Thread by @prototypell

SHIROU vs ARCHER: An Analysis Thread
#ShirouDay

PART 1: "I did not become a guardian for this!"

This fight has a few distinct parts, but the first isn’t actually a fight at all. It’s a conversation where Saber questions Archer about his motives, and Archer reveals why he wants to kill Shirou.

Archer’s answer, here, is based on the fact that he became a Counter Guardian.

As a Guardian, Archer was never called on to save anyone. All he did was kill people. His actions led to more lives being saved, but he never experienced any of that. He was always sent to kill despairing people in order to preserve the happiness of others.

As they are human heroes, the Counter Guardians are only called on to prevent disasters caused by humans. Therefore, Archer was continually exposed to the worst parts of humanity in the course of his job.

After endlessly repeating this cycle, he grew to hate both humanity as well as himself, for thinking it had any worth in the first place.
But this is a very literal view. What does being a Counter Guardian actually represent, for Archer?

Well, it’s worth noting that being a Guardian wasn’t that different from when he was alive. Even when he was alive, he was still drawn into endless conflicts. Even when he was alive, he still had to kill people to save others.

The only difference is that when he was alive, he stubbornly kept going, insisting that eventually he would reach his ideal where everyone around him was happy. But as he continued, the number of people he wanted to save always expanded, and his work never ended.

When he became a Guardian, he thought that the power he gained would allow him to save more people, but he quickly realised that he was as limited as he was in life, just on a larger scale. Eventually, he became disgusted with what he was doing, but could not escape his role.

The fundamental contradiction that Archer runs into here is between his wish for nobody around him to become sad and his wish to save as many people as possible. If you want to be a true hero, you have to save many people – but you can't save everyone.

Despite not wanting anyone to be unhappy, Archer had to sacrifice and ignore some people to save others. This is Kiritsugu’s ideal of a hero that Shirou inherited, but it conflicts with the way Shirou idolised Kiritsugu as a perfect hero who could save everyone.

It seems clear to me that Archer would still have problems with Shirou’s life even if Shirou never became a Counter Guardian. The idea of a Guardian is an exaggerated and essentialised vision of what Shirou’s life would be like if he pursued his dream of becoming a hero.

In this sense, becoming a Counter Guardian can be interpreted as a metaphor for becoming an adult and entering the workforce. As children we’re encouraged to think about our future careers as expressions of our identities and our desire to make a positive impact on the world.

But often we are forced to take jobs that don’t treat us as individuals and leave us deeply unhappy, even if they’re in an industry that we thought we would enjoy working in.
Archer represents the fear that in the future you’ll look back and find your life meaningless.

PART 2: "I am not looking for results now."

Archer decides to personally kill Shirou, preventing him from becoming a hero in the first place and creating a paradox that will end Archer’s existence as well.

Except, it’s actually incredibly unlikely to work. And Archer knows it! He’s just taking out his anger on Shirou.

From the start, it was clear that this fight was not about results at all. I mean, in the first place, when Rin became Saber’s Master, Archer was done. Sure, he had Rin as a hostage, but if he actually did anything to her, he was screwed.

Rin tells him that there was no point in capturing her, because Shirou would come to fight him regardless. Plus, the fight takes place well away from where Rin is being kept, so Saber could intervene at any time. The only reason that Saber doesn’t is that Shirou asks her not to!

Not to mention that Archer is on the brink of disappearing anyway. When Kirei is talking to Rin, he doesn’t take either Archer or Shirou into account when planning out how he’ll end the Grail War. And why would he? To an external observer, the two of them are inconsequential.

Even to the two of them, the fight is meaningless. Shirou expects to be killed as soon as they start fighting. Archer knows that there’s no way Shirou can defeat a Heroic Spirit. And more than anything, regardless of who wins, the one who dies will be the same.

In fact, for Shirou, knowing that his future self will turn out like Archer is basically the same as being dead already.

But that doesn’t change the fact that he must fight Archer. For Shirou, it’s about more than just whether he lives or dies, it’s about whether he continues to be himself. Despite it being the main revelation of this route, Shirou and Archer aren’t actually the same person.

PART 3: "To fight against me is to compete in projection."

The strength of a projected weapon is in how close the image in the caster’s mind is to the real weapon. But if the caster sees their weapons as inadequate and loses faith in the projection, a flaw can be introduced that results in the weapons fading from reality.

Shirou thought he had no chance of winning against Archer when he fought him in the church, given that he was simply copying Archer's techniques.
The reason why Shirou’s blades keep breaking against Archer’s is because he’s not imagining his projections as equal to Archer’s.

The reason why he gets thrashed by Archer at the beginning of their fight is because mentally, he gives up after seeing Archer’s memories of his future. He sees his end, a horrific image of Archer’s back pierced with many weapons.

Archer’s back, which has represented how far ahead he is of Shirou, now represents Shirou’s fate once he gets there. And his mind gives in. Shirou’s language becomes more defeatist. ‘There’s no way’ it will match his sword. ‘Of course’ my projection is destroyed in one blow.

But still, there’s a dichotomy presented between Shirou’s mind, which is at the point of giving in, and his body, which decidedly hasn’t. Multiple times, it’s his body that tells him to keep fighting, and that he should resist Archer’s words.

It’s his body that refuses to let him fall when Archer blows him away. It’s his body that gains more power every time Archer tries to repudiate his ideals. ‘The body’, here, is some primal, essential force from deep inside Shirou, more fundamental than even the heart.

Even if intellectually, he understands the points that Archer is making, he simply, physically, cannot stop.

As a result, Shirou realises his initial belief that he can never beat Archer is wrong. The only mistake he made was accepting that he couldn’t win.

PART 4: "Her sheath - Its protection is still there!"

Besides showing Shirou how awful his life was, and how it didn’t get better even when he became a Counter Guardian, Archer has one other argument against Shirou’s ideals. That is the fact that Shirou’s wish was not genuinely his, but rather an imitation of Emiya Kiritsugu.

Shirou was saved by Kiritsugu, but at the same time, Kiritsugu was the one who was saved. As the one who caused the disaster, finding a survivor made him incredibly happy. Shirou had everything in him destroyed by the fire, only for it to be replaced by Kiritsugu’s smiling face.

As such, when Kiritsugu died, leaving behind the final wish of becoming a hero, Shirou embraced that, not through his own will, but purely as a result of thinking that it was beautiful.

Archer calls that hypocrisy. He says that Shirou could never become a hero that way.

Shirou doesn’t disagree, exactly. He sees the problem. He just doesn’t care. Shirou knows that what he’s pursuing is a dream that may never come true – but that doesn’t mean it’s not a beautiful one.

Shirou knows that he’s only imitating the ideal held by Kiritsugu – but why does that matter, when everyone can agree it’s an admirable one? And it’s at this precise moment that Archer mentions Avalon, as the reason why Shirou is still capable of getting up and resisting him.

Avalon doesn’t come up very much in UBW, despite its important role in the Fate route. Avalon is called the Everdistant Utopia because it embodies the dream of Artoria, who, despite knowing that fully saving Britain was impossible, kept striving towards a perfect future.

It’s not about the result, it’s about the process by which you try to get there. As long as you’re trying to do the right thing, it doesn’t matter how many times you fail.

Here, that dream is transposed onto the ideals of Shirou and Kiritsugu.

After all, it's what Kiritsugu gave to Shirou when he rescued him - the power to heal.
It’s what allows Shirou to keep going throughout the story despite taking fatal wounds, demonstrating the determination needed to continue on the path towards that unobtainable dream.

PART 5: His words slash at my heart.

As the battle is about Shirou and Archer’s beliefs, what they say and feel is more important than how they fight. When Archer tells Shirou that his wish came from another person, the words ‘grab his heart’. Archer’s swords are swung ‘with the weight of his contempt behind them’.

Even as Archer is beating Shirou down, he keeps ‘cursing himself’, denying his dream in a way that hurts both Shirou and himself.
When Shirou forces Archer into defense with blows ‘heavier than any that came before’, he’s already stopped using Archer’s combat skills.

He didn’t use any magic or technique to make his blows stronger, he just hit harder. Because unlike before, all Shirou is thinking and saying is just one thing: It isn’t a mistake. And more importantly than the blade, it is those words that are driven into Archer’s chest.

However, probably the most important words in this battle are those of the Unlimited Blade Works chant itself. Given that the poem is meant to describe the user, it makes sense that it would appear alongside Shirou's visions of Archer's life.
Let's go line by line:

‘I am the bone of my sword’ is interesting. In Japanese, it’s ‘My body is made out of swords’, so it seems that the intention is for it to be read as ‘my bones are made out of swords’. However, putting it this way, Archer provides internal structure and stability to his swords.

he bones are often considered the deepest and most fundamental part of a person, so for Archer to be the bone of his sword means that he is what sustains them and what they’re based on. It certainly fits with how projection is based on an image created by the user.

It creates a juxtaposition between language used to describe living beings and objects which continues into the second line. ‘Steel is my body and fire is my blood’. Archer consists of the materials needed to create not just swords, but many tools- that’s what he’s become.

When it comes to him being ‘Unknown to Death, nor known to Life’, the Japanese once again differs, saying both that he never retreated from battle but was also never understood by anyone. Well, I say it differs, but I think it just reveals a double meaning hidden in the English.

Death can be understood straightforwardly – Archer was unknown to death because despite fighting in countless battles he kept surviving. But Life is a bit more figurative, the natural reading being that because of all the fighting he never got a chance to live his life properly.

He's placed outside the binary of life and death that all humans belong to, instead treated like an inanimate object – sure, swords aren’t alive, but that means they can’t die either.
However, the Japanese implies that ‘Life’ refers to other living beings.

Archer was literally unknown to life because nobody who interacted with him really understood what he was trying to do, which is an altogether sadder interpretation.

‘Yet, those hands will never hold anything’, when read in the context of the previous line, ‘have withstood pain to create many weapons’, is strange, because it indicates that despite all the weapons he’s created, he never once picked them up or used them for anything.

Once again the Japanese reveals a little of the intent here, because the analogue of ‘those hands will never hold anything’ is ‘his life has no meaning’, implying that we should be interpreting it a little more metaphorically.

Not being able to hold anything, for Archer, means not being able to have anything that he hasn't copied from others. It means that the things he does gain slip through his hands like sand, because despite his wish to save people, he can’t be there for them all the time.

It means he’ll never be able to hold, for example, his child in his arms, because he put more priority on fulfilling his dream than starting a family.

His blades might be Unlimited, but everything else in his life is very, very limited, to the point of nothingness.

That’s the life of Archer that Shirou absorbs through crossing blades with him. At first it overwhelms him. Archer, to Shirou, is the realisation of his ideal. But despite becoming a hero, Archer ended up regretting his life. That is almost enough to destroy Shirou.

However, when Shirou finds the will to fight back, the last image he sees of Archer’s life doesn’t leave him reeling. Instead, he almost pities Archer. He might not understand him, but he can ‘use his pain as a lesson’. To do that, he uses the Unlimited Blade Works chant.

He accepts the words in Archer’s place, and makes them his own. He does it so he can be proud of himself, because, ironically, Archer didn’t accept the words of his own poem. He wanted to reject the events of his life that led up to its creation.

When Shirou says ‘My body is made of swords’, it doesn’t invoke a Reality Marble. It doesn’t make his projections stronger, or his body any less screwed up. Nonetheless, the fact that he’s fully accepted Archer's life is enough to swing the tides of the battle.