Can we have a good discussion about this? This is a view I've seen many times but never really substantiated. I've played the VN and I can't see what they did to ruin the adaptation. The music is great, the animation is serviceable and the story was barely changed from the VN (I can't think of any majour plot points removed). Yet everyone talks about it being a butchering like they took out some great scenes or otherwise started making things up. I'm interested in what Ufotable will do, but I see most of their improvements coming in the visual department, unless they are using a different route that isn't shit. Because Emiya not letting Saber fight for him is sexist nonsense even if it looks awesome.
They absolutely ruined Fate-route Shirou and gave people an even worse impression of him for one, they did this by not attempting to relay any of his inner monologues from the source, a route in which he's a static character. His sexist comments are said not because he believes women can't fight, as shown in later routes, but because he can't explain his thoughts in any convincing way on how he can't allow someone to defend him as he has heavy survivor's guilt. He then chooses for the easy route of "you can't fite cuz ur a girl" to Saber, yet if you notice he has no qualms at all on Rin taking an active role.
Besides that they add in unneeded elements from Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel and mix them together in the middle part of the story, and the results are a disaster as shit isn't explained and they just butcher Caster's character, turning her into a generic comic villain. Her depth is in how her story in the UBW path parallels Shirou's own character arc, and since this is Fate Shirou lol. Sakura's subplot is also introduced but not explained well at all, also to add Sakura is completely irrelevant in both Fate and UBW so this was unnecessary.
They also butchered what is the single best scene in the Fate route (tI myself consider the Fate route generously mediocre), and by that I mean the church scene where in the game we begin to understand the inner workings of Shirou's mind but lol they wrote Shirou as a dense, generic harem MC and also seemed to tone down the emotion in the scene, so that was shit.
Finally to add they emphasized the SoL elements in this adaptation, making the already bad parts of the Fate route even worse. The animation was damn bad too, look at Archer vs Lancer, looks terrible. The
Unlimited Blade Works adaptation will hopefully overturn all the negatives that DEEN has wrought over the years with their terrible productions. Shirou is a fully developed character in both this path and
Heaven's Feel so if Ufo can manage to capture his thoughts then we should have a good adaptation. Cooking scenes are pretty much to a minimum too after the Fate route so no need to worry on that front.
Also for all the Rin fans out there, guess who is the character who in the source material uses the famous line "People die when they're killed" because it sure wasn't Shirou.
