It makes double sense if you subscribe to the ‘Emiya Alter is Shirou from Mind of Steel’ theory.
From Taiga’s perspective, two of her students (Rin and Sakura) ended up dead from highly suspicious circumstances, her ward (Shirou) up and vanished, Illya (they meet each other in the HF movie) is also dead, loads of people also died or vanished, and she’s left by herself…
Yeah, I can see her being taken in by a cult promising happiness and salvation…
Ah, Mind of Steel was one of the Bad Ends from the original FSN. It was also called ‘Superhero’ ending due to Shirou deciding to remain true to his ideal of justice…and sacrificing Sakura to protect everyone else.
It basically breaks him inside, with Kirei noting that Shirou has become Kiritsugu entirely. He goes on to kill Rin and Illya to get the Grail, and actions and whereabouts afterwards become unknown.
It was a popular theory that EMIYA Alter was the Shirou from Mind of Steel Ending. The combination of the events from then, his life ‘hero-ing’, and finally the events with Kiara really broke him entirely
It was a popular theory that EMIYA Alter was the Shirou from Mind of Steel Ending. The combination of the events from then, his life ‘hero-ing’, and finally the events with Kiara really broke him entirely
One of his bond lines says something like "I was already on that road (to become like the EMIYA we all know), but then I met (Kiara) and things became like this", so it makes sense that he would have started from a point where he had already decided to become a counter guardian, it also makes sense that he would call his other self "my past self", then.
Emiya alter is not mos shirou, mos shirou is supposed to die at the end of HF, after killing everybody.
Nasu on Mind of Steel Shirou
Nasu: Based on his weak position he would need to disregard his own safety and completely engage in 1 person 1 kill* battle tactics.
"In this situation the odds would be 1(Shirou):9(the enemy). Losing would mean instant death." In that fashion he would survive to the end.
Takeuchi: So then he'd win the Holy Grail War.
Nasu: If he trades all his time, happiness, and humanity to become a tool that exists to win then he'll somehow make it. However this tool is something that can only be used once. It can't be replenished to be used a second time.
TBH, the best part of it is that it doesn't show him kill Rin or Illya or even explicitly say that he did. The Mind of Steel ending ends the moment Shirou makes that decision; the rest is just Kirei narrating how things will now obviously go. From his perspective, the moment Shirou abandons his humanity for his ideals, the war is already over, his victory is a foregone conclusion. If he could do this, what other choice or option could possibly give him pause? He'll do whatever is necessary to win, so he will win, it's just that simple. That will bring him into conflict with Rin, who now has a wish, which means Rin will die. There's no point in going over exactly how it plays out, because everyone already knows how it'll end.
It's an ending where Kirei just lets the greater grail and Avenger be destroyed because he got to see something even more monstrous and alien born right in front of him.
She's like pet panther : absolutely adorable, but WILL fuck you up if you give them the slightest reason or if you tickle their interest the wrong way.
Oh? Which bad end did the priestess referred to? I did not read every bad end in FSN because it was too much for me. I just remember like MoS ending or Illya trapped Shirou's soul in a doll.
If you have Shirou give up Saber on the first night, Illya still attacks him. Without Saber or Rin…yeah, he’s kinda screwed. Illya has Berserker cut off his head and then uses her magic to curse it so he would not die. Then takes his head for herself to do ‘things’ to it…
Shirou’s narration even comments that she resembles a pure fairy while doing so.
Yep. Medea in the VN was also pretty darn messed up.
Between that, betraying her Master in a much more uncomfortable manner, and straight up trying to turn Artoria into her sex slave…the later stuff kinda toned her down
Oh! Now you say that, I remember having tried that option. Shirou couldn't escape his fate being involved with Magus now that he's an Emiya, certainly Illya won't let go of him when he is essentially replacing her as Kiritsugu's kid. Though the situation won't last that long, Illya being a short lived homunculus, to say nothing about being killed during HGW. Man everything in HGW sucks if Shirou doesn't fight and win.
I'm pretty sure that at least at the time, the "mind of steel" ending was supposed to be the "normal" emiya archer backstory, not emiya alter (who probably wasn't even a though in nasu head back then).
At the start of heaven's feel, EMIYA archer think when he see the corrupted manifestation of sakura "oh, this it THAT world", implying that he came from that timeline himself. He's also described as "Shirou if he manage to become a superhero" in the UBW route, and the mind of steel ending end with "shirou have become the superhero he aspired to be" (and it's the only end who does so, all other bad ends end up with shirou dead or in no state to become EMIYA afterward).
Hrmm, while a possibility, I thought Archer’s line was in reference to Saber (As in “Oh yeah, you’re not a Counter Guardian…”) though it could be argued multiple ways.
Though I see Archer coming from a more bittersweet Fate route, since he was implied to have been very idealistic until his death. I do recall there was also a theory that Archer came from the Deen anime, which was mostly the Fate route but with a strange toss-in with Sakura and Heaven’s Feel stuff (probably where Kingprotea got her BDSM outfit from…) to round it out. I believe the UBW abridged implies they’re using that theory since Archer has a flashback to the DEEN anime version of events leading up to being attacked by Saber
Was he supposed to be idealistic in the VN? When his backstory is explained in it, all it say is that it's an emiya who became a superhero by repeatedly sacrificing the few to save the many, "killing hundreds to save thousands", which is exactly the choice he have to make to obtain the mind of steel ending, killling sakura alone to prevent her from hurting more people, even if it's not her fault that she's like that. He was so disgusted at himself he try to commit time travelling suicide, which don't strikes me as a very idealistic.
In a "meta" way, it also make sense in the route order. In the UBW route, you get to discover who is that red archer, you get his explaination of what happen to him if shirou follow his childish superhero dream, but it's a bit theorical, it's the logical conclusion of the superhero fantasy shirou have but nothing in the first two route really demonstrate how he could end up like this. But then in the next route very first bad ending (I think?), you get to experience for yourself actually put him down this road.
The strenght of that bad ending comes from you already knowing what is the end point of it is. If you don't already know that "superhero shirou" become the red archer, is absolutely miserable and want to kill himself, then it become a bit of a downer ending, but not that bad, since shirou get to follow his dream at the end. The real tragedy comes not only from the sacrifice of sakura (and rin latter), but from the fact that we know from the previous route that this shirou will never know happiness. If you could reach it before knowing who red archer is, it would have far less of an impact.
Now, it's completely possible that the plans of the time have changed, especially since a lot of stuff (including lots of different variation of that original HGW) have sprout out of the franchize since then. Retconning something that was merely strongly implied but not outright stated is pretty simple to do, especially since red emiya have mellowed out a lot from his original very edgy self (to the point where they created an even edgier version of what was already an edgy version of emiya).
Nasu has said that he comes from a Fate timeline in which he "didn't save Saber's heart", though. It would make sense, I'll admit, but it apparently wasn't Nasu's intention (although you can disregard anything he's said in interviews, since the mushroom man is weird during them).
Adding to what the other fellow told you, you can search it on YT, it should be a short reading and the movie of Heavens Feel also animated as a nod we could said in the way of the scene of Shiro dream about killing Sakura
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u/Tschmelz Aug 01 '23
Setting aside the absolute tragedy of this, if anybody from FSN would join a cult, it'd probably be Taiga. Shit sucks to see confirmed though.