentioned earlier that 4chan's community seems to hate her. I stay away from forums in general and I don't touch 4chan with a 100 foot pole unless I'm in a masochistic mood, but their opinion is still valid. However, as I said the individual characteristics can be added and discusses separately, and maybe a Germans Love David Hasselhoff entry, since from what I can tell she's more popular in the West than Japan. That's a bit odd in itself, since those Yamato Nadeshiko types are usually popular in Japan but fairly ignored in the US, but it seems partially inverted in this case. That way it doesn't reflect negatively on Sakura and we can still acknowledge that she doesn't quite have the fandoms of the other heroines.

Oh, another thing. She's already got an entry for The Scrappy. It's under Butt-Monkey, which she actually fits reasonably well, outside of HF. I feel that that entry maybe needs editing a bit, though (but, I can't think of a better way to put it).

• Yeah I noticed that again a few days ago as well...as you said, it fits a bit but doesn't feel quite right, but yet there doesn't seem to be a better trope for it.

• It should be noted, though, that Shirou, Matou, and Ryudou all use the same vowel extension sound and are spelled with a u by that source, so it's down to translator's preference.
  • Actually, it's to do with the location in the word. "ō" is correctly transliterated as "oh" when in the middle of a word (as in "Tōsaka"), but as "ou" when at the end of the word (as in all of the other examples given). In all cases, the correct romanisation would be to use "ō", but because this is not an easy character to type (and, some simpler character sets simply won't have it at all), the transliterated versions "oh" or "ou" (depending on the location in the word) are used instead.
    • I would say it's still down to translator's preference. Take a look at the standards for different romanizations, Hepburn can use oh, ou, or oo for instance. Toukyou is a valid spelling of Tokyo, for instance, as is Tohkyoh, but you never see Tohkyou as it's inconsistent. Kyoto is another example, I've personally never seen it spelled Kyohto but I have seen it spelled Kyouto. In general, you don't see that many things romanized with the oh because it's a bit of an archaic transliteration. If romanizations don't use the diacritic or macron to indicate long vowels, they usually double the vowel or directly transliterate the kana (i.e. ou for おう）. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that. It works just fine as a way to read the transliteration, and for non-Japanese speakers it's less confusing than ou or oo because they may not know that it's a vowel extension instead of pronouncing a u sound. Regardless, barring the tricky to type special characters, the modern standard for regular typing (outside of official documents and such) is to use either ou or oo, or just ignore it entirely like in Tokyo. It's worth pointing out, then, that some translators made the stylistic choice to use oh in Tohsaka, even though it's not strictly the standard. At the same time, Souichirou's name has the same extended vowel sound and uses either an ou or just ignores it in most translations I've seen since Sohichiro doesn't work, so as I said I think it's mostly just a preference that Tohsaka got spelled that way. It probably became the most popular version since the anime fansubs decided to use that format and everyone else followed suit.

• Archer has absolutely no intention of using the Grail for "World Peace". For a start, his sole wish is to erase himself by killing Shirou (and, thus, he doesn't actually want the Grail at all), and secondly, he surely knows it's corrupted (since he won the war in his own time). Wishing for world peace on a corrupted Grail is a very bad idea (after all, the only common factor that exists between all wars is the existance of humans to fight them...). In the unlikely event that Archer won the Grail (unlikely since he only really wants to kill Shirou, which Rin would never allow), he would either attempt to use it to erase himself, destroy it to prevent it being used for evil purposes or, if possible, just prevent it being formed in the first place and rescue Ilya (like Shirou does in Fate).