Emiya Shirou
From TYPE-MOON Wiki
| Nasuverse character | |
| Emiya Shirou | |
| |
| Japanese name: | 衛宮士郎 |
|---|---|
| Franchise: | Fate |
| Appears in: | Fate/stay night Fate/hollow ataraxia Fate/Zero Fate/tiger colosseum Fate/unlimited codes |
| Voice actor: | Noriaki Sugiyama, Sam Riegel |
| Character type: | Human, Master |
| Gender: | Male |
| Height: | 167 cm |
| Weight: | 58 kg |
Emiya Shirou (衛宮 士郎 Emiya Shirō?) is a character and protagonist of Fate/stay night.
Contents |
[edit] Profile
Shirou is the protagonist of the story, a serious and honest teenager as well as a hard worker who enjoys helping others. He is in his second year of High School, and his hobbies include fixing a variety of broken things, from VCRs to stoves, as well as cooking and cleaning. He has some slight proficiency with reinforcement sorcery, though his foster father Emiya Kiritsugu did not encourage him to improve it. Initially, he is confused about the Holy Grail War and irrationally attempts to shield others, even his own servant Saber, from danger.
[edit] History
A decade ago, toward the end of the 4th Holy Grail War, Fuyuki City was consumed by a massive fire. The flames razed a large portion of the city and took countless lives, including those of Shirou's biological parents. Although he managed to survive the blaze, he was on the brink of death and would have willingly succumbed to his injuries had Emiya Kiritsugu not stumbled upon him. Kiritsugu, motivated by his compassion and the guilt caused by being unable to prevent the tragedy, healed the boy and accepted him as an adopted son.
Kiritsugu revealed himself to be a magus, and though initially unwilling, attempted to raise the boy as a successor to his sorcery; however, Shirou was unskilled and incapable of performing even the most rudimentary of sorcery. The only spells he had success in, Reinforcement and Projection, was a difficult and unpractical skill, of little use to any proper magus. Especially Projection which was deemed as useless by most magi.
Furthermore, and perhaps inadvertently, Kiritsugu passed on his philosophy to Shirou. Kiritsugu was benevolent, and strived to protect the innocent from the world's many perils, even at the cost of his own humanity; however, he had come to realize that whenever he was able to spare one life, another person was fated to die. Although Kiritsugu was tormented by his inability to save everyone, Shirou always admired his efforts at attempting to do so. Kiritsugu also viewed sorcery as inherently destructive, and though he disapproved of Shirou's desire to learn his craft, he advised applying sorcery in secret, where it could only benefit people and not attract confusion or suspicion.
Several years before the 5th Holy Grail War, Kiritsugu died suddenly, leaving Shirou frustrated, depressed, and alone. However Fujimura Taiga, Shirou's longtime neighbor and his English teacher, assumed Kiritsugu's role as guardian, and later on, Matou Sakura started daily visits to help him with housework.
Despite his poor aptitude for sorcery, Shirou makes use of his skills as an aid in repairing various machinery. In awe of his father's aspirations, Shirou hoped that by improving his one and only technique, he could achieve Kiritsugu's dream of being a "Hero of Justice".
[edit] Abilities
Although Shirou has significant potential in certain areas, he is unskilled in most traditional forms of sorcery. At the beginning of Fate/stay night, his only ability is Reinforcement, the power to analyze the structural composition of objects, and with an understanding of their chemical and physical makeup, increase said object's effectiveness in its given purpose, such as increasing a blade's sharpness, a shield's durability, or his body and eyes. However, he lacks mastery for even this simple spell, and his various applications of it are limited.
Shirou's true talents lie in a more advanced form of Reinforcement, known as Projection. This skill allows him to transmute the form of existing objects through his imagination. With this ability, Shirou is able to transform ordinary objects like wooden branches into metal swords, or create them out of thin air. However, tracing demands a substantial amount of Mana and concentration, and replication is limited by the raw materials available for transmutation. Furthermore, all transmuted objects suffer a degradation in quality and have to be maintained with constant supplement of mana, making this ability almost useless in combat.
However, Shirou's tracing ability is unique in the fact that he does not need raw materials to transmute an object, nor does he need to constantly supply mana to maintain the object. Shirou himself does not realize how special this ability is, for most of the objects he traced before the Grail War were only the empty shells of the intended objects, missing any internal components. During the 5th Grail War, he finds out that his tracing ability is exclusively specialized in swords or bladed weapons. He can recreate any blade by simply observing the original.
In Fate scenario, Shirou traces Caliburn to help Saber after seeing it in his dream. This is the result of Archer's advice: "If you can't defeat it, then imagine what can."
In Unlimited Blade Works scenario, Shirou reaches a higher understanding of Projection after witnessing Archer's Reality Marble, Unlimited Blade Works (thus the name of the scenario). At a later time, during his battle with Gilgamesh, he realizes that his Reinforcement and Tracing stem from his inner world, and gains access to his own variant of Unlimited Blade Works with help from Tohsaka Rin.
In Heaven's Feel scenario Shirou loses an arm in the Einzbern forest, and Archer's arm is grafted on by Kotomine Kirei. As a result, Shirou gains the ability to utilize Archer's magic circuits, battle experience and techniques. Shirou also has limited access to Unlimited Blade Works; although Shirou can browse Unlimited Blade Works for a weapon appropriate for a given situation, he is unable to utilize the Reality Marble properly, since Shirou's and Archer's inner worlds differ greatly. However, this power comes with a high cost: At the moment of activation, Archer's circuits will overload Shirou's body and eventually lead to his death. Before this happens though, Shirou's power increases immensely, allowing him to defeat Black Berserker nine times with a single maneuver based on Berserker's own Noble Phantasm "Nine Lives". This maneuver was fittingly named "Nine Lives Blade Works" by Shirou. In another ending, Shirou utilises serial Projection of Kanshou & Bakuya to defeat Black Saber at the cost of his mind.
His ability of Tracing is due to Shirou's unique mentality, where he considers others to be more important to him than himself. Unlike a normal human being, who would feel happiness for others only within his or her own happiness, Shirou's happiness comes only from others' happiness, even at the cost of his own blessings. Such a characteristic comes from his trauma in the great fire 10 years ago, when he had almost died. Although he alone was saved by Kiritsugu, Shirou had already lost his self-awareness in the fire. As a consequence, he no longer values his own self and tries to find the meaning of his existence in helping others. Added with his admiration of Kiritsugu's hope to be "a hero of justice", Shirou lives only to be able to help those in needs and not for himself. This total lack of his own self actually renders him free to use his own self to create weapons as a method to protect others. A normal magus would have to transmutate matter using his own mana and maintain it by again spending his mana. Shirou, however, needs mana only to morph the part of his own being into the objects he desires, making him a unique Faker, and allowing him to create his own Reality Marble.
The following chant are the words to Shirou's Reality Marble. They are somewhat different from Archer's chant.
I am the bone of my sword.
Steel is my body, and fire is my blood.
I have created over a thousand blades.
Unaware of loss.
Nor aware of gain.
Withstood pain to create weapons, waiting for one’s arrival.
I have no regrets. This is the only path.
My whole life is “Unlimited Blade Works”.
[edit] Role
Shirou has no interest in the Holy Grail, and instead despises its use. However, he is determined to win the Holy Grail War with Saber for he hopes his efforts will ensure that another disaster like the Fuyuki fire will never occur again. Over the course of the story, though Shirou's skill with sorcery develop rapidly, he still holds true to his selfless ideals, as unrealistic as they may at first appear.
Although he remains as the main hero in all of Fate/stay night scenarios, the directions he takes are slightly different in each. In Fate, he decides to make peace with his past, and the story ends with him being more idealistic than ever and falls in love with Saber. In UBW, although he still pursues his ideal despite having to face its faults, he finds a small relief in his love with Rin. In Heaven's Feel, Shirou in the end abandons his ideal, exchanging it for the happiness of Sakura. In each scenario, he represents three different types and stages of a man's life: as a boy who dreams of an ideal, as a teen who wants to have both the ideal and the reality, and as an adult who accepts the impossibility of the ideal and compromises with reality.
