Character · Fate/stay night
Shirou Emiya
He wanted to be a hero. The war he stumbles into is largely staffed by people who already tried that.
In Otakana the clue reads: Boy who summons a servant by accident
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Fate/stay night
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
Shirou Emiya was pulled out of a citywide fire as a child by a man who happened to be walking through it, and he spent the rest of his childhood being quietly grateful in a way that curdled into obligation. He fixes appliances, cooks for whoever is in the house, and treats his own survival as a debt he has not begun repaying.
His magic is close to useless. He can reinforce an object, badly, and he can trace a copy of something he has seen, badly. Then a servant materialises in his shed because he was about to be killed in it, and he is a master in a war he had never heard of that morning. He takes this about as well as you would expect.
Nasu writes him as an argument rather than a hero. Saving everyone is not possible, the story says repeatedly, and Shirou keeps failing to hear it, and each of the three routes tests that from a different angle. Ufotable animated two of them, Unlimited Blade Works in 2014 and the Heaven's Feel films from 2017.
Spelling SHIROU
SHIROU keeps the long vowel that most romanisations throw away. The Japanese is 士郎, and where GOJO drops its U this name holds onto it in nearly every English release of the visual novel. Six letters, and the SHI at the front is one kana carrying three of them. The family name Emiya is not what the game wants.