The Archer Paradox

Who was summoned as Archer in Archer's Grail War? It can't be him, so who was it?

>It can't be him,
Why not?

>glasses

muh dick

He was surprised when he was summoned by Rin, I'm pretty sure he would remember fighting himself during his own Grail War.

It was a later incarnation of him.

I Archer form another univers or another timeline?
I forget

What later incarnation? He's not bound by time.
These are the facts.
1. Heroes retain their memories from their life.
2. He's surprised when he's summoned by Rin.

From those two facts we can conclude that he does not remember fighting himself during his own Grail War.

If Archer was not Archer then who was Archer?

popular theory is Ajax

Does Shirou even realise who Archer is in fate route? If he never even realised it in the first timeline then he could be suprised and feel really stupid for not realising it.

Heroes retain their memories from their life, yes
Not form their previouse summonings
Saber is a special case

Why Ajax? It's been a while since I read The Iliad, but I don't remember him being a bowman.

It works outside of time, so paradoxes do not apply. The Archer in all timelines is Archer, even in the ones where Shirou becomes Archer.

you can asspull anyone to any class but the main reason is Rho Aias

No misunderstand, if he had fought himself then he would remember it.
Why does the Shirou that became Archer (and hence why doesn't Archer himself) remember fighting Archer (EMIYA)?
Really makes you think.

Archer has no memories of the Grail Wars except for Saber. Shirou doesn't fight Archer in every route, either.

Its kind of a weak theory since he could have found it anywhere else too. He isnt boynd by time so he could seen it somewhere else too.

I said its a popular theory. I don't particularly subscribe to it but there is very little else to go on

Shirou doesent fight Archer in the fate route. Apparently the archer shirou was close to fate route so Archer got injured by Saber and then ass raped to death by berserker. Shirou was too busy fucking Saber to even remember Archer at that point.

Okay so according to Nasu Archer is the same Shirou as regular Shiru, so that means they share the same timeline at least
But Archer Shirou is from the original timeline after he helped Saber and won the grail, where after he became the Hero Acher.

This means that if Archer hadn't been summoned by Thosaka that would have meant that Saber and Shirou would have won the grail again leading to regular Shirou becoming hero Acher again.

So by this logic you are right.
It couldn't have been The hero Emiya Shirou (Archer) that was in Original timeline Shirous HGW.

Nasu said this himself so i guess there is a lophole somwhere to save his ass form this

I'm not talking about the times he was summoned as EMIYA.
At some point, a Shirou we'll call Shirou (A) fights in the Grail War and becomes EMIYA (A). In that Grail there had to be a servant summoned as Archer (it could've been EMIYA as that's what happens in Fate/Stay Night).

Then why doesn't EMIYA (A) (Shirou (A)) remember EMIYA from his own Grail War where he became EMIYA (A)?

If he had seen or fought EMIYA, then EMIYA (A) (the one Rin summons) should remember it unless the Archer in his own Grail War had been some other servant.

If he had seen himself, then he would not be surprised to be summoned by Rin as he had already seen it was possible.

I gotta ask a question as well... If EMIYA also kept a momento from Illya and Sakura (which became important to him), would he also be THEORETICALLY summoned by either of those two?

>Then why doesn't EMIYA (A) (Shirou (A)) remember EMIYA from his own Grail War where he became EMIYA (A)?
All of the EMIYAs lose their memories at the start of the HGW because Rin botches the summoning.

What even fucking happens to Sakura and Illya in the non HF route?
Is Sakura just stuck in the worm dungeon forever?

Yeah no, maybe he was confused, but I'm sure he would remember seeing himself just as well as he remembers Saber.

I think he was only faking it do avoid unnecessary questions.

Why would he remember in life? As far as he knows, Archer was just Rin's douchebag Servant.

And when he gets summoned, his memories get fucked anyway. At least, that was Nasu's stopgap solution.

Illya dies in UBW and lives something like one more year or some such in Fate.

Sakura is worm food.

Rin would of still summoned Emiya because of the pendant, because Counter Guardians exist outside the time axis, it's irrelevant that the Heroic Spirit Emiya doesn't "exist" yet Archer's timeline.

Emiya is basically a paradox.

Yeah, her douchebag Servant that looks literally exactly like him.
If that had been the case then why did he feel like he was gambling and betting everything on being summoned during a time when Shirou was alive to kill him?

If he had already seen himself then he would know that sooner or later he would certainly be summoned in Fuyuki at that point in time because he'd already seen that outcome.

And yet when he is actually summoned by Rin he's surprised, because he was not expecting it, because he thought it was basically impossible. A reaction that would have a lot more sense, if in his own Grail War the servant summoned as Archer was not EMIYA.

He doesn't remember anything when he's first summoned. Even if he did, the Shirou of the EMIYA timeline had too much shit on his plate to remember every single detail of the HGW other than Saber. He only starts remembering shit when Saber whoops his ass, and in most cases she does it hard enough to injure him for the rest of the war, making his plans of suicide-via-paradox unviable.

If EMIYA was enough of a factor to be remembered by Shirou after the war, the route would have been UBW or HF, so Shirou wouldn't become EMIYA himself.

Well, here's the thing. Assuming that Emiya Shirou was summoned as Archer in Archer's own Grail War, then they must have had minimal contact with each other.

There are two things we know for sure about Archer: 1) He knows Saber's past, but ultimately failed to save her like the Fate route's Shirou did and B) the first time he tried Gradation Air, he seriously fucked up his arm.

As we know, even the most minimal contact with Archer greatly improves Shirou's success rate with Gradation Air. He only had contact with Archer three times in the Fate route, but he was able to recreate Caliburn with no negative repercussions. He didn't go numb like he did in the Unlimited Blade Works route. So if the Archer of Archer's own Grail War as a Master was Emiya Shirou, then they must have interacted even less than they do in the Fate route. IF this was the case, then Shirou (Archer) only saw Rin's Archer maybe once. He may have died very early on in the war.

>Archer got killed by lancer
Well at least in one timeline Lancer manages to kill a servant.

Doesn't Luvia help her in UBW or something?

Of course it's him faggot, Throne of Heroes is outside space/time.

>He knows Saber's past, but ultimately failed to save her like the Fate route's Shirou did
What the fuck does this mean.

Shirou helped her let go of her past but isn't she still stuck in that outside of time lop?

Nope. It means that Shirou (Archer) wasn't able to get Saber to let go of her search for the Grail. He wasn't able to convince her. Shirou (Archer) and Saber won the Grail War, but Saber continued to search for the Grail and never let go of her wish of a do-over.

Okay maybe i need to be a little more clear on thise subject

I know Archer didn't make Saber give up but the Shirou we follow do help here.
To where the question comes.
Isn't she still stuck in that outside of time thing?

All they did was break the grail, doens't mean anyone could make another one and start another HGW

Actually guardians stored inside the throne of heroes are able to retain memories from previous summoning.

Actually some time in the future she stops from pursuing the Grail.

No they don't, they don't retain any memories from previous summons.

Saber is special because she's technically not dead. Gilgamesh never died and stayed on the Earth so of course he didn't lose any memories.

I'm not sure about Extra and CCC shit but that's Moon Cell nonsense and shouldn't be taken into consideration.

Why didn't anyone notice that Shirou and Archer looked the same?

No. In the Fate route, Shirou manages to convince Saber that she did the best that she could, that she lived a life worth being proud of, and that she doesn't owe the world anything more than that. Saber, seeing Shirou's example, was able to let go of her wish and stopped seeking the Grail. Due to these factors, when she destroyed the Grail at the end of the route, she cut her contract with the world. Saber ended up going to Avalon and never became a true Heroic Spirit. The Saber of the Fate route is still residing there in that utopia, waiting for someone who [should] never appear.

Archer failed to do this. He failed to convince Saber of anything, so even after winning the Grail War and presumably destroying the Grail, Saber continued to seek it, continued to search for a means of redoing the Selection of the Sword.

The reason Shiou (Fate route) doesn't become a Counter Guardian is because he managed to convince Saber of those things. If Shirou chose to make a contract with the world and become a Guardian even after convincing Saber of all those things, he would have been a hypocrite. Shirou (Fate) was able to live his life, become a hero, do the best that he could, look back on his life with pride and die without doing something as stupid as forge a contract with the world and dedicate his eternal afterlife to its servitude. He didn't owe anyone or anything any more than that.

It's a little complicated, actually.

A Servant is basically a copy of the Heroic Spirit that lies in the Throne of Heroes. When the world summons a Servant to do various tasks, they get to retain some memories. Obviously, due to the clusterfuck nature of their existences being outside of time, how they perceive their memories is extremely random. When a Servant summoned by the world completes its task or dies, it returns to the Throne and its data is basically stored in the Heroic Spirit's server.

Servants summoned by humans, however, are different. They don't get to retain anything. When a Servant summoned by a human dies, they get cut off. The Heroic Spirit in the Throne doesn't receive anything from it.

Because anime is same face.

>Why didn't anyone notice that Shirou and Archer looked the same?
What the fuck are you talking about?

The only thing they really have in common visually is hilariously long arms.

But they're not the only ones with long arms.

>Saber ended up going to Avalon
Oh yea now i remember

Didn't one of Shious find here there?
Forgive my bad memory but it has been so long since i actually read the VN

In Last Episode, which takes place after the Fate route, Shirou makes it to Avalon because he managed to spend his whole life reaching for the stars and never faltering. He became a New Star himself.

>He became a New Star himself.
>Realta Nua

...

>It can't be him
But it can be him, the throne is outside space/time.

not unless he was summoned imperfectly by a magus without a proper catalyst while rushing a complicated ritual, you know?

then his memory might have been a bit screwy
though, obviously he could just have been lying

Ajax uses a spear, Teucer or Odysseus (because of the final scene of the Odyssey) would work better.

A popular theory is that Ajax was Rin's servant and Shirou(Archer) witnessed him use Raw Anus, which is why he is able to use it too.

>I'm pretty sure he would remember fighting himself during his own Grail War.
Listen you fucking secondary UBW is just one of the three routes, and not just a 33% possibility.
In Fate Shirou never realizes who Archer is. In Heaven's Feel, it's ambiguous whether he figures it out or not, or if he even cares afterward.
There is also the possibility something completely different happened during his time and still never figured out Archer was himself.
Then there's the fact he could be shocked because time is weird for him and he wasn't expecting to be summoned by Rin at that moment, or ever.

Let's talk about something better like if Archer can use Gae Bolg, or how strong his Excalibur copy would be.

Archer can't recreate Excalibur.

>special case
So many special case, it must be classic Nasu's shit writing with shitty plotholes, just like every master goes to the same school

>Unlimited Blade Works (Infinite Sword Creation)
>Archer's noble phantasm. A barren wasteland lined with a thousand blades. A great ritual deployed using eight lines of projection. A type of old world magecraft, called a reality marble, which manifests the internal world of the caster and writes it over the world for a small amount of time. All of the weapons Archer can project are there and in this space he doesn't have to project them from scratch, instead he can immediately pull out the weapons sticking out of the ground.
>In EXTRA, the conditions for where wrought iron is possible are boosted so projection of holy-sword class weaponry is possible, though their performance is inferior.
>Okay truth is, I was surprised to find that the staff in charge of the 3D had made animation for Excalibur being projected while I was looking the other way.
>Well it is new animation after all and there's no reason to reject it. So long as it's a degraded version, I guess it's okay.

The Excalibur Image that Archer creates in Fate/EXTRA CCC is pretty shit. It can't shoot beams and its damage is far below that Excalibur should be capable of.

Easy on the autism, bro.

There's only one school in that town, what do you expect?

Yeh, those arnt plot holes, autismo. They are fully explained within the plot.

>implying
he just never tried, he can totally do divine constructs if he only gave a fuck.
t.prismafag.

Better question, what if Rin summoned herself. but a good version, not the shit one that looks like a porn spoof version of Bayonetta

Nope. Luvia is her sister in Apocryptica, where Tokiomi adopted her out to the Edelfelts instead.

What if Luvia summoned TOHSAKA?

>muh afterschool daycare masters
Joke writing, only existing for plot convenience, because who wants to write actual characters am I right? Just throw a bunch of Shirou and his HS friends where they can fight and fuck. Face it Nasu can't write a proper setting for shit without plotholes or shitty explanation.
>muh saber is technically alive so she remembers Kerry xddd

That was retconned in a half-assed manner. Kuro states that it's an "advanced exploit" and that normally it's impossible. They never gave a reason for why it was possible once before and not possible again, but Kuro is only able to create a "paper mache" version.

Shirou

What are you talking about? Could you explain further?

>hurrr durrr

Please try to curb your autism.

Are you okay?

Not an argument faggots, Saber gets special snowflake treatment because Nasu can't think of any other way to connect her with Shirou.

>plot holes
Im not sure english is your first language since you dont seem to understand the meaning of the word "plothole"

Next thing you'll be getting mad at Lord of the Rings since the only Hobbits ever featured "only ever came from Hobbiton durrr"

Stuff from Prisma can't explain F/SN. They're utterly different universes, with only the barest minimum in common.

Can you actually articulate what is wrong with Saber being different than other Servants?

Or actually defend the fact that she gets special snowflake treatment.
The sole reason she does is because for plot convenience

Sorry, I don't understand.

So that's a no.

No, I mean in Prisma. Apparently, when Ilya recreated Excalibur, it was an "advanced exploit", but no further details are given. Kuro is only able to create a paper mache version. Also, the author actually said that normally, creating Excalibur through Gradation Air can't be done.

It's all stupid and pretty half-assed. He avoided giving a proper explanation and just sidestepped it entirely.

>mad at the plot for having a plot

You seem to be experiencing brain problems.

Typical fatefags eating whatever shit Nasu shits out like its the greatest thing ever. Can't even defend your shitty plot devices without buzzwords.

You could at least try.

>Gollum accidentally destroys the ring
>"P-PLOT CONVINIENCE!!!"

>Harry kills Voldemort
>"P-PLOT CONVINIENCE!!!"

>Lizzie gets married to Mr Darcy at the end of the book
>"P-PLOT CONVINIENCE!!!"

When anything happens in a storyline, of-fucking-course it is "convinient" to it since it is fucking created and intended to be that way

What the fuck are you so angry about?

Yes he can. He even threatens Saber with it in UBW, and Shirou makes dark Excalibur to destroy the grail in HF.
Now shut the fuck up.

>"F-fuck I look retarded"
>"I guess I'll just use the "hurrr fatefags love nasu durrr" line and try and back out with my dignity intact!"

Safe to say that your dignity is now in pieces though

Ignore him he's the guy who thinks everyone suffering all the time is the only realistic ending.

I don't remember calling Shirou killing Gil a plot convenience, which is what all your examples aligns with. I'm calling Saber getting her memories so she is easier paired up with Shirou a plot device, autismo.

Not an argument fatefag

It's what Nasu said. He's been very insistent for years that Excalibur can't be recreated normally with UBW.

Archer was lying in UBW and Shirou simply created another sword and a blurred Excalibur Alter was used as a placeholder.

>He even threatens Saber with it in UBW,

By his own admission its incomplete and much less powerful than the real deal, but is still enough to cause major damage

It was made by faeries in another dimension. He cant identify some elements used in its construction. He can see more of it than he can in Ea but its still not the real article.

If Excalibur can't be created by UBW, then he shouldn't be able to trace something stronger than it.

then miyuverse shriou made that one fuckheug divine sword afterwards so my words still stand, he could do it if he only gave half a shit, or actually had mana to do it, which is the most likely scenario is he couldn't fuel the damn thing.

When has he ever traced something stronger than it?

>autismo
>so uncreative he even needs to steal an earlier insult leveled at him

And this "easier to connect with Shirou" shit is utter garbage since the main fucking use of that plot twist was to counter Gilgamesh who also retained his memories.

Are you ok user? It looks like you are typing whilst having an aneurysm

Nobody said "can he create a perfect replica of excalibur?" the question was how strong his copy would be.
If Nasu said that maybe he should go back and read his own visual novel.
> and a blurred Excalibur Alter was used as a placeholder.
Quit pulling that out of your ass, you always say that without citing any sources that it's a placeholder because you're scared of the idea of Archer being able to project an Excalibur for some stupid reason.

Again, don't cross Prisma and F/SN. They work on very different logic.

>not an argument

I know. Im calling you retarded. Why would I argue with someone spewing retarded shit?

>"The sky is red!!"
>Thats retarded
>"N-not an argument..."

Nah. Shirou can create Divine-forged weapons. In that very scene you're talking about, Gil mentions that it's actually just a shoddy shell with none of the innards. It doesn't have the power of a true divine weapon and was only used as a bridge to run across.

Besides, it's not like Prisma's author has any real say in what is or isn't possible in Nasu's works.

>the question was how strong his copy would be.

Again, not as powerful.

It would already take a Rank Down hit since it has been traced, and its loss of component material would devalue it even further.

Possibly a B or A rank NP. He would have more success in overloading it with prana and BP'ing it than actually using it.

If Nasu says it, then I have no reason to disbelieve him. I mean, the Excalibur that he creates in CCC is only a half-assed version that can't even shoot beams and does pitiful damage despite what it's modeled. It's the strongest attack he has, sure, but it's still weaker than what a copy of Excalibur should imply.