The Fate series has, over the years, amassed a pretty large and loyal fanbase which continued to grow as more entries to the series popped up and adaptations were produced. Earlier this year, Ufotable's adaptation of the Unlimited Blade Works route came to an end. For the most part it was well received. Some visual novel fans weren't satisfied with it as is to be expected from any adaptation and some anime fans brushed it off as another shounen series or that it just wasn't their thing. But one thing that repeatedly pops up in criticism of the series is its protagonist: Emiya Shirou. Many people complain that he is "moronic" or "childish" and some visual novel fans claim that he was just "badly adapted". I disagree with both of those claims and am going to go into detail on how Shirou's character not only has depth in the TV series (and the visual novel of course) but is not at all the idiot some fans make him out to be.

Shirou was a product of a by now bygone era in Japanese anime and manga. There was the original Sunrise character, the twisted, sadist comedy relief of the original shounen hero, the twisted, sadist comedy relief of the original shounen main character. Then there was the insipid slice of life that was so beloved by the hardcore shounen crowd that it even spawned a spin-off series, a spin-off titled After School Special. Then there was the spin-off that mimicked another spin-off, The Melancholic Flamenco. Then there was the Melancholic Flamenco, which is a completely different beast from the spin-off that is currently in the process of being adapted for the big screen.

Now I want to talk about the spin-off. Now, there is the original Sunrise character who is a blank slate who has never experienced any sort of ideological connexion with any sort of leftist ideology. He is a blank slate, exactly as I said earlier, a blank slate without a writer, without any author, without any world to explore, without any characters to follow. In short, this is a character who exists in a world without a story, in a world where there is no such thing as "canon" or "canonical" either.

The Melancholic Flamenco is a parody of a classic 80s' comedic Western, and in this parody, the Western is itself a parody of itself. The two characters, the one from the comic book and the one from the anime, are meant to represent the absurdity of Western civilization as we know it, in the most literal sense of the word. The satire, at its best, is on the level of the absurd, but it is also, from the viewpoint of Japanese popular culture in the 80s, a celebration of the silliness of the spirit, the bravado, the excesses of the West End (and, perhaps, the East End).

The Melancholic Flamenco is a satire of the modern-day values of the "red", "blue", and "yellow" traditions, combined with the reverence and fear of the nuclear family, the drive to Silicon Valley, and the suspicion that some are being held as a way of "protecting" the others. A satire of the ways of the world with a dash of something irreverent in its tone.

The heart of the matter, however, is the choice of the Melancholic Flamenco as the protagonist of the story. The importance of this choice cannot be overstated. The central character of the story, Takahashi Onoda, is a satirical, rebellious, and litigious lawyer who, at the age of thirty-one, falls in with the "reds" (the derogatory name for the "yellow" or "red" classes) and becomes the object of their ridicule and mockery. Takahashi Onoda is thus the personification of the revolt of the modern age in its most complete form.

The central conflict in the story, as told by Onoda, is one of law and lawlessness, or society and anarchy. The main characters, the rebels, are faced with the dilemma of whether they fall into the jurisdiction of the state or of anarchy. If they choose law, Onoda will not only be a lawless and uncivilized person, but he will be an utterly lawless and uncivilized person indeed, for he will be the first to break the seal of lawlessness on a day that will be remembered as "The Day When It Happened". If they choose anarchy, Onoda will not only be a lawless and uncivilized person, but he will be an altogether lawless and uncivilized person indeed, for he will be the first to rebel against the sealing power of lawlessness and law.

The significance of the choice of anarchy as the revolutionary movement's secret is not lost on the reader. In