>>4107399I have some mixed feelings on that "female main character" stance. I think it needs to be qualified a bit since it can often overlap with the mindset that "UBW is the Archer route" and "Rin wasn't all that relevant in her own route", even if not necessarily and innately so. I think most people who say just really, really underestimate just how important Shirou and Rin's romance with him is to her, both as a character within the story and as a fictional creation of Nasu. Rin gets explored the most and in the best way through her relationship with Shirou, and he also really mattered to her. You can't just pluck Rin out of FSN and just expect her to work in any random environment, stories are stories because writers devise the best possible sequence of events and characters to interact with for any given character to truly flesh them out to their fullest. Shirou for instance wouldn't be nearly as great without Saber, Rin, Archer, Kirei, Illya, Sakura, etc. to interact. Would Rin really be anywhere near as interesting as she is without Shirou? Given the fact that people who say they like her in HF more than in UBW don't consider her among their favourites, don't love her anywhere near as much as fans of her romance with Shirou in UBW do... I say absolutely not.
I'm not saying that Rin can't work as a protagonist, but in order to make her truly as interesting and compelling you do need to understand why she works in FSN and UBW specifically, particularly the nuances of her character there, like how her self-esteem issues only really get explored through her romance with Shirou and how he inspires her to get past them. It's only by seeing why and how Rin and Shirou work together that you can write a Rin that works well on her own, to come up with the right plot scenarios and characters she can play off with to truly get explored to the same extent as she does through Shirou.
