Before I talk about anything else, I realize the main thing that vindicates the narrative that the Anime adaptations have butchered Shirou’s character are all the Anime only people who hate the character and make fun of him.
You are giving those haters too much credit by charitably assuming they’d like or even get Shirou more if they read the VN. The Anime community simply is filled with people who are going to hate that kind of character no matter what, they think the standard Anime Protagonist is boring and dumb, they are the Anime community counterpart to thinking Superman is unrelatable. No amount of Fantranslated Inner Monologue Naus Prose is going to change their minds.
But I’m not gonna say there are zero people for whom this would make a difference, because I already know that this minority of people are over-represented among the kinds of people who make Fate youtube videos, they keep saying they didn’t like Shirou in the Anime but got him when they played the VN. And that makes sense, that is exactly the kind of experience with Fate that would most motivate one to want to dedicate their lives to trying to advocate for the VN to Anime Onlies.
But I’m pretty sure those people never hated Shirou as much as the people I was mainly referring to before.
There is an impression to many that even the majority of people who like the UBW Anime as Anime onlies hate Shirou, but I feel this is just another product of the actual majority opinion among casual Anime watchers having no representation in online discourse. Clearly lots of people unironically enjoy Solo Leveling and Rent-A-Girlfriend, but they aren’t interested in trying to push back against the hate those shows receive on YT and Twitter and Bsky.
I watched the UFO Table TV Anime version of Unlimited Blade Works first of any Fate/Stay Night adaptation as well of any UFO Table Anime, I had no spoilers. But everything these VN fans keep saying the Anime failed to convey about Shirou’s character I got just fine. I always liked the character.
I recently saw someone on Reddit say, and I’m paraphrasing, “Anime onlies think Shriou has some Batman level no kill rule which is clearly not in the VN” and I”m like, the Anime clearly showed Shirou being mad when Archer didn’t kill Caster. Anyone who thinks Shirou is deadset against killing bad guys simply wasn’t engaging properly with the Anime.
The main thing however is Shirou’s survivor’s guilt, everyone insists this is something completely absent from the Anime versions of the character. To me this was an incredibly obvious aspect of his character in the Anime, it’s the last thing I even think of as even remotely benefiting from further elaboration.
However, what I’ve noticed time and time again is that people who critique something only as an adaptation and not as a stand alone piece of art within its own medium/artform. Is that they will repeatedly confuse not conveying something in the exact same way as the source material with not conveying it at all. They aren't even considering the ways this new medium has to convey information that the source material didn’t.
The main reason I consume mediums like Anime over mediums like Manga, LNs, and most VNs and even more so generally prefer Dubs to Subs, is because I appreciate Acting as a skill and a talent and an art. VNs sometimes have voice acting but I’m pretty sure Fate didn’t originally and has still never had an English Voice Over track. It’s not impossible for me to get immersed in a performance done in a language I don't understand, but it is more difficult and with my ADD I prefer not to have to try.
The difference between Voice Acting in a standard VN and Voice Acting in an Anime is that in an Anime the non vocal parts of an acting performance as provided by the animating of the character the voice is being projected onto. So what Anime specifically can add to Fate/Stay Night in place of all the lost Prose is not just flashy Sakuga heavy fight scenes but actual Acting. It’s because of that acting that this artform can convey with how one line is delivered as much meaning as a page of prose.
So to me to claim that Shriou’s Survivor’s Guilt is flat out not in the UBW Anime is to disrespect and insult all the work done by those artists and animators and by Bryce Papenbroke, and I’m going to optimistically assume Sugiyama Noriaki did a good job as well.
I don’t make these videos defending Anime Adaptations of Visual Novels because I don’t respect what Visual Novels are uniquely capable of as an artform. But because of things like my ADD they are an artform I simply can’t engage in and appreciate as intended. But I do have endless respect and appreciate how they’re responsible for such Anime I love.
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