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Rin Tohsaka

Voiced by: Kana Ueda (JP), Mela Lee (EN)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rin_ryuji_higurashi_cut_in.png

"The world is just another word for the things you value around you, right? That's something I've had since I was born. If you tell me to rule such a world, I already rule it."

Rin is one of the main Magi of the series. She is known in the fandom for her Tsundere traits and helping popularize the twin tail tsundere with Zettai Ryouiki look. Rin is an honor student in Shirou's school, and the talented heir of the prestigious Tohsaka magus family, one of the founders of the Holy Grail Wars. She enters the Fifth Holy Grail Wars out of a sense of responsibility as the Tohsaka heir and her own competitive desire to win. She tries to summon a Saber-class Servant, which is widely considered to be the best Servant class. Thus, it is a point of much irritation when she summons Archer instead. Eventually, she grows accustomed to him, and they are partners in every route of the game.

Rin is a complex person, using a honor student facade to hide her fairly abrasive nature, but this is also a disguise for her rather good nature and the strong morals she tries to ignore. More than anything, Rin seems driven by her sense of duty to the Tohsaka lineage, though her moral values save her from being the cruel, emotionless magus her brain tells her she's supposed to be.

While she is mostly an adviser to Shirou in Fate, she becomes the main heroine in Unlimited Blade Works and plays a major role in Heaven's Feel.


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    A-F 
  • Academic Alpha Bitch: The highest-ranked honor student of her year and the School Idol of Homurahara Academy. She deliberately plays up the trope to keep people from getting close enough to notice the supernatural aspects of her life.
  • Action Girl: She has a take-charge attitude by nature, and is extremely competent with her magic.
  • Action Girlfriend: Heroine of the second route who fights alongside Shirou in times of danger.
  • A-Cup Angst: Luvia often pokes fun of her smaller chest size, much to her anger.
  • Adaptational Nice Guy: Though the central conflict between them still remains, Rin comes off as much less harsh and antagonistic towards Sakura in the Heaven's Feel movie trilogy adaptation as compared to the visual novel.
  • Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed. While she's still a competent Action Girl who can hold her own in fights in the 2014 adaptation of the Unlimited Blade Works route, the anime omits two scenes from the visual novel that show how she's unafraid of retaliating against higher tier opponents like Servants: her attacking Saber when she and Archer first officially meet her during the Prologue, and much later, her attacking Gilgamesh with a barrage of high grade gems that could harm even Saber to avenge what she thought was Gilgamesh brutally murdering Archer in front of her.
  • Aggressive Submissive: She's usually a Brainy Brunette and an assertive Tsundere and The Tease, but in her sex scene she becomes uncharacteristically shy. An explanation for this is given in Fate/EXTRA CCC, and while that Rin is from an alternate universe and has a somewhat different backstory, their personalities and core conditions of personality-formation are still similar enough that it might very well apply to the original too. Basically, precisely because she grew up with no other choice than to be very independent and hard-working, and because she is normally The Perfectionist, she secretly craves being able to just relinquish power and control and not having to be the one worrying about whether or not things will be alright for just a little bit when with a partner.
  • Aloof Big Sister: Rin does not make it very obvious she cares for Sakura, and will retreat to her "we're just strangers" mask when around her. It turns out that Rin had hoped that Sakura, who'd been given up to the Matou family while both were young, was living a peaceful and easy life that Rin couldn't have as a magus, and this admission, combined with Rin nearly dying rather than kill Sakura, helps the sisters reconcile.
  • Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Dark-haired, smart, beautiful, and in a bit of an aversion for the trope, rather standoffish instead of cold and distant. She plays it up in school so others would keep her distance from her.
  • Always Someone Better: She's this to her younger sister, Sakura, being the peerless and gifted beauty Sakura feels she can never hope to catch up to.
  • Ambiguously Bi: Rin realizes she is bisexual in the uncensored version of the Fate route when taking part in a mana transfer ritual with Saber and Shirou. Besides this, Rin is very affectionate towards Saber both in the visual novel and official artwork. However, it should be noted that this applies only to the original hentai version of the visual novel's Fate route, not Unlimited Blade Works or Heaven's Feel. It is also absent from most adaptations, which are derived from the censored version of the visual novel.
    Rin: I didn't know I was into girls...
  • And I Must Scream: This is her fate in the "Femme Fatale" Bad End of Heaven's Feel. Dark Sakura goes on to absorb the body, mind and soul of Rin Tohsaka with Saber Alter's help. Out of anger and resentment to how cold Rin was when Sakura was pouring her heart out about her abuse, she put her in a simulation of all the physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse Sakura went through over the years. Rather cruelly, Dark Sakura remarks that Rin is already crying on the first day and begging for the pain to stop.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: Rin is the POV character in the game's prologue before it switches over to Shirou once the game proper begins. She also gets the POV at several times during Unlimited Blade Works, and at the True End of Heaven's Feel.
  • Anger Born of Worry: Happens multiple times in Unlimited Blade Works due to Shirou being, well, Shirou, as she gains feelings for him over the course of the route.
  • Badass Adorable: More relaxed than the stern and stoic Saber, but still more beautiful than cute.
  • Badass Boast: Her response when Archer asks her for her wish if she wins the Holy Grail War:
    Archer: All right, if you don't have a specific wish, why not wish for something ambiguous? Like ruling the world?
    Rin: Why? The world is already mine. Hey now, Archer. The world is just another word for the things you value around you, right? That's something I've had since I was born. If you tell me to rule such a world, I already rule it.
  • Badass Family: Her father was a Badass Bookworm who almost won the 4th War, and she's very distantly related to Zelretch, who is nearly a Physical God.
  • Badass in Distress: Her Servant Archer kidnaps her in order to force Shirou into a duel in Unlimited Blade Works.
  • Badass Longcoat: Her signature winter red coat she's usually seen wearing throughout the visual novel and the adaptations. She also dons another red coat as an adult ten years later based on character artwork of her.
  • Bare-Fisted Monk: Kotomine taught her Bajiquan, and she makes the most of those teachings.
  • Batman Gambit: During a battle against Servant Caster in Unlimited Blade Works, Rin is hopelessly outmatched in sorcery, but it turns out that in case her original plan to Beam Spam Caster fails, she was fully prepared. She lulls Caster into thinking that she's given up, waits for Caster to get in range... and then shows that she knows Chinese martial arts, to the shock of everyone.
  • Beneath the Mask: Two different levels, and she's only aware of the first. Beneath her perfect student facade, she's grouchy, a tsundere and a troll. But only halfway acknowledged beneath that is that she's actually pretty kind and strongly values both lives and fair play.
  • Berserk Button: Don't call or even imply that she's fat. Shirou learned this the hard way.
  • A Birthday, Not a Break: Material books say her birthday is on February 3. That being the fourth day of the Holy Grail War, where she almost gets killed by Saber and then Berserker before sunrise in every route, it's unsurprising for this to go unmentioned.
  • Big Sister Instinct: All those times in the Prologue and the Unlimited Blade Works route where she's suspiciously seen watching over Sakura on separate occasions for seemingly no reason other than a whim? Turns out, those moments foreshadow her true relationship with Sakura, while hinting that Rin still loves her all this time, before it's eventually revealed in Heaven's Feel.
  • Blood Magic: Uses blood runes for summoning. It's later shown that she gradually enhances her magic arsenal by drawing her own blood and applying it to gems.
  • Blow You Away: One of her jewel spells she uses on Saber is a wind spell, which turns out to be a complete No-Sell.
  • Born Winner: She was born with a rare Elemental Affinity that lets her master all five Great Elements, and a large number of high-quality Magic Circuits. While she isn't at ridiculously gifted as Ciel, she's still has enough potential to become one of the greatest mages in the Mages' Association. This feeds into Sakura's low self-esteem, as she feels she cannot match her elder sister who is beautiful, intelligent and powerful.
  • Brainy Brunette: She's very intelligent, an honor student to boot despite school being a secondary concern for her at best, and has dark brown hair.
  • Break the Cutie: Nothing in the main story comes close to breaking her... except her fate in "Femme Fatale", where Dark Sakura puts Rin through a simulation of all the sexual abuse she's endured over the years. It was apparently bad enough that Rin cracks on the first day, begging her sister to stop and let her go.
  • Broken Ace: Rin believes she has to be perfect at everything, both in school and in magic, thanks to her father's words and the pressure she feels from her duty to the Tohsaka line. She certainly does it very well though, being smart, gifted in magic, and good-looking. It's when she is away from school that her true colors are shown.
  • Brutal Honesty: When she's being frank with someone, she doesn't try to mince her words at all.
  • Bullying a Dragon: The last third of Heaven's Feel, after Sakura has a Face–Heel Turn, can be summed up as Rin doing everything in her power to further piss off her superpowered and already pissed-off sister despite the vast power difference, which doesn't do anything but make everyone's lives so much harder.
    • In Ataraxia she persuades Shirou to harass Saber by searching for her “reverse scale”. This backfires on both of them once Saber Alter comes out.
  • But Not Too Foreign: Her father, Tokiomi, has foreign ancestry through his mother, who is heavily implied to be the younger Edelfelt sister who disappeared during the 3rd Holy Grail War, making Rin possibly quarter-Finnish from her father's side.
  • Butt-Monkey: With a good ol' dose of the Tohsaka family's penchant for usually messing things up at the last second combined with her fun to tease personality, poor Rin ends up bearing the brunt of a lot of physical comedy and other jokes though this is more prominent in her appearances in the spin-offs rather than in the original visual novel itself. This tendency even carries over when her physical body is used as a vessel for the goddess Ishtar, turning the vindictive and rather cruel goddess into a clumsy moron who spends more time getting humiliated and made fun of than anything else.
  • Cheshire Cat Grin: Perfected this to an art form. If she's smiling at you, something bad is going to happen, to the point one of the Track Girls treats it like a Slasher Smile.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: She will grow into one if in a sufficiently long relationship with Shirou. In the True End epilogue of Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works], she does not take Luvia being a bit too friendly with him well. It ends with both girls in an over-the-top sparring match. Ironically, she doesn't display much jealousy, if any at all, towards either Saber or Sakura in their respective routes and is even supportive of their relationship with Shirou.
  • Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: She plays this role to Shirou, calling him out when he is about to do something reckless because of his ideals. Likewise, Shirou is Rin's own Morality Chain, hearing him out when she is about to do something unethical. This dynamic between the two gets to the point that even Lancer teases them about their feelings for each other. Even Nasu says that when it comes to the relationship between Shirou and Rin, they spend just as much time fighting each other as working together.
  • Combat Pragmatist: She'll use any dirty trick to win. Even shooting someone in the back. Though it's only for evil characters.
  • Composite Character: Noted over the years to inherit many different traits from various characters prior to the visual novel's release.
    • The first one is Aoko (who was also drawn upon for the next two characters below) as the designated heir and mage supervisor of the land over her arguably more talented sister. This carries so far as inheriting a scene from Aoko's original story for Unlimited Blade Works with Shirou, and another plot beat for Heaven's Feel of completing the task bestowed upon her family by a Magician for use against her estranged semi-antagonistic sister.
    • Next is Akiha. They're both the young female heads of prestigious families involved in the occult, with long black hair, blue eyes and essentially the same face. They even have the same Tsundere "humph!" pose, except that Akiha's lacks the flying hair that Rin has whenever she does it. Both characters are in turn partly based on Azaka — young Rin and young Azaka look exactly alike.
    • Last is Misaya Reiroukan from Fate/Prototype, the original concept for Fate/stay night, with some elements from Ayaka Sajyou thrown in, as the far more talented mage heiress compared to the protagonist whose father fought for the Grail and has a pairing with Lancer.
  • Cowardice Callout: During the Heaven's Feel route, she tells Shinji that his I Just Want to Be Special motivations for acting like a magus and seeking the Holy Grail are signs that he's "a coward that wanted proof to hide [his] powerlessness".
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Using the Jeweled Sword Zelretch in Heaven's Feel she dishes out one to Dark Sakura. Rin deliberately drags out the fight in hopes of Shirou showing up and avoids going for any quick kills, but even then Dark Sakura is still no match for her.
  • Daddy's Girl: She was close to her father as a child when he was still alive and it's very clear that she loved him dearly. Her admiration of him has her striving to follow in his footsteps as the ideal magus.
  • Decoy Protagonist: Subverted. You play the prologue as Rin, and it seems like Saber kills her at the end. When you get to the main story, you play as Shirou, and he saves Rin at the last second. From that point on, she cedes the protagonist role to Shirou, but still plays a major role in all three routes and certain scenes are still shown from her POV.
  • Deuteragonist: The closest thing the story has to one; she is the character with the most screentime next to Shirou, narrates both the common prologue of all the visual novel's routes and the epilogue of the Heaven's Feel True End, has the most scenes from her point of view in first-person next to him, and is the only one of the heroines who has a major role in every route, even in Fate, where it's the smallest. She is a counterpart and Foil to Shirou and while he is the central focus and most of the story is his, many parts of it are also about Rin.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
    • In Fate, she actually manages to take out one of Berserker's lives by herself. Given the nature of God Hand though, it doesn't stick for too long, but that doesn't make it any less impressive nonetheless.
    • In Unlimited Blade Works, she actually manages to defeat Caster, first by engaging her with magic long enough to get Caster to let her guard down, and then beat her in hand-to-hand combat. Caster is physically the weakest Servant, but a human beating a Servant is said to be impossible. Sadly she fails to capitalize on this because of Shirou being defeated by Souichirou, and they both would have died without Archer's intervention.
    • In Heaven's Feel, she defeats everything Dark Sakura throws at her using the Jeweled Sword Zelretch while Rider and Shirou keep Saber Alter busy.
  • Dude Magnet: It's not given too much attention like Shirou, but she has a ton of male admirers in school, with Shirou and Shinji being the only named ones, and Lancer also playfully flirts with her in Unlimited Blade Works.
  • Due to the Dead: She's seen visiting her parents' graves as a child in the Unlimited Blade Works anime's first ending credits sequence. In the same route, she and Shirou bury Illya in a makeshift grave outside Einzbern Castle after Gilgamesh brutally murders her as a sign of respect despite being enemies with her prior.
  • Equivalent Exchange: Supposedly a strong advocate of this, but it's a very poor cover for the good-natured aid she gives at almost any opportunity.
  • Facepalm: She has several dedicated sprites for this, often because of Shirou.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Poor girl suffers this in "Femme Fatale" for Heaven's Feel. Dark Sakura, out of hatred and spite of being neglected by Rin for all the trauma she's put up with over the years, puts Rin in an endless simulation of what her living hell with the Matou family was like. It was bad enough that Rin broke on the first day, begging her sister to stop, which only amuses Dark Sakura more than it inspires any kind of sympathy.
  • Face Realization: She tries to behave like a typical magus, but in each route she realizes she's no good at it. Most prominent in Heaven's Feel when she can't bring herself to kill Sakura, and admits she no longer has any right to berate Shirou for his Stupid Good tendencies.
  • Fatal Flaw: Her insistence on acting like a stereotypical mage, which leads to dishonesty with others and especially herself. A lot of drama in Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel could have been avoided if Rin was honest with herself about her feelings and admitted she isn't the hardass she tries so hard to pretend she is. When she finally stops antagonizing Shirou and Sakura and admits out loud how she really feels about them, the situation becomes much easier to solve.
  • Finger Gun: The Gandr spell is fired from the index finger. It should be a curse, but Rin's variant fires actual energy bullets, and at an high rate. In the 2014 anime, she uses the entire hand to fire. She reverts to the index finger in Episode 8 though, possibly for a less powerful attack (in particular, she uses it to intimidate a recently-defeated Shinji into telling her the identity of the Servant who killed Rider).
  • First Love: Shirou has a crush on her at the start of every route, though he only follows up on his feelings towards her in Unlimited Blade Works.
  • First-Name Basis:
    • At first, she addresses Shirou primarily as "Emiya-kun", but at some point in every route, she switches to his first name when they get to know each other better. She still occasionally uses his last name; according to Shirou, it's either when she is about to mock him or to say something important.
    • Interestingly, she refers to certain people by first name in her monologues but addresses them by surname when she says their names out loud. For instance, she addresses Ayako as "Mitsuzuri-san" when she talks to her yet refers to her as Ayako privately in her thoughts.
  • First-Person Smartass: She's incredibly sarcastic and mercilessly critical of others and sometimes, herself, in the portions where she narrates in the visual novel, particularly during the Prologue.
  • Foil: To Shirou, being a genius magus to Shirou's unorthodox and mediocre practices. She is also a much more balanced person when compared to Shirou's distorted self. They still have similarities, such as being hopelessly obsessed with their goals and being basically the most ethical characters in the series. (Although Rin sees her good side as a weakness.) After they get to know each other better, while he always admired Rin from afar, Shirou starts liking her a lot more when he notices her caring side, and they develop enough respect and admiration for each others' similarities and differences to work together and stop each other when the other one goes too far with their goals.
  • For Your Own Good: She tries her darndest in Unlimited Blade Works to keep Shirou from participating in the Grail War in an effort to keep him safe from danger twice during the route. The first was her attempt to attack him at school so she can take his Command Seals from him, thus eliminating him from the War. If she succeeds, she lets him return to his normal life at the cost of Shirou's memories of the Grail War so far as well as his contract with Saber in a Bad End. The second time was when Shirou loses Saber to Caster. Knowing how vulnerable Shirou is without his Servant, Rin had to tell him that he'd be nothing but a hindrance to the mission so he would try to keep himself out of danger this time. While she nearly succeeds the second time, Shirou's realization that he's in love with Rin and his dogged desire to protect her no matter what happens mean that it naturally wouldn't stick.
    G-R 
  • The Gadfly: Mixed with The Tease. Tohsaka doesn't limit herself when it comes to equal-opportunity harassment.
  • Gemstone Assault: A practitioner of Jewel Magecraft. Usually, the jewels are just charged up with a bit of magic every day to supply greater amount of energy when needed, but they also make good explosives.
  • Generation Xerox: Her being the extraordinarily talented daughter and superior heir to her otherwise average magus of a father mirrors that of one of her ancestors, Nagato Tohsaka's unnamed daughter, who was also a remarkably gifted magus heir born to an unremarkable and not-so-talented magus of a father.
  • Genki Girl: Downplayed. When she's not putting on her aloof facade around others, Rin can be rather upbeat and peppy in her private moments whenever something interests her or fires her up.
  • Girlish Pigtails: Part of her popular Tsundere image. In Heaven's Feel's True End, she has abandoned the tails, making her look somewhat more adult.
  • Go-Getter Girl: Rin's ambition and drive is very evident, although she still remains a fundamentally decent person underneath.
  • Gratuitous German: Her family's magic was largely stolen from the Finnish Edelfelts, so the German isn't coming from there. It's likely due to being from one of Zelretch's apprentice lines.
  • Gravity Master: She can use her magic to do this to an extent, and in the prologue she uses this to run more than 100 meters in less than seven seconds.
  • Harmless Electrocution: She seems to be the character at who this happened the most in the whole Fate franchise.
    • In the Unlimited Blade Works route, she gets electrocuted by Illya at the entrance of her castle. While Shirou just gets a little shock, Rin gets a powerful electrical bolt that knocks her out.
    • In the first episode of Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya, she gets again electrocuted by Illya and Ruby's laser, after she calls her a moron. This results in Rin being grilled like a barbecue.
    • One may possibly count Ishtar, her Servant counterpart in Fate/Grand Order, who gets electrocuted by Ereshkigal and shrunken after this in the Babylonia singularity.
    • Coincidentally, two of the times she gets electrocuted are caused by Illya.
  • Hartman Hips: She has a rather big bottom, which is most blatantly seen in episode 2 of the UBW TV series.
  • Hate at First Sight: Even as a child, she made her dislike of Kirei pretty clear from day 1.
  • Hoist by Her Own Petard: Rin's "uncaring magus" persona, which is how she believes a magus is supposed to behave, coupled with her own arrogance and self-righteous personality, tends to cause unnecessary burdens and problems for others and often works against her more often than not. This is mostly highlighted in the Heaven's Feel route.
    • In Heaven's Feel her constant assertions that she's willing to kill Sakura if no other solution can be found make it a lot easier for Sakura to succumb to the corrupting influence of Aŋra Mainiiu.
    • The above gets a lot worse in the last and possibly the most horrifying Bad End of them all. Rin genuinely cares for Sakura but for a variety of reasons she acts exceptionally cold towards her and always retreats to her mask around her. It works too well in Heaven's Feel, where Sakura becomes convinced that her older sister sees her as an enemy and doesn't care for her, which is one of the things that pushes Sakura towards her Roaring Rampage of Revenge. This culminates in Dark Sakura subjecting her to an Ironic Hell/Lotus-Eater Machine where Rin is forced to experience Sakura's horrible life with the Matous in first person. Rin completely breaks down after the first day of that.
    • Also in Heaven's Feel, an interlude has Rin raiding the Matou mansion, where she runs into Shinji and tries to verbally bully him into leaving the city. It almost works, but she makes the stupid mistake of twisting the metaphorical knife in the wound by praising Shirou for his exceptional "quality as a magus" despite lacking the skill, which prompts Shinji to actions to one-up the guy that turn the route From Bad to Worse in a big way. Twice.
  • Hopeless with Tech: As a mage, she doesn't get technology at all. The sad thing is that she's actually better than most. Rin barely knows what a VCR is, let alone DVD or Blu-Ray. She hates technology with a passion since she can't understand it, although she is learning from Shirou. In the Type-Moon April's Fool's joke with various Nasuverse characters setting up their own Twitter accounts, Rin has Archer set up her account, and starts using that as her secret diary. Hilarity ensues.
  • Humble Goal: Initially, she doesn't have a wish planned for when she gets the Grail. Winning the Grail is really just an afterthought; what matters to her is winning the war and proving herself.
  • I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me: She expresses a mix of genuine confusion, embarrassment, and surprise when Shirou confesses that he likes her that way during their talk in the cemetery in Unlimited Blade Works .
  • Iconic Item: Her thigh-high stockings, natch. There's a good reason she's considered the poster girl for Zettai Ryouiki. She is also strongly associated with her red Badass Longcoat, but she only ever wears it with her school uniform.
  • Iconic Outfit: Her casual clothes consisting of a red, long-sleeved sweater with a white cross pattern on the chest, a black micro-mini skirt, and black thigh-highs.
  • I Was Just Passing Through: Her behavior around Sakura during the Prologue and at one point in Unlimited Blade Works is this in spades. She drops by the Archery Club every now and then despite not being a member and not being interested in their activities for seemingly no reason other than a supposed whim, just happens to walk around the same path Sakura uses to go home when she and Archer were patrolling the area, and Shirou later spots her in her route following the same blonde foreigner she and Archer spotted previously lurking around the Matou Estate just as Sakura was about to enter their home. All this behavior of hers seems really odd during the first read-through until you've reached the Heaven's Feel route where it's revealed that she and Sakura are biological sisters. Suddenly, everything she did prior to the reveal makes a load of sense once you realize this was Rin's way of checking on her younger sister despite their years of estrangement.
  • I Was Quite a Looker: Her granddaughter in the Heaven's Feel Normal Ending says that she looks like a crone. In comparison, Sakura aged more gracefully.
  • Image Song: "Kirari" (Sparkling).
  • In Another Man's Shoes: Rin has this forcibly inflicted on her by Dark Sakura in the Heaven's Feel bad ending "Femme Fatale." Rin carelessly dismisses everything Sakura suffered as part of her cold mage mask; this absolutely pisses off Dark Sakura, who summons Saber Alter to restrain Rin and then puts her in a simulation of her past to get a firsthand experience of the pain she invalidated. Rin only lasts one day in Sakura's shoes before she's reduced to mindlessly begging for mercy, showing the difference in their mental strength.
  • Infinite Supplies: Averted. She stores her mana into gemstones in order to use it for her big spells, but since jewelry is expensive, she only has so many shots. However, she gains an Infinity +1 Sword in Heaven's Feel, which gives her the ability to pull in mana from alternate realities, theoretically giving her an infinite supply.
  • In the Back: Tries it on Illya during the 2014 anime. Doesn't work.
  • Ironic Hell: In "Femme Fatale", which is widely considered to be the most twisted and horrific of all the Bad Ends, Rin shoots her mouth off to Dark Sakura about how she doesn't care about the abuse her sister went through. Sakura promptly summons Saber Alter if Shirou hesitates killing the latter for too long, and the two subdue Rin and force her to experience Sakura's memories of her Rape as Backstory through Sakura's eyes. When Shirou dies, he can hear Rin screaming that she's sorry over and over.
  • I Surrender, Suckers: Her plan against Caster involves pretending to surrender.
  • I "Uh" You, Too: Rin never admits to loving Shirou despite it being very obvious in UBW and Heaven's Feel. In UBW, she declares that her life's goal is to make him thoroughly happy, which is close enough. In Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, in a scenario that takes place post-UBW, she actually manages to tell Shirou she loves him repeatedly while they're in the throes of passion.
  • I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In Heaven's Feel, she gives up on Shirou to let him be with Sakura. The epilogue hints this is easier said than done.
  • Jerkass Façade:
    • Puts up an icy facade around her peers to keep her distance from them and to keep up that "perfect magus" persona of hers, even though she's far from the heartless person she keeps making herself out as. This behavior of hers is more prominent around the people she cares for the most, like Shirou in Unlimited Blade Works and her sister, Sakura in Heaven's Feel.
    • Rin is at her most antagonistic during the final leg of Heaven's Feel. While Shirou and Rider are in agreement in wanting to save Sakura, Rin is adamant in wanting to kill her and proceeds to repeatedly Kick the Dog throughout her fight with Sakura. Though it's eventually revealed that Rin was acting callous to harden her own resolve and yet she still couldn't go through with it.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Being an angry and temperamental Tsundere, Rin can be grouchy and acerbic, with her two favorite pastimes being giving Shirou grief in his training and talking smack on about him and others, but she's a good person who cares for her friends.
  • Kung-Fu Wizard: She was taught some basics of Baji Quan by Kirei which turns out to be a powerful trump card when combined with strengthening magecraft. She continues to train in martial arts even after the war, and later develops and hones a particular discipline in combat that utilizes both magecraft and martial arts in one deadly combo. In fact, character materials in Fate/Apocrypha mention that she eventually opens up a school that trains students in that discipline in that particular timeline. This isn't too surprising given that her ancestor, Nagato Tohsaka, used martial arts as a means to reach the Root according to character materials, so this is likely something instilled in the Tohsaka family itself.
  • Lack of Empathy: Describes herself as this when Sakura gives Rin her speech about how much her life had sucked. Rin tells Sakura that she never really cared about her situation and doesn't think that Sakura becoming a monster is a bad thing, driving Sakura nuts. However, Rin realizes that she is wrong when she finally realizes that she can't bring herself to kill her sister after all.
  • Last-Name Basis: Shirou addresses her by her family name even when they become close friends and later a romantic couple in the UBW route. The only person besides Shirou who even calls her that is also his future self and her Servant, Archer EMIYA, who calls her by her first name to hide his identity and later says her last name as a sign of old affection for her as he becomes his past self before vanishing at the end of the route.
  • Leitmotif: "Gentle Everyday", which often plays during light-hearted moments in the visual novel. The 2014 adaptation of Unlimited Blade Works gives her "Rin:My Wish" during action scenes, "Rin:Remembrance -Shoukan" as her general theme, and "Rin's Melody" during her more emotional moments.
  • Letting Her Hair Down: She slowly loses her signature twintails as she grows older. In the True End of Heaven's Feel, she no longer wears them. In the Epilogue of Unlimited Blade Works and in her appearance in The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II, she still has one tail up, though as an adult ten years later, she stops wearing them entirely.
  • Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The dark to Sakura's light. Except when Sakura's possessed, in which case it's inverted.
  • Living Emotional Crutch: To Sakura, her emotionally and sexually abused sister.
  • Love Interest: To Shirou in the Unlimited Blade Works route.
  • Luminescent Blush: Being a Grade A tsundere herself, she has plenty of moments in both the visual novel and the anime where she blushes whenever she's caught off-guard or embarrassed, usually because of Shirou. The blush even reaches her ears as shown in the adaptation of Unlimited Blade Works.
  • Lust Object: She is this to Shinji, although Rin has no interest in him. He doesn't take this well, to the point of trying to rape her in the Unlimited Blade Works route.
  • Magic Skirt: Despite that S-rank Zettai Ryouiki and micro-mini skirt, she only loses the magic once, very slightly, in exactly one scene in the entire franchise.
  • Memento Macguffin: The Azoth Dagger under her possession that she later gives to Shirou in the Fate route originally belonged to her deceased father, given to her by Kirei shortly after Tokiomi's funeral. In a cruel, twisted sense of irony, it was the same weapon Kirei used to literally stab him in the back during the 4th Holy Grail War.
  • Mentor Archetype: She teaches Shirou whatever he needs to know about magecraft in all three routes. When they both go to London to study in the Mages Association together in the Epilogue of Unlimited Blade Works, he's officially apprenticed to her as his magic teacher.
  • Mercy Kill: In Unlimited Blade Works, if you accept Caster's proposal, Shirou ends up as a limbless body in a jar, but still totally conscious. Rin comes to kill him, saying that "the bad dream ends here".
  • Minor Living Alone: As both her parents are dead, Rin, who is only in her second year of high school as of the beginning of Fate/stay Night, lives all by herself in her old family mansion with no one else to take care of her. While Kotomine is technically her legal guardian, he only occasionally checks on her and mostly leaves the girl to her own devices. Based on the time in-between the 4th and 5th Grail Wars, she'd been living alone all this time since at least her pre-teen years.
  • Morality Chain: In Unlimited Blade Works, she takes it upon herself to be this for Shirou once she learns of his deeper issues so he would learn to love himself better and to ensure that he doesn't go off the deep end in his pursuit of his ideals, so his life wouldn't end in tragedy the same way Archer's did.
  • Ms. Exposition: Whenever something that the reader is potentially unfamiliar with is brought up and Illya isn't explaining it, it's usually Rin's job to do so, especially in the Fate and Heaven's Feel routes.
  • Murder Makes You Crazy: If Shirou doesn't attempt to stop her from killing Sakura in the Mind of Steel Bad Ending out of choice, she'll do the deed and Kirei will confirm that she will go mad from the act of killing her only sister by her own hand.
  • Not a Morning Person: Rin tends to be decidedly grumpy in the mornings. It clashes with her perfect schoolgirl image so badly that even after knowing her for awhile, people are outright shocked to see her dragging about in the morning, completely at a loss for words and unsure if what they've just seen was real. And then they choose to forget about it.
  • Obviously Not Fine: Shortly after Archer betrays her and Shirou gets hurt again trying to save her from getting killed, she puts up her aggressive front and angrily yells at Shirou for recklessly jumping in in that dangerous situation when he's still badly hurt. But Shirou quickly sees through it and flat out tells her that she's hurting inside more than he was right now, prompting Rin to unexpectedly open up the waterworks after he tells her that she can let out all her feelings once they get home.
  • Ojou: Complete with a Big Fancy House. Despite this, she's mocked as a bumpkin by Luviagelita, since she's from a country the Mages' Association considers a backwater. As it turns out, she actually isn't very rich. Jewel sorcery is expensive and Kotomine managed to lose a majority of the Tohsaka estate's money due to not being very good with it.
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: Considering all the super-powered entities at play it's easy to forget just how much Rin accomplishes on her own. With little more than a distraction from Saber she manages to kill Berserker, though it doesn't stick and she's even winning against Caster until Shirou's failure allows another enemy to join the fray. It makes you wonder how the war would have gone had she not used her amulet, containing enough mana to win the war, to revive Shirou in the prologue.
  • Parental Abandonment: Her father died in the previous Grail War. Her mother apparently died sometime before the Fifth War due to illness, but was presumably in a mental home before that.
  • Peerless Love Interest: To the whole school, Rin is an aloof and unobtainable beauty who's perfect in every category, and because of this, she's garnered several male admirers, with Shirou being one of them, who can only look at her from afar. While her true personality doesn't quite match up to the image she upholds at school, Shirou nevertheless falls for her even more the longer they spend time together during Unlimited Blade Works.
  • The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Let's be serious, most magi in the Nasuverse are sociopaths in the name of magic. So long as you don't draw too much attention to yourself from the mundanes, it's fine. However, Rin doesn't really want to wish for anything with the Holy Grail and she's very against the idea of innocent people being killed, no matter what she says to the contrary. She's also a great believer in fair play.
  • Plucky Girl: She's headstrong, tenacious, doesn't easily back down from a challenge, and is in fact, eager to face them head on. In fact, Shirou getting to see this side of her is what made him fall even harder for her in Unlimited Blade Works.
  • The Power of Love: Ultimately, it's Rin's love for her sister Sakura and her admitting of such that ended up breaking Aŋra Mainiiu's hold over Sakura, saving her.
  • The Promise: At the end of Unlimited Blade Works, she promises Archer just as he's about to fade away after the Grail is destroyed that she would make sure that to always stay by Shirou's side so he would learn to love himself and be happy as he chases his dream, and to make sure that Shirou doesn't end up like Archer in the future.
  • Red Is Heroic: She typically sports red clothing and is associated with the color red itself. While she may say otherwise, Rin is undoubtedly one of the more heroic characters in the story of Fate/stay Night.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Hotheaded Rin is the Red Oni to the more stoic Saber's Blue Oni.
  • Relative Button: When Kirei sadistically confesses to Rin that he was the one who murdered her father years ago in Unlimited Blade Works, she flips and would've gone ballistic on him had she not been literally tied up at the moment. When Shinji threatens Sakura, her biological sister's, life in Heaven's Feel, she's much calmer...but clearly very angry at the perpetrator for what they did.
    S-Y 
  • School Idol: She is the most popular girl in school.
  • Selective Obliviousness: Rin seems to exhibit this in regards to Sakura. For someone who is usually very intelligent and observant, she is remarkably poor at noticing all of the things that have changed about her sister, including even her hair color. When she goes into the Matou house for the first time, she immediately realizes what being the Matou heir means, and yet despite knowing that Shinji has no potential as a magus, and that her sister was adopted into that family because her father couldn't train both of them, she fails to make the obvious logical jump to figuring out Rider's true Master or her sister's situation until it is explicitly pointed out to her. Of course, since working it out would have meant either hand-waving the fact that her sister is suffering horrific torture, or breaking from her duty as guardian of Fuyuki in an effort to save her, it's perhaps understandable that she decided not to think too hard about it.
  • Sexy Sweater Girl: Part of Rin's Iconic Outfit is her red turtleneck that clings to her curves and pairs well with her Zettai Ryouiki.
  • Shipper on Deck: She's this to an extent for Shirou and Saber near the end of Fate and it's implied that she's also one for Shirou and Sakura since way back in the Prologue since her saving Shirou in the beginning was partly for Sakura's sake.
  • Shoo the Dog: To prevent Shirou from putting himself in danger after a near fatal encounter with Caster after Saber's taken from him, she tells him straight up that due to his powerlessness, he'd be nothing but a hindrance, especially since he was no longer a Master in the War and leaves him to rescue Saber.
  • Shoot the Dog:
    • She attempts this twice with Sakura in Heaven's Feel. The first time, Shirou calls her out on it, then prevents it. The second, Rin herself stops short because she can't go through with it. This is consistent with her advocating this mentality but not being able to reconcile it with her morals.
    • An earlier instance of this occurs in Unlimited Blade Works, as when she attacks Shirou at school, making the wrong choice or entering the route prematurely results in Shirou getting decimated by her spell and left completely defenseless. Rin then coldly apologizes to him, claiming that what she's about to do next is akin to taking his very life. What does she do? Erase his memories of the war and return him to his normal life.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: With Sakura.
  • Single Woman Seeks Good Man: While she's annoyed by his martyr complex, Rin admits she finds Shirou's noble ideals and kind-hearted nature charming. According to the Unlimited Blade Works anime, she became attracted to him because of his determination and strong will.
  • Sitcom Archnemesis: With three people: Issei, Luvia, and in her lighter moments, Illya.
  • Situational Sexuality: In the uncensored versions, when fleeing from Illya and Berserker, Rin has sex with Saber in order to arouse her enough to do the deed with Shirou, thus replenishing her prana supply, realizing she's bisexual in the process.
  • Smart People Wear Glasses: One of the most intelligent characters in the cast, though she only wears her glasses part-time when she has to double her focus during expositions.
  • Smoking Is Cool: Her Super-Deformed version which appears in the Tiger Dojos. Illya worships her, probably because her father is a prime example of this trope himself.
  • So Proud of You: Zelretch tells her this as he saves her from the wrath of the Mages' Association in her hearing, during the True End of the Heaven's Feel route.
  • Sore Loser: Played for Laughs. When Rin discovers that Shirou had summoned Saber, the Servant class she wanted, she gets annoyed at Shirou, but nothing really comes out of it and she quickly gets over it after a brief and funny rant.
  • Spell My Name With An S: Sort of. Different Romanizations have spelled her surname Tohsaka, Tousaka, Tosaka, Toosaka, Tôsaka, or Tōsaka. The first three seem the most popular in that order, but it still hasn't really been standardized in any way yet.
  • Spirited Competitor: She is very competitive in everything including cooking.
  • Squishy Wizard: Gloriously averted. To Caster's horror, as the latter is a prime example herself.
  • Suddenly Always Knew That: She suddenly pulls out excellent martial arts ability against Caster with the only foreshadowing at all her confidence before going into the fight. Considering her teacher, Kirei, is an expert it's not so surprising in retrospect, but at the time, her opponent is understandably shocked.
  • Superior Successor: She outclasses her father as a mage in every aspect. It was to be expected, as that is exactly what her mother's trait was supposed to do.
  • Supreme Chef: She specializes in Chinese cooking, much to the surprise of Shirou, who doesn't feel confident in his own skills with it. On the other hand, she can't even make miso soup, again to Shirou's surprise.
  • Super-Speed: Can use her magic to do this to an extent, running more than 100 meters in less than seven seconds in the prologue.
  • The Tease: She repeatedly teases Shirou in an overly flirtatious manner after finding out that he is easily embarrassed. It's turned back on her in her route when she starts becoming embarrassed when they're about to have sex.
  • Teen Genius: Considering that her family has been known as backwater bumpkins and incredibly mediocre magi compared to the "Lord" Families of the Clock Tower, Rin is basically a prodigy in comparison to her ancestors.
  • This Is Unforgivable!: After Gilgamesh turns Archer into a pincushion and is presumably killed by the former's sudden onslaught, an angry Rin retaliates by throwing high grade gems with enough power to harm even Saber at the attacker in Unlimited Blade Works. Sadly, despite her efforts, her gems weren't able to lay a single scratch on the culprit because they had an item that was fully capable of negating her attack.
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: While Rin is rather fiery-tempered, she is actually very feminine. The tomboy here would be Saber, who refuses to view herself as a woman. Their roles switch in Unlimited Blade Works and Heavens Feel with Rin becoming more Tomboyish, while Saber acts noticeably more feminine, in both Routes.
  • Town Girls: The Neither to Sakura's Femme and Saber's Butch. Their roles switch in Unlimited Blade Works and Heavens Feel with Rin taking on a role of The Butch while Saber is The Neither, in both Routes.
  • Trash Talk: Engages in one against Caster, to goad her into fighting her as part of her plan to rescue Saber and close the distance between them so Rin can get into a surprise striking range against Caster.
  • Tron Lines: Her magic circuits form glowing blue-green circuitry-like markings when activated.
  • Tsundere: A textbook case and widely considered the most famous example (she's also pictured in the trope page). She is even tsundere in bed. However, her major tsundere traits are mostly reserved for her route and Sakura. She even popularized the Zettai Ryouiki and twintails look for tsunderes.
  • Tsurime Eyes: As befitting her rather teasing nature she has matching narrow eyes.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Has this relationship with Ayako. She frequently trades barbs with her whenever they talk and their first meeting, as Rin recalls, has Ayako tell her that they'll probably end up with a 'kill or be killed' relationship", but even with Rin's insistence on keeping an aloof facade around her peers, it's clear she and Ayako appreciate each other's company and friendship no matter what the other says.
  • Vocal Evolution: For the dub of Unlimited Blade Works, Mela Lee's voice isn't that different, but her performance is far less restrained than the dub of the original anime, making Rin's anger or outburst come off as more serious or comical depending on the situation.
  • Waif-Fu: She's fairly short and has quite the thin build, but she's surprisingly strong and quite good in hand-to-hand combat. In Unlimited Blade Works, she embarrassingly admits that she works out fairly often, if not daily, to keep herself in shape all the time. This is supported in Fate/hollow ataraxia, where it's shown that she has fitness equipment stored around her house that she regularly uses for her benefit.
  • Wave Motion Sword: Her personal use of the Jeweled Sword of Zelretch.
  • Weak, but Skilled: In contrast to Illya and Sakura, who both have massive reserves of mana, Rin has much more basic skills, and magic abilities with a good reserve of mana compared to the typical magus, but still not as potent in raw power as someone like Illya. However her natural ability to manipulate her own mana so well gives her flexibility that no other magus in the story has. Her finesse can be seen in how well she applies her magecraft to various combat strategies, from using Reinforcement on her legs to allow her to move faster, being able to use all of the main elemental forms of magic in the form of her strong gems, and her knowledge of other forms of magecraft, like Gandr, make her more useful than most other mages. That's not including her knowing martial arts.
  • Worthy Opponent: Caster is genuinely impressed with Rin and her tenacity when she fights her in Unlimited Blade Works, and even mentions that she would've liked to take her in as an apprentice had she been a little more talented. Or if, you know, they weren't enemies at all.
  • You Killed My Father: In Unlimited Blade Works, Rin finds out that Kotomine Kirei killed her father. She doesn't take it very well.
  • Your Head Asplode: One of the Bad Ends in Unlimited Blade Works has her die this way against Kuzuki.
  • You Owe Me: According to Sakura, Rin stays close to people she loves by indebting them to her. When she gave Sakura the ribbon that symbolises their sororal relationship, her condition for repayment was a disproportionately expensive gem that Sakura might never be able to afford. In Heaven’s Feel, she declares that Archer giving up his arm to save Shirou’s life means that Shirou is her Servant now- basically giving him a life debt to her.

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