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The Archer from the Fate:SN series is both a great archer and a great
sword/knife user. Since he's Archer, you would think that he was an archer
first. However, I have been told that apparently,

> Archer is the future Shiro.

Since this character learnt swords first why was he the archer and not an
Assasin, a Sabre or something else. What did the Archer learn first, the Sword
or the bow?


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2016-08-30T06:21:43.913
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2018-04-05T08:23:00.933
2016-09-02T08:58:08.497
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fate-stay-night
What did Archer learn first, The Sword or Archery?


> since Shiro started to use swords first

That is incorrect.

This is not clear neither from the anime nor from the VN, but Shiro is highly
skilled in archery way before the story starts. This is why he is hanging
around archery range early in the story.

Somewhere I read that Shiro was so good, he had to put effort into actually
missing the target. He stopped practicing archery because he was bored of
succeeding while putting no effort into it.

It was only after Holy Grail War started that he began to actually use swords
and copying Archer's style.


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2016-08-30T06:47:45.820
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Shiro used to be on the Archery varsity team in his school. That's why he is
good at using bows. He became good in using swords/knives because of the
fighting experiences. mostly when he fought Gilgamesh, which sharpened his
sword intuition. Shiro is an archer who can wield blades for short.


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2016-09-02T04:05:22.037
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Neither. The Archer class servant of the 5th Fuyuki Grail War was a magus
before anything else. At his core he is Projection and Reinforcement
magecraft, all culminating into his reality marble (an innate bounded field)
"Unlimited Blade Works."

As a magus his talents were unremarkable, save for his talent in Reinforcement
and Projection. While Emiya Shirou was in his school's archery club, it was
short-lived and not very noteworthy. Most of his strength came from him making
a contract with the World in order to become a Heroic Spirit in the form of a
Counter Guardian after his passing.

His adeptness in melee combat is unusual for a servant of his class, but his
Origin is "Sword." It's inevitable that we would use them in one way or
another. The twin swords he uses, Kansho and Bakuya are not tied to him as a
servant, but was merely something he projected. He utilizes these twins swords
because of the innate magic resistance (to deflect Caster's A-ranked spells)
they give, in addition to being effective against monsters such as Gorgon form
of Rider and the extradimensional abomination summoned by Caster (from
Fate/Zero).

Servants are placed under the Archer class based on their Noble Phantasm. The
user does not have to be adept at a bow, but any projectile weapons, even
firearms. Gilgamesh is placed under Archer based on his Noble Phantasm "Gate
of Babylon," which essentially is him launching Noble Phantasms stored in his
treasury.

"Unlimited Blade Works" allows allows him to reproduce just about any weapon
he's seen (with some exceptions), allowing him to summon an arsenal of weapons
as he needs it. His Projection magecraft allows him to create and overload
projected Noble Phantasms (the copies are one rank lower than the original).
The overloaded Noble Phantasms called Broken Phantasms are increased by one,
but are destroyed they are used. Combining Broken Phantasms with a bow allows
Archer to nuke the enemy from extreme distances. Think of as having an
unlimited quiver of super powerful arrows for just about any situation.
Tactics such as these make him suitable to be classified as an Archer class
servant.

Additionally, it should be noted that this Archer is not from the same
timeline as Emiya Shirou. He is an Emiya Shirou that walked a different path
as a nameless hero of justice, who made a contract with the world to be save
humanity as a whole as Counter Guardian. But in the end, he was made to clean
up after the actions humans by becoming an assassin. To save humanity as a
whole, instead of "saving everyone" as he had hoped.

It's possible for him to be summoned as Caster, Berserker, or Assassin, but
that's a story for another time.


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2016-09-02T05:44:11.603
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Archery. Archer's magecraft is remarkably close/based off the 8 steps of
Japanese Archery/Kyudo/The way of the bow, and his lack of self identity is
the reason why he's good at it. The weapon might have changed (his body
instead of the bow, swords instead of arrows), but the steps are the same


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2016-10-10T04:34:50.437
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Archery is Shirou's basic talent, he didn't even need to learn it to be good
at it (as mentioned above, he is way too good for the archery club), sword
technique is more like his hobby or inner calling (because of Avalon, made his
Origin: Sword) and he is not really talented at it no matter he tries even on
his max potential + World-boost, his swordmanship is still below standard
close-combat Servants (although he can defensively fight against those "True"
melee combatants, such as Saber and Lancer with his True Mind's Eye (spider-
sense-like skill)

If he was really intended to win the Holy Grail, he would just sniped every
Master and Servants from afar (including Lancer, who has Arrow Evasion
skill/blessing or such, but only worked if Lancer could see where the arrow
coming from and the arrow had no AoE like Caladbolg II ... on Berserker, he
could just snipe Ilya anyways (but for unknown reason, Archer won't or can not
kill Ilya, perhaps Archer came from Shirou-Ilya path? lol), and Berserker will
run out gas later if there is no Master supplied his Mana), i.e. his meele
sword play is more like a handicapped fighter, and not even trying to win on
most cases.

So my conclusion based on VN and animes: his granted Sword origin from Avalon
gave him an endless craving for Sword techniques, but will never reaches
mastery like his Archery does ... also maybe he thinks Archery is a coward
skill, and he prefers to fight his opponent bravely like other meele
combatants lol


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2017-06-29T04:42:13.787
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He learned Archery before and he was pretty accurate when shooting, making him
Archer material. His archery skills is even better than his magic when he was
still Shirou.


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