shinji sidematerial stuff

=Profile=
Height: 167cm
Weight: 57kg
Image Colour: Ultramarine
Skills: Great powers of deduction, finding things
Likes: Puppies, special privileges
Dislikes: Unconditionally happy atmosphere
Natural Enemies: Tohsaka Rin, Mitsuzuri Ayako

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=Fate/side material=

Matou Shinji (Character)
Shirou's friend. Matou Sakura's brother. As Rider's Master, he ends up in several conflicts.
He's self-centred and has a bad habit of looking down on others, but he is upright in his own way. Though he's warped, he's not a bad person. He respects rules (though doesn't follow them very closely himself), hates injustice (excluding himself), and is kind to girls (with the exception of the girl he claimed as his). Indeed, he is in the running for the first or second most desirable man in the school.
Though the gap between his ideal world and the world he lives in has warped Matou Shinji's personality, when he and Shirou first met he wasn't warped to the extent he is now. He and Shirou met four years ago. He came across Shirou who, being Shirou, was doing odd jobs for free. Though he stood behind Shirou and insulted him saying "you must be an idiot" (and meaning it), he kept him company until the end, and said "you may be an idiot, but you do good work, don't you?" and smiled happily.
Perhaps Shirou saw something in the foul-mouthed but honest Shinji. From then on, they became close friends.
Though Shinji-kun made fun of Shirou, he was very friendly towards him, secretly socially destroying the people who tried to take advantage of Shirou and frequently inviting him to the Matou mansion.
But since as we know he's a fickle genius, even after being friends for several years, he can suddenly become an enemy for unclear reasons. He's the type who is reliable to his allies, but troublesome to those who become his enemies.
In the Saber route, it was planned that you could accept Shinji's invitation to team up, but it was rejected due to time constraints.
Ahh, if that route (let's call it the Shinji route) was kept, you may have seen more of Shinji's good side, but we're at our limits so please forgive us.

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=Fate/Secret Book=

--It seems you like puppies. What do you like about them?
Shinji: Puppies sure are great. They come right up to you with their tails wagging even if you don't train them, right? That's so pitiful it's irresistibly cute. I wouldn't want to take care of one, though.

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=Fate/complete material 2: Character Material=

-How Matou Shinji came to be
NASU: Shirou's intolerable friend. But he's not just an intolerable guy. He's a mistaken troublemaker with a distorted past. And we thought we needed a human-type friend character who devotes himself to his desires and does whatever he wants, like "if he became a Master, he'd abuse that power, right?". So Matou Shinji was born.
TAKEUCHI: In the sense that he's a normal person, this is a character who's in a familiar position to the readers.
NASU: Though he's also a character with THAT sort of personality (laugh). Shinji doesn't have the ability or qualities of a magus, and has plenty of ability for a normal person. If he'd had someone by his side willing to be his sycophant, he'd be a man who gives off a pretty good impression.
TAKEUCHI: Like kind of an annoying Holmes. But there wasn't actually any sycophant, and Sakura was around causing his inferiority complex, so his heart became twisted.
NASU: It became so that he couldn't sustain his self-worth except by scorning others. If he hadn't had any talents, he might not have gotten so warped. Just because of those talents, the awareness that "I'm better than other people" built up more and more. But beside him was Sakura who had the ability as a magus that he could never reach no matter how hard he tried, and in the Matou family that was a lineage of magi, he was treated as though he didn't exist because he didn't have that ability. So looking down on the people around him was the only way of life left for Shinji.
TAKEUCHI: I have no room to sympathize, but he had a real reason for being selfish...? Even Shin-chan has his pride.
NASU: But the Matou house would have been more fun if Sakura treated him like dirt! We were talking about Gilgamesh earlier, and honestly, if someone like that became your Servant, most Masters would want out of there. You'd think "hell no, I ain't teaming up with this guy", right. But Shinji is just happy about it. "I'm the Master of someone this strong? Then I'm going to win."
TAKEUCHI: He's great, in a sense. In my case, if Gilgamesh appeared and said something like "use me as you wish", I'd immediately answer "please go away". Anyone would (laugh).
NASU: But you could call that a strong point of oblivious Shinji, thinking of himself as equal with Gilgamesh who's unique even among Servants. Even though he's wrong, being able to fearlessly command Gilgamesh is a talent.

-About Matou Shinji's design
NASU: What I requested was simply the image of "the most handsome guy in school and a bit of a wannabe-stylish type".
TAKEUCHI: I took the order, and thought up a normal good-looking guy with creepy facial expressions, but he looked like Gilgamesh with his hair down, so it was changed to the current wakame hair.
NASU: You could have given him a bit more of an unpleasant handsomeness though.
TAKEUCHI: It's strange. That's what I was going for, but eventually I noticed that rather than creepy handsome he became more of a madao (utterly good-for-nothing old guy) instead (laugh).

-Shirou's friend Matou Shinji
NASU: At school, Shinji's grades are always in the top five. His grades are good and he's the eldest son of a family with a mansion in Miyama, so it feels like he's always got girls hanging onto him. They probably wouldn't hang out with him in university, but during the high school period he's the perfect subject to squee over. Plus he has money.
TAKEUCHI: So it was about the money?! Ah, before and after the Grail War, did Shinji's mental state regarding Sakura or Shirou change?
NASU: Because he was called "useless" just for the body he was born with, becoming a Master was the best thing that ever happened to him. Leaving Sakura aside, maybe he seriously wanted to team up with Shirou. When Shinji says "I'll use you", it means he appreciates you. On the other hand, when Sakura summoned Rider, he was sulking like "I guess the time has come". But when he saw that Sakura didn't want to, he took a chance with nothing to lose and said to Zouken "leave it to me, not someone with no motivation" and the response was unexpectedly "all right". A huge turnabout for Shinji. Still, when Shinji who wasn't a magus said to Rider "I'm your Master from now on" he ended up getting rejected. So he had Sakura make the "book of the false attendant", and became able to command the strong Servant Rider. From then on his mind was finally at ease. Then he felt more lenient, like he could forgive a few things. Because of this, in "stay night", he became twice as unpleasant as the usual Shinji. Actually, the normal Shinji is not so violent (laugh).
TAKEUCHI: He felt lenient, but he got worse? (laugh) Just how full of himself is Shinji?
NASU: That's inevitable. Anyone would become arrogant if Rider became their Servant! He was in all kinds of Heaven Condition. By the way, to Shinji Shirou is a rival, and at the same time he's the only man who will associate with him without ulterior motives. Even while calling Shirou an idiot, Shinji mentally sees him as special, regardless of whether he likes or dislikes him. You could say Shinji wants Shirou by his side, he's irreplaceable. It's unknown whether or not Shinji himself realizes it, but he looks at Shirou and thinks deep down "it must be nice to be able to live like that...". But in the story we needed an "easy-to-understand villain", so I had him become an ostentatiously bad character. I should have jotted down some line in the story like "he's an unpleasant guy, but he shines too".
TAKEUCHI: Shinji only survived in the Rin route where he messed around the most. Maybe it's more like a reward for trying so hard. It seems like he became better after that, right?
NASU: Maybe because he became like "the Grail War is over, so I don't have to worry anymore". And he saw his own limits, and in particular Rin risked her life to save him (laugh).
TAKEUCHI: He grew up, huh. Someday the day will come when you too look back fondly on these days as an embarrassing memory... By the way, was his relationship with Sakura always like that?
NASU: No, when Sakura was just someone who was adopted by the Matou family, he loved her even as he picked on her somewhat. But the moment he learned that the successor to the family was not him, but the outsider Sakura, the positions reversed. Like "the one who was feeling pity for the way the other was born wasn't me, but her?" At that time, he lashed out with feelings of shame and disgrace so much that he wanted to die.
TAKEUCHI: I feel a refined madao power in the way Shinji nonchalantly uses violence against women.
NASU: Shinji is habitually violent against Sakura, so he's not opposed to using violence against women. Isn't it scary what people can get used to? So, like I said before, the reason Shinji is violent to Sakura is because he always subconsciously thinks "if I don't control her, then some random person is going to usurp the Matou family". Before he knew she was the successor, he picked on Sakura but still loved her somewhat, but once he learned the truth he was seized with the obsessive idea that "if I don't completely repress her, there's no place for me" and resorted to violence.

-What you wanted to convey through the character Matou Shinji
TAKEUCHI: His position is an essential character in a romance that takes place in a school. His origin was that kind of "necessary for the story", but his unique flavour must be the reason he became a long-hated, and then beloved character.
NASU: I already said this, but he's a normal person who attained great power and ran wild. In a sense, he is the character in the closest position to the reader. I wanted to convey that. But it's not "true". In the world of Fate, "true evil" refers to people like Kotomine who were broken from the start.

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=Fate/complete material 3: World Material (Q&A)=

Q: It seems Shinji's mother was a "carrier", so what was she a carrier of? Was she something special like a Gods Holder (Tradition Carrier)?
A: No, nothing special like that. According to Zouken, she was the daughter of "some random third-rate magus".

Q: Sakura cooks at the Emiya house, so does Shinji eat meals all alone at home? Or with Zouken?
A: Alone, or he eats out. He flirts with girls at Italian restaurants!

Q: After Shinji survived in Rin's route, does he become a little better than he was during the story? And can he find happiness...?
A: No fundamental changes, but since a great weight was lifted off his back (his obsession with magecraft), he'll probably be able to enjoy life as a fussy, loud-mouthed, smarter-than-average, troublesome person.