Type-Moon: Fate/stay night, Tsukihime, and Kara no Kyoukai discussion

Could, but probably wouldn't. She might not be able to bring herself to kill herself, but if defying Zouken would only result in him killing her, I think it's likely she would have done it a long time ago.

I don't sympathize with Sakura because I don't like passive character. When she stops being passive and starts doing things, she starts blaming everyone else for everything. While true to a point, she's avoiding responsibility.

Plus, her backstory is so ridiculously tragic that it's hard to take seriously. Kohaku was raped from the age of about eight until probably fourteen or so? That's awful. Sakura was raped by worms, her brother, had organs eaten by those worms from before and blah blah blah? You're overdoing it. I can't take that seriously.

Ahh yes. Her life plays out like a soap opera.

A bad one at that.

I can't really blame a character for being passive, when being active wouldn't really accomplish anything.

One thing that I've long found silly is how many readers will complain about damsels in distress not doing anything to rescue themselves, as if that were something people could realistically be expected to do in plausible situations. How do prisoners of war get away from their captives? Overwhelmingly, it's by being ransomed or rescued by other people.

I'm reminded of an anecdote from Kurt Vonnegut, who was a prisoner of war during World War II in Dresden. He spoke German, so the other prisoners appointed him as their leader in dealing with their captors. He proceeded to curse out their captors and tell them what was going to happen to them when the Russians got there. They beat the shit out of him and the other soldiers revoked his leadership position. He did not recount this as an example of courage in the face of adversity, it was just him being an idiot.

I can understand seeing the levels of abuse as excessive though. I was able to buy it since the antagonists were established in such a way that I found their treatment of Sakura believable in context, so it didn't feel contrived to me. By contrast, I found the abuse scenes in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ridiculous and pantomimic, even though they were far lesser in magnitude, because I felt that the antagonist was underdeveloped and simply a half assed device to give Fate a tragic backstory. But the reality is that Zouken and Shinji are simply contrivances of an author who exist largely to give Sakura a tragic backstory, so I can understand if you don't like it when an author tries to yank your levers that hard.

Since people have been subject to unbelievably horrific things in real life, for varied and absurd reasons, I don't find it hard to take seriously when fictional characters do excessively horrible things to each other, I just find it hard to take seriously when the characters feel like flat constructs who're there to deliver the badstuff.

On an unrelated note, I find myself hating pretty much all the sex scenes in Tsukihime, and disliking Shiki by extension. When the girl is saying "stop, no, it hurts," and the guy ignores her, this is not just unsexy, it's infuriating. If you've got the willpower to pull yourself together from the brink of death to fight superhuman creatures, use a little of it to show some goddamn consideration. This pissed me off in the sex scene in Unlimited Blade Works too, but at least Shirou was thoughtful enough to offer foreplay for Rin's sake which she turned down.

I don't care whether it's realistic for her not to do anything. Why does that matter? That said, I think there was more she could have done once things started going wrong. Just let Shirou handle everything and it'll all be a-ok.

Sadly, I found Shinji to be more interesting than Sakura. He exists primarily to be a dick, but he actually seemed fairly complex and like there was more to him than just I RAPE EVERYONE! I wish Sakura was more like Kohaku.

edited 7th May '12 2:42:25 PM by Arha

I don't think that Shiki is a pillar of moral fiber, or self restraint. Remember how he met Arc?

That pissed me off too. I mean, his urge to kill her gets explained later on (but not even in the same route!) but the fact that neither he nor Arcueid treated "why did I follow this random person I've never met before to her apartment and cut her to pieces?" as a pressing question to answer really strained my suspension of disbelief. Shiki might have the blood of demonhunters in him urging him to kill any supernatural being he encounters, but he should at least have a believable response to his own craziness.

I can give him a pass for killing her in the first place (although I'd have preferred if it were foreshadowed that this was behavior that he might engage in in the first place, rather than merely being explained well after the fact,) since he wasn't in his right mind, but I can and will judge him for all the stuff he does when he's nominally not being crazy.

I will always forgive characters for not doing stuff that's stupid. If acting like a hero will predictably lead to disaster, I will groan and roll my eyes at a character who insists on acting like a hero. And if acting like a wimp is the only way for a character to accomplish their goals, I'll be more impressed if they act like a wimp than if they try and pull off some bravado.

This is one of the main reasons I liked Rin so much. She falters at times, mostly in favor of kindheartedness, but for the most part she's a resolutely pragmatic character.

edited 7th May '12 3:00:19 PM by Desertopa

The story is written so that Sakura will be passive. Why should I like that about her? She's still not showing any character traits that I actually like. I can't even really say that she's a strong character like you can about some yamato nadeshiko types.

Like I said, even if it makes sense to not do anything, you're still not doing anything.

Well at least you're sad about it. Still, I've said it before and I'll say it again. They badly dropped the ball with Sakura.

I also agree that perhaps Heaven's feel should have been second. First a super idealistic story, then a super cynical one, and then finally, the origin of Shirou's mindset, Archer's background, and the revelation of how to honour his dream and recognise the world for what it is.

Also, put the Kotomine fight here as well and your set. UBW would have been a much better capstone to the story then Heaven's feel. Plus Rin is involved in all three stories, so making her the final heroine works better than Sakura.

Well, as I think I've said before, I still like Sakura less than Saber or Rin. She didn't really do much until she went crazy. But given that she seemed boring and pointless in the first two routes, I felt that being able to see her side of the story and get into her head made her a dramatically more interesting character than I expected.

I would have felt better ending on the note of Unlimited Blade Works than Heaven's Feel, were it not for the fact that Heaven's Feel leaves a major conflict retroactively unresolved in the other routes.

If Unlimited Blade Works disposed of Zouken, reconciled Rin and Sakura, and confirmed that Shinji is definitely no longer raping his most convenient target, then it would have made for a satisfactory ending coming after Heaven's Feel.

edited 7th May '12 3:22:03 PM by Desertopa

I think the impact of Sakura going evil is lessened by everybody telling her off for doing it.

If she went insane and everybody was thinking "oh shit, we have to calm her down" that would be fine. Instead its "She's killing everybody, now we have to kill that selfish bitch."

My opinion of Sakura is neutral.

The only character who gave me that impression at all was Rin, and it seemed like she was really trying to convince herself, in order to make killing Sakura easier. Yeah, restoring Sakura to sanity is a more favorable solution than killing her, but it's also much harder and more dangerous. Don't forget, Shirou sacrificed people's lives in order to save Sakura. Even at the end, when Rin refused at the last moment to strike Sakura down, it was still a highly realistic prospect that they would fail to save her and humanity could have faced anything up to a class 3 apocalypse.

I don't really care that much about Sakura either, but it can get tiring when you hear/read all that SLUT SLUT SLUT SLUT SLUT shit-slinging. And then there's this.◊

Reconciling Tohsaka and Sakura shouldn't even be that hard. The two are bound to hang out a lot if Tohsaka and Shirou are dating, though Sakura wouldn't be too happy about that. And it pretty much was confirmed that Shinji quit being a dick.

Anyway, what we're doing now is about the worst Sakura bashing I've seen. I don't go to parts of the internet where she gets bitched at that much.

And I don't even get the thing with the fish.

Every day until you like it. I don't even go to /a/ anymore.

I did find it pleasantly ironic that Sakura, the character who seemed like a complete stock "pure" Yamato Nadeshiko type was both the only non-virgin heroine and the only one who has sex with Shirou in the first place, first and foremost, because she wants to.

Quit being a dick Shirou, anyway. Maybe he became nicer at home too, or maybe, forced to face his inferiority to the people outside his home, he sought solace in the one person he could still grind under his heel.

edited 7th May '12 3:53:11 PM by Desertopa

That's a pretty old and obscure meme. /a/ is a terrible place. I just hang out at /vg/ in the vn threads.

I HATE THAT FISH. secretly I love it

Desertopa: Well, someone said that it's implied in UBW that Shinji killed Zouken, but I personally don't remember that. Either way, I think it can probably be taken for granted that Shinji has quit the rape. If he hadn't, the ending would have just had him killed off.

I think that it's implied that Shinji got Gil to kill Zoken.

I don't remember any implication that Shinji killed Zouken either. How could he even do that? He doesn't have any magic and if he just stabbed him or something he'd be back in no time.

Edit: I also don't remember any implication that he got Gilgamesh to kill him, but for that matter, how could Gilgamesh kill him permanently without killing Sakura?

Also, I found a quote from Nasu a while ago (trying to find it again) where he said, paraphrased from memory, "I don't believe in happy endings. There's always someone who doesn't get saved."

edited 7th May '12 4:11:13 PM by Desertopa

Because Shinji got Gil to kill the old man. That's how he could have pulled it off. Something in the royal treasure room? I don't know.

edited 7th May '12 4:11:59 PM by EHK

No-one believes in Happy Endings anymore.

I still wish guys like Nasu and Urobuchi didn't beat our skulls bloody with it however.

Plus sometimes even in Real Life, things can work out at least in the short term. Like that pilot who landed a plane safely without a single loss of life.

And that example probably sucks.

Wait a minute?! If Zouken's body was destroyed, wouldn't he still survive through the worm he implanted in Sakura's heart until he could ...Find himself a new body?! O_O

edited 7th May '12 4:15:41 PM by HandsomeRob