Fate

Was Kiritsugu right?

the grail literally proved him wrong

Utilitarinism is right but it's not for human beings.

Yes, but the grail is also tsundere. You're not supposed to be honest with it.

Yes, but the problem was that he wasn't correct.

Not really. It's better to try saving 300 people by sarcificing 200, even if it can lead to the situation where you must sacrifice 100 more people to save 200, than do nothing and let everyone die.

The only thing Grail proved is that it sucks to be the person who has to make that choice.

see

>The only thing Grail proved is that it sucks to be the person who has to make that choice.

It proved something else. Humanity was a mistake. If people were not shit they would all accept that sometimes the 200 must be sacrificed so the 300 can live. And that would consequently end all war and bring peace.

But hey, humans are trash and world peace is unachievable.

Why did he decide to destroy the grail?

He gave up so of course he was wrong.

His methods were wrong. He tried to fulfill the role of some kinda god by forcibly dictating the path that humanity follows, even if it meant directly altering humanity's foundations as a whole. He had some sort of twisted form of megalomania, believing he alone knew what was best for humanity.

In many respects, Emiya Kiritsugu, Amakusa Shiro and Twice Pieceman were similar types of people.

So by that logic the 200 who must be sacrificed have to accept that their lives are automatically worth less than the 300 because they got on the wrong boat. That is literally what F/SN argues against through Shirou. That line of thinking is self-destructive and wrong and Shirou acknowledges it in both UBW and Heaven's Feel.
He destroyed the grail because he learned that the grail was corrupted and that any wish that came from it had to come in the form of destruction.

literally the other way around

Maybe.

In the end, it's the path that Shirou will follow. Unlike Kiritsugu, though, Emiya Shirou's ideals will never be twisted enough that he'd use something like the Holy Grail to change humanity by force.

Plus, in CCC and Grand Order, Emiya truly relishes the chances to save humanity.

In Destroying the Grail? Yes. It is not some wishing device, even Gil knew that.

What did Twice want? I don't even remember.

I completely agree. Shirou's imitation of Kiritsugu's ideal is simply the purest form of what both of them wanted. Kiritsugu's ideal is formed by the reality of what humanity is and hoped that the grail could end humanity's suffering. He also understands that humanity will not change on their own and needs the grail as its false promise is the only chance humanity has as real salvation that is not too bad.

He wanted perpetual war so that humanity could advance more I think.

He hated war. But he realized that war was the best way for humanity to advance. Rather than allow humanity to stagnate as is the case in EXTRA, he wanted to force perpetual war so that humanity would keep advancing forward.

It was the total opposite of Kiritsugu's beliefs, but the structure was the same.

Lately, Emiya's basically been Nasu's rep for "modern heroes". He's become less cynical and more of an ideal type of "ally of justice".

Turning lives into numbers is retarded, even objectively human life isn't equal.
A doctor or engineer is worth 100 mexicans cleaning toilets.

>Lately, Emiya's ... become less cynical

>There are no ideals, and also no ideology; therefore he is very efficient. A nameless antihero that brags about being just like a machine, and so forth. Because the portion that was his root is completely corrupted, he causes massacres without mercy in order to accomplish his objectives.

>A doctor or engineer
>100 mexicans cleaning toilets

It's not as if these groups would be segregated between boats.

Kiritusgu was never wrong about utilitarianism (which is what all war runs on; people weighing lives and doing terrible things for the greater good). His mistake, if he made one, was to think that even a magic wishing device would be capable of ditching it and saving everyone.

Not even the Holy Grail could make socialism work.

...

While utilitarianism looks right in its most basic principle, when it comes to execution it falls short. This is especially shown through Emiya who was forced to kill more people than he ever saved including innocents as well. It comes down to that the ideal of trying to save the many is not necessarily wrong, its ultimately trash. That's why, in my opinion, Heaven's Feel Shirou's ideals are the best because he faces reality and forsakes that ideal for one person and ultimately everyone is happier for it.

No. Shirou lucked out in that he managed to save Sakura without sacrificing a bunch of people he doesn't know in the process. If not for that HF, sacrificing millions to save his waifu, would be villain backstory material.

When did he intend to sacrifice people? I know for a fact that while he didn't care about people and can possibly become even worse than Kiritsugu in the Superhero ending, he only ever put himself in danger like before. While not holding his save everyone mentality, he's still a decent human being.

>So by that logic the 200 who must be sacrificed have to accept that their lives are automatically worth less than the 300 because they got on the wrong boat.
Every life is worth the same, but 300 lives are more than 200 lives.

>That is literally what F/SN argues against through Shirou. That line of thinking is self-destructive and wrong and Shirou acknowledges it in both UBW and Heaven's Feel.
It's self-destructive for the person who is forced to make the choice, yeah. Doesn't mater what choice he would end up making.
In HF Shirou found a way out of having to choose between Sakura and hundreds of innocents. If there was absolutely no way to save Sakura and stop Angra Mainyu, and he would choose the girl he loves over hundreds of strangers, do you think he would live happy afterwards?

>When did he intend to sacrifice people

When he decided to let Sakura live despite knowing that she was a threat he made a gamble on people's lives.

Because instead of trying to be some god who oversees us humans and tries to take the "best" choice, he acted like a human who happened to be in a position to decide. He chose what was best for him.

And anyway, neither the random people or Sakura were to blame for the deaths. If They'd known where the greater grail was before they could've gone destroy it.

No but he is best boy

No, the grail proved him wrong. If you try to accomplish a noble goal with terrible methods, you're being just as destructive and evil as the people you're fighting against. Even if you're doing it for the greater good. Your intentions don't mean shit if you cause more destruction than anything.

Kiritsugu was trying to achieve something with ruthless methods that turned human lives into mere numbers, which was too a too simplistic world view for something that is much complex than that. Like Saber, he didn't understood the people around him, and in turn, everything he worked towards crumbled down the moment he had to face that humans aren't just numbers or plans to execute.

In the end, the way you accomplish things DOES matter. Kiritsugu using everyone around him and killing or ditching people that stood in the way didn't made him a hero, the grail showed him that. The grail showed him he was just one step away from the becoming the very evil he was fighting against.

TL,DR Kiritsugu's world views were far too simplistic for a much more complex problem.

All lives are worthy of being saved, but not all lives are equal. People are not that simple. Kiritsugu was basically trying to make a tough choice over humans, without understanding humans.

There are too many factors and variables to take in account, saying simply "I saved the most people" ditches a lot of complexity that is inherent in human nature.

Utilitarianism works only on paper. Everyone knows this. Also, war is not for the greater good, is a clash of interests. Is really not that simple.

Saber was a good king, though. Or so the people around her would swear up and down. She just couldn't produce the results that people wanted.

She couldn't produce the results people wanted because she didn't understand them. That in itself puts a huge gap between you and your subjects.

Read Garden of Avalon. The results that people wanted were

>"Do something about our poor harvests."
>"Make the foreigners stop invading already."
>"Our land is LITERALLY DYING, why can't you fix that?"

The grail got corrupted in the past war, why are people so autistic about this whole discussion?

>Read Garden of Avalon
Provide evidence that a complete translation for Garden of Avalon exists, or you can't justify asking that of someone on an English language imageboard.

The VN just says she was too perfect for any normal human (a.k.a her people) to relate to her. It's really fucking cheap to give information like that in side materials when Fate was so vague about that sort of things in the first place.

I mean I like Saber and all but I'm not invested enough to read Obscure Side Material #278462.

Ah, shit, right, forgot.

Well, the gist of it is that the land of Britain was basically the last bastion of the Age of the Gods, while the rest of the world was already knee-deep in the Age of Man. Saber, being the incarnation of a dragon, was basically one of the reasons why Britain couldn't complete the transition. The land couldn't provide a good harvest, so people were starving. On top of that, foreigners were constantly invading. Once all the Age of the Gods-class mysteries disappeared (Vortiger, Merlin, Altria, the fairies), Britain would be the same as the rest of the world.

Saber was between a rock and a hard place. As long as she lived, the land could not provide for the people. But she couldn't exactly kill herself because the foreigners would invade and there'd be no one to defend them. She had two cards available to her and both led to the downfall of the kingdom. There was nothing she could do except try and make Camelot's end as gentle as possible.

The people were dissatisfied with her because her results weren't good enough. The one who claimed that she couldn't understand people was Tristan, who came to immediately regret his words afterwards. Many of the knights were dissatisfied with her because she let Lancelot and Guinevere go, despite their crimes.

Wasn't it basically Saber's perfection from Caliburn that led to every problem she had like not understanding her people, letting Lancelot and Guinevere do their thing and choosing not to accept Mordred?

So how would you solve two boats dilemma? Make every passenger to take an IQ test to decide their worth while you are sinking?

Caliburn had nothing to do with her mentality.

The thing with Lancelot and Guinevere is that, from the bottom of her heart, she wanted them to be happy. But she was torn between her heart as Altria and her role as King. She didn't want to punish them because she believed their suffering was genuinely her fault.

As for Mordred, she was completely right. Mordred demanded that she be made Altria's successor, and Altria correctly surmised that Mordred lacked the capacity of a king. To be blunt, Mordred would be the worst fucking king ever.

In the first place, you weren't meant to take that literally. It was just a metaphor to show how flawed Kiritsugu's methods were. I doubt there would be a situation in which a single person gets to decide the fate of humanity's last population.

An hypothetical situation that vague could go many ways, I don't get why people get so stuck up with that part.

give the sinking boat passengers floats and rafts and inform the coast guard of a sinking boat

While I don't doubt that Mordred would be a shit ruler, Altria could have prevented Mordred starting a full blown rebellion by explaining that she's a test tube incest baby and actually try to treat her like her actual child. The reason I bring up Caliburn is that every time it shows her without having gone that route, she is different like the innocent girl she could have been or the tyrant that came with her using Rhongomynyad.

Altria didn't really know how to deal with Mordred. And it's not as if she can acknowledge her lineage since that would lead to a scandal.

I think you'll find that the more you read about Altria, the more you'll find that she's actually pretty clumsy when it comes to interpersonal relationships. The Fate route is truly a prime example of that.

>Determines the human value of life in terms of quantity instead of quality
Fuck him. This guy would have burned Europe to the ground if it meant saving Africa, because Africa contains a higher population. Yet, we all know Europe contributes far more to the world than Africa ever could: past, present, and future. It would be like sacrificing Japan for Vietnam and the Philippines. No one cares about the ladder.

If Kiritsugu's logic was to save the most people, why didn't he just save america, china or india, the countries with most population in the world? In the large scope of things, Japan with declining population problems shouldn't be that important.

He went to Japan for the Holy Grail.

> terrible husband
> terrible boss
> terrible father
nah he was shit

No

It's not that he lucked out, it was that despite Kirei and Zouken doing their best to make suffer, he found himself and happiness, while also cutting through their bullshit that had dead ends in either direction due to his ignorance about the grail system.

If he sacrificed Sakura, he would bury the truth with her, as Ilya is unlikely to tell him the root of the system without him getting close to it. That, and she never needed to be sacrificed in the first place, it was lack of information that even made the choice a choice anyway.

I could get behind this guy, no homo.

But that's the kind of situations Kiritsugu was dealing with all the time. Shoot the plane to save the city, kill mad scientist to stop him from experimenting on people, etc.

In all of your examples, the "bad" option has a younger and more fertile population than the good option.
Sometimes shit is your kind of shit, and you should pick the option that gives you the biggest workforce and army.

>Shoot the plane to save the city, kill mad scientist to stop him from experimenting on people, etc.
Kiritsugu's knee-jerk reaction to all of those problems is killing people. And thanks to that he ended up with a pile of bodies behind him. That is not the only solution to everything. Shirou and Archer showed this, too.

So we like Fate/Zero now?

Fate/Zero itself was never the problem.

>kill mad scientist to stop him from experimenting on people,
His dad? He was a fucking kid who didn't understood anything about anything, he shot him because a complete stranger told him he was responsible for everything (even though it was his retarded assistant who fucked up to begin with). That was a bad example as anything you do as a kid is not, and can't be a reflection of your beliefs since kids aren't mature enough to understand morals or ideals.

>Shoot the plane to save the city
The fact that he had a missile launcher up and ready to kill Natalia is just proof that Kiritsugu's priority was to kill first, ask questions later. He didn't even bother to think of other solutions.

I'm more surprised that people don't find unsettling how he can ditch people in a heartbeat when they're not aligned to his ideals or are in the way (his dad, his "mom", his lover, his wife and daughter).

Assuming the Grail wasn't corrupted, what form would Kiritsugu's wish take? Like, the Grail is just a pile of mana, he would need to give it concrete directions for how to use that to save everyone. And given how Apocrypha is saying the Amakusa is wrong for doing that, I don't see how Kiritsugu could do better.

The Grail can't grant his wish. If the one making the wish doesn't know how his wish would be granted, then the Grail can't grant it either.

"You can't ask for a wish you yourself don't know" - Grail

The Shirou who sacrificed Sakura in the Superhero Ending has only known that
> something something crest worms could make her go crazy and she's a potential source of danger
he also thought at the time that he could fix it with the Grail. Killing her with these in his mind would've been really some Kiritsugu-tier autism.

Kiritsugu was perfectly in the right and justified in everything. Only thing he did wrong was be a dick to Saber for no real reason.

> how he can ditch people in a heartbeat
he almost had a mental breakdown after he killed Natalia and he was actually contemplating on running the fuck away with Iri right during the HGW.

Sacrificing someone and then feeling bad about it doesn't change that you still killed someone.

What would Shirou do the if in Kerry's position to shoot the plane to save the city?

Sure it does, user.

Throw swords at it.

There's probably nothing he could do aside from shoot it down. After all, his abilities are mostly destructive in nature.

It'd be a different story if he could somehow get the plane to land on the sea.

No, it doesn't. Specially if done multiple times.

>That is not the only solution to everything. Shirou and Archer showed this, too.
It's not the only solution to everything, but it's the only solution in some cases.
Shirou was lucky that after he have chosen Sakura over a bunch of strangers the third option arose. But he couldn't foresee it and count on it from the beginning. The only thing he proved is that sometimes there are circumstances beyond our prediction and control.

>The fact that he had a missile launcher up and ready to kill Natalia is just proof that Kiritsugu's priority was to kill first, ask questions later.
I believe he had bought missile launcher after learning that Natalia failed to assassinate her target.
>I'm more surprised that people don't find unsettling how he can ditch people in a heartbeat when they're not aligned to his ideals or are in the way (his dad, his "mom", his lover, his wife and daughter).
I guess I just look at it from the perspective of 'the innocents' rather than the hero or his mother/father/love interest.

No you fucking secondary, that's the point. Did you even BOTHER watching/reading F/SN in any format? Fucking kill yourself, Kiritsugu is one of many paths Emiya Shirou doesn't take because Shirou knows better.

I'm not the same user as the previous user
I wasn't trying to defend it. but to write him off as a completely sociopathic cunt, who just throws away people without hesitation is a mistake and kinda goes against the whole point of his character.

The way Emiya explodes on Twice was fucking ace.

The grail is just a mass of mana. It can't just grant wishes, you need to use that magic to perform your wish yourself.

I wasn't trying to say he's a sociopath, but there is something very fucking disturbing in Kiritsugu with the way he relates to the people around him, specially his family. Even Saber commented how ruthless and heartless he was.

I thought those are before he joined Chaldea? or is those DEmiya?

> but there is something very fucking disturbing in Kiritsugu with the way he relates to the people around him, specially his family.
Yes but she didn't know him personally, that's the difference. Emiya Shirou knew him personally. Irisviel knew him personally. Illya knew him personally, too.
Notice how those three people have beautiful, kind memories of him and not one of them blame him for anything?

> Fate Shirou (start of hero business):try his damnest to come up with a solution, then he shoots the plane down and remains an emotional wreck til the next week
> Fate Shirou (well into the hero business): been part of this a million times over, shoots the plane done
> UBW Shirou: does his best but ultimately comes to the conclusion that he has to shoot the plane down
> Archer: shoots the plane down
> HF Shirou: allows the plane to land, tries his damnest to damage control it after he secured his loved one

>> HF Shirou: allows the plane to land, tries his damnest to damage control it after he secured his loved one
Finally someone who understood Heaven's Feel. I can't stop scratching my eyes out every time someone assumes Shirou gives up on his ideal throughout HF.
HF is about "realistic, but optimistic compromise" man. He would most certainly do something about clearing away the plane's landing to try and prevent people from getting infected.

>try his damnest to come up with a solution, then he shoots the plane down and remains an emotional wreck til the next week
Shirou doesn't dwell on things that much. He'll curse his own weakness, but he'll continue walking forward hoping for a way to save everyone. Even if he fails every single time, he'll still stand up and keep trying.

At the same time, though, it's risky. Because if he makes the slightest mistake, he could end up allowing an epidemic to spread across the city.

Shirou's path means that it's harder for him to take responsibility for his actions. If he fails, others will pay the price and then some.

We were almost able to have civil conversation about different ethics but then porngame fags arrived. Till next time, anons.

Shirou was an orphaned, vulnerable and gullible child who idolized a man he knew nothing about and barely saw at all.

Irisviel is a sheltered, naive homunculus that is mentally 5 year old and knows nothing beyond the castle she lived in. She admitted she didn't understood a thing about her own husband. And she was mad when she saw for the first time how ruthless Kiritsugu was.

Illya is also a heavily sheltered homunculus who ultimately didn't knew who her dad was and was very young when he left.

All these people barely knew him or weren't mentally capable of making a judgement of him at the time they met him. Of course they had kind memories of a man they didn't understood. Kiritsugu's loved ones are people who ultimately are too naive about the world to be able to disagree or criticize his ideals or methods.

Archer was the only one who admitted he was terrible.

Shirou functions very well even if he's hurt, but those times he has to sacrifice people, they really hit home for him

You aren't capable of civil discussion if that's how you're going to write F/SN off.

But his strong point is that even if something hurts him deep, he won't dwell on it. Even if he's in pain, he'll still stand up. This is the path he's decided on, so he doesn't have the right to get depressed for a prolonged period of time. He'll carry that weight to the end.

The difference between Shirou and Kiritsugu was that Kiritsugu was crushed by everything. The way the world works, the sacrifices he'd made, he was broken and twisted.

Shirou won't be broken as easily. It would take making a contract with the world and become a slave to the planet mindlessly killing for eternity to come close to breaking him. Though even Archer still harbors attachment toward his ideal.

>Shirou doesn't dwell on things that much. He'll curse his own weakness, but he'll continue walking forward hoping for a way to save everyone.
Well, good for him. But sucks for people he let to die while waiting for a magical solution that will save everyone.

I wasn't saying it would crush him. Just take a toll on him.
> He was clumsy, and it made you worry if you were looking at him.
But he would accomplish it in the end, and I think he changed a lot of people's lives.
I'm sure his life was a happy one.
His clumsy battles were not meaningless.
He was able to save people proportional to how much he got hurt and how many times he faced death.

you just described Kiritsugu

>bunch of zerobabby secondaries who don't even play grand order think they can hold opinions on fate works
"lol"

He was never wrong.

>It was a long journey. The time spent, the ideals pursued, and the life he tried to achieve, must have been quite a burden. No matter how far he walked, the distance did not close. Without rest, without giving up, without hesitation, with strained eyes.

>He walked down that long road.

>His journey continued on and on, endlessly. The reason why is very simple. Where should he go, what should he do, in order to stop his footsteps? He should have decided those answers at the very beginning, but he apparently had not.

>---Nothing is indestructible. No matter how durable a machine is, it will slowly wear away with use. Machines, bodies and spirits are all alike in this manner. Everything will be damaged with time. Every time one looks at something, its color fades a little more. Therefore, even his heart, which did not recognize anything as painful, would perhaps finally notice after many years of repetition.

>Even if your actions are meaningful...
>In the end, you yourself are worthless.

>Hope and despair are inseparable. Noble idaels become tiresome duties, and in the end a sordid obsession. What people idolize in childhood becomes a mundane reality, and though they may look back on it, they lose that respect. That is the correct mentality for anyone that's human.

>But, because he was not "correct", he carefully locked away his heart that could feel pain.

>His heart of iron was proof that he was a man of tin. Like this the long journey could continue. In exchange he felt less pleasure, but fortunately he was a not a greedy man, and he was happy to be rewarded once in a while.

>He yearned for something beautiful. He saw many people and towns. Beautiful things existed everywhere. ...But he could not encounter the starlight he had parted with on that day. The reason his journey did not ned was likely not because he lacked a goal.

>It was because he had not found what he was really looking for.

>But, it was a satisfying life.

when will we see more of fate/zero's strongest servant?