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• 1 2019-11-18T09:51:31-08:00 Fate Route 12 plain 2019-11-18T18:16:32-08:00 In the Fate route, Shirou falls head-over-heels in love with Saber, to the point where he basically does die for her, and his ideal is altered upon learning that following the war, he will most likely never see Saber again. Archer leaves him be in this route, with only a single piece of advice to help him on his journey: "Do not forget. What you must imagine is that you yourself are the strongest. You do not need outside enemies. For you, the one you have to fight is none other than your own image", becoming as strong as possible and enabling him to grant Saber the power to defeat what is the second most powerful entity in the war, the Berserker Servant who represents Heracles. Nasu in an interview described each path's theme. Fate was the dream of having "oneself as an ideal"(ComiPress), the "oneself" in this case being each individual. Archer's advice drives Shirou to constantly self-improve, seeing only himself as a limitation and constantly striving to surpass himself, such as in the battle against Berserker where he creates a copy of Caliburn, the Sword in the Stone, and as soon as it is destroyed, creates another, more accurate copy, and another, eventually enabling him to surpass Berserker with Saber. Additionally, Saber also improves herself through her personal ideals changing. When she was summoned, she wanted to use the Grail to erase her rule as king and install someone else to avoid the Battle of Camlann, but Shirou lecturing her allows her to overcome the guilt in her past and, when she passes on at the end of the War, leaves with a smile and no regrets.