Attacking a Body Made of Swords
She keeps appealing to the unconcerned world about her pain
[Contains spoilers for the entirety of Fate/stay night, especially the final route, Heaven’s Feel]
SOMEONE WILL APPEAR TO RELEASE YOU.
Fate/stay night is a visual novel focused on the harm the past can inflict upon the future. Archer is an older, alternate version of Shirou, thrown throughout time to perfectly fulfill an ideal inherited from his father — to endlessly save people, killing everyone who stands against him, saving as many lives as possible. It’s Kiritsugu’s impossible ideology, spoken before his death to an adoring child, carried out unflinchingly and without error. And the image of himself as a superhero, something he’s dreamed about having the power to be for years, horrifies Shirou. He’s forced to re-examine the weight Kiritsugu laid upon him, confronting the pain such belief would cause. Unlimited Blade Works is Archer’s ability to summon forth every weapon ever held against him, but Shirou takes it for himself. He redefines what saving people means to him, drawing forth matching blades in every duel he has, standing against Archer and Gilgamesh as someone infinitely willing to combat them and their beliefs. His borrowed ideal from his father is forged into his own, Shirou wielding his body made of swords as a shield for everyone else in the world.
This is the ending that gives Archer peace, it lets him rest and understand that the hellish path he walked isn’t set in stone. Shirou finds peace with Rin and Sakura alive together. Shirou’s ability to bring forth swords is used in Fate to hand them to Saber, to let those stronger than him help him on his path. His never-ending fake weapons in Unlimited Blade Works are used to carve through the concept of a perfect, unbreakable ideal. It’s a happy ending. But Heaven’s Feel follows it, piercing through the manipulated fate Shirou built for those around him, upsetting every belief that existed unchallenged throughout the first two paths.
YOU WERE DEFECTIVE FROM BIRTH.
An empty black heart, unable to be pulled from his chest, Kirei Kotomine deserves nothing of his importance in tying everyone together. His existence is emptiness, and he believes Shirou to have the same emptiness, the same drive for the same, empty purpose as him. A duality, Shirou and Kirei both follow paths from those above them, Shirou’s laid out by his father before him, Kirei by the emptiness he’s felt for as long as he can remember. Until Heaven’s Feel, when Kirei finds Shirou doing something he considers inconceivable: turning opposite his prepared path. He poses a question to Shirou in his empty church, teasingly pushing him towards an answer: saving the world or saving Sakura? He acts utterly in control, working with perfect knowledge of Shirou’s love of his father and idolization of his beliefs. And Shirou chooses Sakura. Something that breaks Kirei Kotomine to the core.
Kirei tries to feign lost interest in Shirou, accompanying him on a journey to rescue Illya only out of hatred for Zouken, unable to stop from questioning what is driving Shirou forward, unable to keep his anger hidden completely. He brings this hollow rage to his fight against Zouken, killing him without care and speaking to Sakura. She’s overwhelmed by the shadow, a dark, cursed magic Zouken implanted in her. And Kirei’s words focus her, break away the mirage she created for herself: She is the one hurting others, not a dark shadow, she is lashing out at a world that never helped her and denied her existence as a person. She thanks Kirei before she crushes his body, leaving him for dead. And he manages to eventually stumble his way to a final confrontation against Shirou Emiya as his empty heart fails him, unable to understand how Shirou could be willing to throw a wish away to save one person, one so willing to exist in direct opposition to his father’s ideal of saving others, Kirei unable to change his path, unable to conceive a different way to live. He desperately runs to Shirou, hitting him, intending to kill. He pulls away, noticing his hand slashed open, stained red. It is a price he had to pay to attack a body made of swords.
I NEVER THOUGHT I WAS BLESSED.
The perfect girl, raised to be the perfect magus, set apart from the world, her sister, and herself. If it is Saber’s existence that binds the group through the literal and emotional contracts her existence and servitude allow to form, Rin Tohsaka is the heart of them all: Shirou’s position of power as a Master, however unintentional, is what allows Rin to lean on him and open herself up more than she’d ever allowed before. Rin is an eternally burning fire under Shirou, Saber, and Sakura. Her realistic words hide her hopes, sparking Shirou to disbelieve her, to push for more than Rin allows herself to speak aloud. Sakura must die, the older sister’s solution. But it’s Rin’s actions that mark the first conscious, willing motion to abandon the past. In her hunt for Zouken on the eighth day of the Holy Grail War, she comes to the Matou home, and crosses over the doorstep. She breaks an oath of peace between the families that lasted generations, and thinks on this for only a moment:
“…I see. This is the first time I’ve gone against my dad’s instruction.”
She mutters to herself.
But it’s nothing special.
It’s not like something important was destroyed by disobeying her father.
Her action is the first in a chain, linked across the other children surrounded by fate and destiny, their parents and their histories leering over them, driving them to death for the sake of others ideals. Something unimportant was destroyed by Rin taking a single step, a single movement weakening the chains tied around her friends’ futures. Its importance to their families doesn’t matter in the slightest, because Rin deems the action nothing worth thinking about. She enters the house, finding the room where her sister, Sakura Matou, has been tortured for years to be trained into the perfect vessel and tool to win the Holy Grail. Rin is horrified, furious, and gains clarity in a single flash: it’s all pointless. The Matou family would harm a child so much for so long for the amount of magic she could accomplish in minutes. She stomps out of the room, confronting Shinji Matou in the house, forcing herself not to kill him where he stands and filling him with a hatred of Shirou that leads to him straining these chains even further.
Rin Tohsaka speaks to Shinji of perfect, unattainable traits for a magus. A drive to produce greater and greater magic but no desire to see the outcome for oneself. Rin sees these traits in Shirou, as a sign he’s broken. She never entertains the possibility of becoming such a magus herself. Until Rin stands before her sobbing younger sister, with a sword of infinite possibilities in her hand. A design created generations ago, brought into reality at great cost to her, Shirou, and Illya. She throws it away. She pulls Sakura into a hug, even as a spear of darkness buries itself in her gut, she whispers how she wanted to believe anything was better than being stuck with her family’s burdens. Sakura is stunned, shocked at the belief and empathy of her burdens as Rin crumples at her feet. Before this final confrontation, Rin asked Shirou what he would do to save Sakura, even if she threatened to kill the world. Shirou says he’d do anything. Shirou is broken but unwilling to bend. His body is filled with swords.
I AM THE BONE OF MY SWORD. BUT I ALREADY KNEW THAT.
He died in a burning field before Kiritsugu put the sheath of Excalibur into Shirou’s body, saving him. Shirou Emiya opened his eyes and saw Kiritsugu sobbing over him, overjoyed to have saved one single person, and burned that image of a hero into his mind. And then Kiritsugu dies, sitting on the porch with Shirou years later, immediately after Shirou swore to become the superhero his adoptive father dreamed of. He never speaks or actively exists in the game, but Kiritsugu’s ideal is buried deep in its core, like a splinter, nearly impossible to extract. It is untouched in Fate, Shirou living to his father’s ideals as truly as he possibly can, stumbling, failing, but doing his very best, his swords summoned only to be handed to others, to protect them from harm. The splinter is twisted in Unlimited Blade Works, Shirou finding his father’s ideal wanting when he has to stand against someone else’s beliefs; he can’t sacrifice anyone, so he chooses to push himself further and defeats everyone that stands against him with fake blades wielded in his real hands.
It’s Heaven’s Feel that finally tears the splinter free. Shirou is put in agony over a choice for the first time in his life. Sakura, someone who is deeply hurt by her family, by the world, is hurting, killing others. Everything his father taught him says he should end her life. Kotomine tells him this again, as do Archer, and Rin, and Illya. And Shirou despises it. He rejects them all, rejects the idea of killing someone he cares about so much, and completely turns his back on his father’s ideal. Shirou finds his new ideal, devoting himself to Sakura’s life and to making sure she’s able to live without her own splinter, given by Zouken, dug into her heart. Shirou’s arm is torn away, and Archer willingly replaces it with his own, seeing Shirou’s new path, leading to a new outcome, as something worth supporting, something that deserves to survive, no matter the cost. Shirou has the firmness of Archer’s goal, but directed towards one single person instead of all of humanity. Every time he draws on Archer’s arm, when he relies on power and strength of will that he hasn’t earned or controlled- Kotomine warns him it’s like activating a bomb, while Illya warns him it will leave him empty. He realizes there’s going to be a cost for throwing away an ideal, even one borrowed, and believes it worth paying.
The Fate route features Shirou empty as a protagonist, lacking ideology or any wish, fighting on because the plot and his fathers wish compel him. Heaven’s Feel brings this emptiness back, making it intentional: Shirou loses himself after using Archer’s arm, he is drained of personality and memory as it kills him, unwilling to compromise, willing to kill anything to protect Sakura. Scenes lovingly described and given hundreds of words in every other part of Fate are skipped over. Shirou loses the time not spent fighting, because what does a sword get out of eating, talking, or existing while not fighting? He defeats an unkillable demigod, and forces himself to push beyond Kiritsugi’s will, and to run farther than Archer’s belief could take him, Shirou creating his own way of protecting people he loves, ready to burn his life out. And, dead on his feet at the end, before an unborn embodiment of the wishes that preceded them, Shirou decides it would be selfish to die, because he has to be there to make sure Sakura is alive. He forces himself to live on, to make sure he and Sakura can both atone for the suffering around them, and tear free of an existence defined by people who forged paths without any love for their children.
WE WEREN’T RELATED BY BLOOD
A homunculus existing to be an object to grant her family’s wishes, her body scarred with marks of control and commands. Illya von Einzbern’s role was decided before she was born, before her father, Kiritsugu Emiya, betrayed the Einzbern’s families wishes for the Holy Grail to stay true to his ideal. She never saw him again, her grandfather locking Kiritsugu from the castle in the woods, teaching Illya to hate the name Emiya and his betrayal of their family. Her entire desire upon being allowed out of the forest with Berserker hinges around ending Kiritsugu’s life. Upon finding him dead, her rage finds a new place in Shirou as the unaware boy finds himself wrapped into the cycle of a war for wishes. Their confrontations reveal the duality Illya has with Sakura: Illya’s entire existence is tearing against itself. For years, she was alone, forced to be nothing but a tool for peoples wishes. She summoned Berserker, gaining a silent but steadfast companion, a friend filled with power and unending rage who could help direct her fury at the world. And finally, meeting Shirou, witnessing her foolish brother throw himself in front of an all powerful Servant to protect Saber from a blow, shocked her out of her anger. Illya walked away, leaving Shirou and his allies alive, her vengeance confused and muddled.
She meets Shirou again in the daylight, without Berserker , and finds that despite all of the pain Kiritsugu caused her by leaving her to raise this boy, she likes Shirou. He’s kind, curious, and struggles to understand her and her world. A mention of the Holy Grail War makes her cold, forcing herself to remember the boundaries set. She’s not a person, she exists to kill other Servants to grant her family’s wish. Her very being is meant to disappear from the world once her job is complete, making her existence as a person pointless and interacting with Shirou more unnecessary. Illya finds herself meeting Shirou in the same park again. He can see something in Illya, struggling to grasp at the conflict burning under her cold front. Berserker is taken away one day, consumed by a dark, hateful shadow that steals Saber away from Shirou as well. Her first friend gone, Illya is undone, prepared to die, her grandfather’s wish forgotten with her ally and companion lost. And Shirou doesn’t allow it. He loses part of himself, his arm torn off by a wave of shadowed malice as he rescues his sister. His arm is replaced by Archer’s, the spirit finding worth in saving Shirou’s life as his own fades. Illya is the one who is by his side when Shirou wakes up, her role as a tool not forgotten — just less important to her.
Shirou wants, more than anything, to be happy with his family. Sakura, Rin, and Illya are all together, willing to work , cook, and plan as a team. But Illya breaks through the few days of peace Shirou tries to give himself when he asks her to stay and live with him, telling him the scars their family has left on them all won’t let them free unscathed. She knows Shirou will have to make use of Archer’s arm, and the heavy cost that comes with it, to save someone else, and that won’t leave him alive. And there’s no place for her in Shirou’s house without him. An ultimatum, something Shirou ignored in Fate, broke through in Unlimited Blade Works, and finds himself powerless before in Heaven’s Feel: You can’t choose all, you can only save one. He uses Archer’s power to save Illya, and begins the process of losing himself. Chunks of time disappear, losing all memories of shopping, cooking, eating with his family, forced to cut into his palm to stay present and real for more than a moment. And at death’s door, Shirou sees Illya walk towards everything he’s fought to destroy to protect her and Sakura. He tries to stop her, recalling her name from the void of a person he’s become, but doing so brings back his desire to live more than anything. Illya smiles and Shirou falls, making her decision as the vessel and tool meant to bring wishes into the world to seal the Holy Grail War, stopping the cycle from ever beginning again, and letting her family hurt and heal in peace.
THERE WERE PEOPLE THAT CLUMSILY LOVED HER.
There is worth in looking at people in the world who don’t love you and spitting in their faces. Sakura Matou was content, for years of her life, to be harmed by her uncaring grandfather and brother, existing as a perfect empty vessel to fulfill their goals. She meets Rin and Shirou at school and grows close to them, finding warmth in their companionship and willingness to enjoy her presence. Sakura was forced to exist for years under a violent duality, victimized completely and bearing it because of the way Shirou looked at her and befriended her without ever showing judgement or anger, unaware of how much more complex he was making Sakura feel, forced to understand the harm her family was causing to her while keeping it completely hidden away out of fear it would change how this single caring person would see her. The Holy Grail War was a nightmare. Shirou would return home hurt every night, Sakura feeling the curses her family had afflicted on her body lashing out across the town, harming and killing others, taking out her pain on a world that never noticed her. Her grandfather filled her body with worms, creatures meant to fill her nerves with magic and pain, all so she could become an object: meant to contain the energy of the Holy Grail instead of Illya, to grant his selfish wish for immortality.
Heaven’s Feel solidifies itself around Sakura, Shirou, Rin, and Illya all finding their own way the same conclusion: denying your families wishes and aspirations forced upon you is a positive action. Sakura breaks as she’s assaulted by her brother, killing him, laughing and crying as she mourns losing her chance at living peacefully with Shirou. Illya tells Shirou and Rin of Sakura’s shadow: her being is tied to Angra Mainyu, a force representing all of the evil in humanity, every curse and sin she’s taken silently burning her up from the inside out. She warns that Sakura will lose herself, a puppet for her families wishes. Her grandfather laughs as Sakura harms the world she sees, Zouken enjoying how powerful his toy vessel has become. Zouken believes his immortality, his existence, to trump any other need for his family, and Sakura is his vehicle for bringing that truth into reality. Even after Kirei Kotomine destroys his body, a fragment of him exists buried in Sakura’s heart, determined to never leave her so he’s able to sustain his own life. Sakura forces a hand through her own chest, tearing Zouken Matou out of her body, out of her being, out of her future, and stomps him beneath her heel. She’s furious at her family, she’s furious at Shirou for not helping her, and she’s furious at the world for not noticing her pain at all.
Sakura awaits Shirou and Rin at the hole in reality Angra Mainyu is forcing itself through, attempting to be born into the world as the true cost for their forefathers ideals. Rin holds Sakura in her arms and tells her something Shirou and Rin both decided for themselves. They’re all hurting, because of the actions of people who controlled them, who sat above them without an ounce of consideration. Shirou’s hurt was buried deep, ignored out of shame and self-hatred. Rin’s was made easier to hide, easier to exist with, by hoping that Sakura’s life was easier than her own. And Sakura cries, an outpouring of love and spite as Shirou arrives and sees Rin Tohsaka laying on the ground. Sakura begs him to kill her. She’s hurt so many people, and she doesn’t deserve to live on. She’s as bad as the Matous, Emiyas, and Tohsakas before them, unable to bear the chains tightening around her very being. Shirou’s body is filled with swords. He creates a sword, a blade held by Caster that horrified Saber. A blade able to break contracts and bonds, capable of destroying the connections between people and families. Shirou tells Sakura to cut her ties with her family, and come home with him. She keeps crying, her tears turning joyful, giving a simple nod. Existing in an uncaring world that doesn’t notice your hurt is impossible. So you have to cut your ties with that world, cut away the people who don’t care and don’t want you, and force yourself to spite their ideals and love the ones you choose yourself.
A sword is a weapon, meant to hurt and stab and kill. It exists to mark others with the violence and will of someone’s ideals. Shirou Emiya is made of swords. He traces them in his head effortlessly, and Heaven’s Feel fully understands the outcome this leads to. Every effort from people he hates, from people who think nothing of him, to lead him down the path they’d like, to force their will upon Shirou and his friends, ends with them impaled on his body. He defends himself against Kirei’s assault, leaving the priest’s hands bleeding with every touch, blades tearing through his skin to hurt every person who puts themselves over Shirou, Rin, Sakura, and Illya. Rin is never harmed by Shirou’s swords, even while openly discounting his love and belief, because she doesn’t see her goal as greater than his and wants, more than anything else, for Shirou to be right. Sakura is untouched by his swords until he breaks her contract, physically cutting into the weights her family had put on her being. His body is destroyed by blades erupting from him after he saves Sakura and Rin. Illya, Sakura, and Rin perform an impossible magic, adjacent to the costly creation of the gem sword, for their own sakes- to make sure they don’t lose someone they care about, someone who cares about them. Shirou wants to live more than anything, wants to be with Sakura and Rin while they heal, and forces himself to come back. His false body is odd, uncomfortable, and Sakura feels strained weights, while Rin’s worldly responsibilities crash down around her. But they exist together, determined to protect and love each other. Their families behind them, old ideals cast aside as they slowly, day by day, rebuild themselves. I think I’d really like to cook a meal for my friends someday soon.
