It is largely agreed that rape is the cheapest way of generating drama and making the audience despise a villain.
In some cases it is a handled well and in some not, like all narrative tools.
For example, SAO has been highly criticized for using rape as the go-to method for villains.
I would argue that the Nasuverse has the same problem. No, Nasuverse has it even worse.
There are many ways to threaten a character, but in the Nasuverse, rape is always used when the character threatened is female. It's hard to think of a female character who isn't raped, or threatened with rape at some point in any of the works I've read. For the record, the series I'm specifically referring to are Tsukihime (vn), Fate/stay night (vn and UBW anime), and Kara no Kyoukai (anime), with some references to spin offs such as Fate/zero.
Let's start at the beginning.
Naturally, in Tsukihime, Shiki shows he's going crazy by raping and/or threatening to rape his harem.
"Pushing them away, I press her onto the ground.
Would it be better if I had some nails?
With both arms pushed back and her figure spread open like a cross,
Arcueid looks at me with naked hate in her eyes."
"I'm going after her. Take me there."
"Do you think I'll follow an order from a person in your condition?"
"Yeah, of course I don't think so."
"If you don't listen to me, I'll rape you right here."
"——"
Her expression collapses.
She casts a look as if staring directly into my heart.
But now, I can't back down.
"Kk——"
Ow. Her nails are tearing through my clothes.
*pant**pant**pant*
Amazing. You're amazing Kohaku—you're so cute.
Becoming this frantic—your face turning red, tears running down your cheeks, saliva spilling past your lips.
Begging for more like this is just too cute.
I will have her.
NOW
I don't care about her wishes.
NOW
Not giving any resistance to my impulses, I rape her.
Not giving any resistance to my impulses, I rape.
Violating her body in this brutal manner, I feel like I am letting go
of everything that I've been holding in for so long.
This is only the tip of the iceberg.
Not to mention, the villain in Far Side went evil out of desire for the girl of the route. This happens to be the motive of about half of the major villains in Nasuverse. It gets tiring after awhile.
Sadly, this continues into Fate/Stay Night.
Gilgamesh shows up out of nowhere in the Fate route, how best to quickly establish him as despicable?
"Huh. It seems you are not willing to come to me. I find that hard to understand. A heroic spirit like you must know how valuable it is to be chosen by me."
"—Nonsense. I am a king even though I am a heroic spirit. I will not submit to you."
"Is that so? Even if you are a king, you are still a woman.
It should be a woman's joy to be held down and violated. So why do you refuse? It is not like you are a virgin. Are you scared to become mine?"
Ans. Make one of his main goals to rape Saber, the heroine of the route. In the other two routes, he hardly even mentions her, despite getting as much if not more screen time in UBW.
Shinji is a bastard. How can we properly portray him as such?
Ans. Imply he raped a classmate.
Saber is captured by Caster and made her servant. What is the first thing Caster does once Saber is falling under her control? How can we make everyone take Caster seriously as a villain, and quick?
Ans. Heavily molest Saber.
Now we want people to actually take Shinji seriously as a threat! How can we do that?
Ans. Try to rape Rin, heroine of the route.
Sakura has a difficult past, what ever could it be....?????????
Ans: raped by Shinji
I wouldn't have much of a problem with this if it was only one or two of these instances... but after the nth time I can't help but groan, "again?"
Not to mention, the problem continues in Kara no Kyoukai. Specifically, movie 3 and 7.
Why do you think this is used so much in this particular franchise, and in others like it? Is it because of so called "purity"? Is it just because it is an easy way of generating hate towards a villain?
It personally annoys me when used to this extent, and I find it the biggest flaw of the Nasuverse.
You forgot Ilya telling Berserker to behead and rape Saber because of course
Honestly I'm surprised there's no rape in Mahoutsukai no yoru
I think Nasu has just improved in that regard in recent years is all.
Most of the works op is referencing were written almost 20 years ago now, and most of Nasu’s more recent works haven’t had the same problem to the same extent (I think the only recent example was Boggart and Mash in LB6, but even then it’s hardly even close to some of the older stuff), so he’s probably either seen this criticism over the years and taken it to heart or naturally changed his focus.
That is true, honestly Tsukihime for how good it is felt stupidly edgy at times lol
What, you weren't a fan of naked Roa-Ciel raping her entire village before turning them into blood smoothies?
The LB6 moment was meant to be comedic as well. Mash throws Boggart through his castle like a looney toons character.
Doesn't change the fact that he is a rapist. He himself admitted that he "deflowered" many women and is going to do the same to Mash. I don't find this comedic at all.
Also, to remember that the Fate series started out as an eroge. I expect a porn game from the early 2000s to have some wild shits
Of course porn authors have some of the most insane worlds bundling.
Also forgot ilya "mind raping" shirou and turning him into her inanimate teddy bear slave or something
If I remember correctly it's in a bad end in VN. As for Ilya herself, besides like maybe HF she is just that crazy dangerous and unhinged due to certain reasons
Iirc the bad end of the VN is Ilya turning Shiro into a sentient sex toy
Ugh, don't remind me about those scenes in SAO. The two we got from Kawahara were bad enough (in Fairy Dance and Alicization) but I have no idea why A1 thought it was a good idea to include more anime original scenes like that, it's just ridiculous.
Tbf Nasu that was mainly from his older works and his more recent ones like Mahoyo, Avalon le Fae, and in general his FGO chapters don’t rely on rape anymore.
Besides that while I do believe he relied too much on rape back then, in the end all of the rape victims were treated pretty seriously.
We do have an attempt rape scence in LB6 and then swept that under the rug right afterward like a gag.
Nah, that was mostly there to tell the audience "no, amnesiac Mash never had sexual intercourse throughout the ordeal"
But it also explicitly makes clear that he's raped a bunch of other women.
Oh yeah there was that weird Mash-Boggart thing. Though that was more of a case of a bad joke falling flat rather than him relying on rape as a threat like he did in the past. Regardless I thinks it fair to criticize him on that.
I think he put that in deliberately to show rape didn't happen, because you know some of the audience are going to be angry about potential NTR otherwise.
Obviously since this is a gacha though I’m not sure that marriage plot was even necessary considering how I don’t feel like it amounted to much tmk.
The whole memory loss plot line is only there to separate Mash from the rest of the cast. Which is funny because Morgan just send her back in time right after she remember who she is. Overall beside Mash vs Calamity Barghest and maybe Mash vs Beryl, Nasu pretty much waste her screentime. Thankfully we get OC4.
Also there to make the memory loss feel like it had a point and not just there because we needed an excuse to somehow find castoria and for her to join us
I feel like if that was the case he could've easily not written in the marriage plot.
Literally nothing would change if Nasu made it so that Mash was declared an adopted daughter of the clan for political gain.
Instead, now we have a story that treats an attempted rapist as a great man worthy of respect, and for like a solid few months you couldn't talk about Mash without people bringing this shit up.
It was like the McDonald's employee Deku thing, but thankfully not so widespread.
Considering how low the bar is for faeries, it's like how Hades is known as a relatively good god because he only raped one person.
Not really.
The story is often aware of the difference between "good for faeries" and "good in general", and they kept treating him as "good in general".
He is not treated as wholly good, he's an antagonistic force for most of his screentime. The story compartmentalizes specific honorable traits of his in specific times to glorify.
This is Fate we're talking about. Gilgamesh was a rapist. Cu Chulainn was a rapist. Jason was a rapist. Don't even get me started if we're bringing other crimes like murder into the equation. That doesn't stop the narrative from treating their good traits as worth of respect.
After all, Nasu was a eroge(porn game) writer, and Tsukihime and Fate Stay Night were eroges.
I heard that F/SN and Tsukihime were eroge because of financial struggles or something like that
It was more because that’s just what was done with VN’s back then so they didn’t know if They could sell copies without sex scenes, so they shoehorned them in. Once it became clear there was absolutely a market for these types of experiences without them they got dropped hard
Yep. Also, the fact that King Arthur is a girl was because they want to sell the game.
Well in the end Artoria turned out to be a precious gem. My favorite out of the 3 (I still like Rin and Sakura very much)
And her romance with Shirou, especially in Realta Nua and Last Episode, is so good.
Yeah
That’s not an accurate label. He clearly had very little interest in writing sex scenes, which is why all of them were terrible. They were only added because it was a “requirement” for many VNs at the time and it would help sell the games.
They’re eroge, yeah, but calling them porn games is a massive injustice.
There's a reason why Realta Nua functions despite removing basically all of the sex scenes from the original VN.
That's funny since the sex scenes are everyone's favorite part
Context matters.
We meme and make fun of it. We DO NOT admire or praise it.
They are funny as "that part we don't talk about" things
Very few people ACTUALLY got into nasuverse because they wanted to read 15 hours of well written story just for a sex scene
Guess I'm the exception
I always find it so incredibly reductionist and inaccurate to boil fate down to an eroge when it's longer than all 3 lord of the rings books combined and all the "porn" and sex doesn't even make up 5% of that.
It's like claiming the great gatsby is porn or something as opposed to just containing sexual material / scenes
More like barely 1%
Ironic isn't it? They cut out all the consensual sex, but the rape is still front and center.
All the works you quoted of him are pretty old but disregarding that i think the disdain of him even daring to include it is pretty stupid. Can rape be done and portrayed distastefully? yes ofc, but does that mean it shouldn't even be allowed to be included unless you make and spend half your story about how evil it is and that is has to be the main focus? i don't think so, not that it actually isn't a decent part of the actual story in fate with someone like sakura, i think that got dealt with the appropriate weight and time
Like why wouldn't gilgamesh want to rape saber if she refuses to be his wife, slave or whatever. Like that literally perfectly fits his character, i've only even read the epic of gilgamesh for like 30 minutes but from that alone you already learn how it was literally the law in babylon or uruk whatever that any newly married women would first have to consummate her marriage and lose her virginity to him, the king who "owns everything in the world". Treating women like property, especially one that fascinates him like saber, he literally sees that as his birthright and her standing up to him only makes him want her more
Shinji already had a crush or at least lusted after tohsaka so when given the power it's not surprising he would try that(and he gets prevented and curbstomped by lancer right away), as for what he did to sakura yeah it's obviously fucked up i dont think the story pretends otherwise, also not that surprising given the household he grew up, and he literally got his throat cut for it by her eventually. could the story have spend more time on that part? yeah probably but i don't think it was the focus
As for shiki, only ever finished 1 route myself but i encountered 1 or 2 rape or rapish scenes as well and as you say it's to portray how fucked and badly he's losing his mind. And i'm not necessarily opposed to doing and showing it that way, now where those scenes well written? Yeah not really but they get the point across and counted for whatever fanservice vn's especially back in those days were sold for i guess
I just like it when works don't shy away from those dark things and don't pretend that it isn't what those evil characters would do, cause they would and i think we all know that
Also for a lot of these it's the threat or implication of rape(speaking mainly for fate cause im most familiar, obviously its not the case for tsukihime), they barely if even actually portray it happening. it's just them talking about it and then usually they either get prevented, defeated or killed before they even try
I'd agree if it wasn't for how much everything since has tried to make him the super speshul golden boy who was just a little grumby in Fuyuki because his friend wasn't there. In conjunction with what OP brought up about the other two routes, it very much makes his characterization in the Fate route feel like "he's the bad guy so he wants to rape"
I think your defense misses the core of my rant, which isn't about banning rape entirely from stories or pretending evil characters wouldn't do evil things. It's about Nasu's overreliance on it as a crutch for "darkness," character motivation, or plot progression, often handled in ways that feel gratuitous, exploitative, or just plain lazy writing.
I literally mentioned this in my post. Gilgamesh has different characterization in Fate compared to epic of Gilgamesh. He isn't like that except for in one specific route. if it's only about characterization then why didn't Nasu write him consistent like other routes? Nasu amps it up in Fate to the point where Gil's obsession with Saber is framed as entitlement to her body specifically because she's defiant and beautiful. It's not just "fitting his character", it's Nasu using rape threats as a shortcut to show villainy.
and how does this counter any of my point? Of course author will give a reason for rape. even hentai characters have a reason for rape is that they are perverts and obsessed with woman. So? it's Nasu falling back on rape to explain dysfunction again. This is literally the point of my post that Nasu relies on rape too much.
but when author relies on dark things too much then it becomes unnecessary edgy. There is White Album 2 VN. it fucks with reader's mind much worse than anything Nasu has ever produced without relying on rape. There are many more examples. And even then I am not saying author can't use rape as a plot point at all but but after the nth time I can't help but groan, "again?" It's not about pretending characters wouldn't do this, it's about Nasu choosing to make rape the linchpin so often when better options exist. It fits the characters because he writes them that way, but that doesn't make it good or necessary.
As for Sakura, I definitely think he should have chosen between Joken’s Rape Dungeon and Shinji's SA. Having both at the same time feels almost comical.
Penis worms? Really?
Tbf they changed theirs designs later
Not defending the inclusion of it, but that's apparently something from Japanese mythology/folklore, I saw the same thing in Doomed Megalopolis.
Its interesting to see the different responses you get here than you did in the fate sub
'Nasu's inability' as a premise falls flat when you yourself mention that it doesn't cover even half of the works he has produced, two of which you have mentioned are eroges and have a lot of weird sex scenes attached to appeal to the readers of the period (Saber x Rin x Shirou threesome anyone?) and in KnK the SA is used to further embody Fujino's characterisation as someone who is so detached that she's unaffected by that until her feelings of pain returns.
Especially in his later works, I don't think it's covered except in passing (iirc A Piece of Blue Glass Moon, the Tsukihime remake, removes even the plot beat with Shiki entirely, but I'm not sure as I haven't got to read it yet).
The "Nasu's inability" thing is supposed to be ironic that way. My point is that Nasu can write works with peak quality writing without relying on rape yet more than half of the times he relies too much on rape.
for example, Kara no Kyoukai anime adaption movie 6 tones it down. Do you know what happened in light novel? The girl Kaori who found out about her teacher taking drugs was forced to take drugs by her teacher, she was raped and impregnated. at the end she chose to commit suicide. Anime toned it down and yet remianed faithful to character motivations. This just further shows how unnecessary some of the rape scenes are in Nasuverse.
I feel like it's the opposite where he has the ability to write without that crutch but he uses it unnecessarily.
Like in fate.
Shinji's pathetic and isn't made more threatening.
Castor's scene is fanservice and doesn't make you take her more seriously.
Most people don't remember much less hate Gilgamesh for that, in fact he's popular cause of his hype and aura.
The eroge scenes are cringe and people like his work despite them instead of because of them.
yeah, that was the point of the title of my post. It was supposed to be ironic since he can perfectly write without adding rape but he still choses to add rape anyway.
FGO has it with the Lion man rapist who tries to rape Mash too.
Although it's played for laughs like "Just because he's a rapist doesn't mean he's a bad guy lol"
So true, man. Even as a major fan of the original Nasuverse VNs and Kara no Kyoukai, the rapeyness was always off-putting. It especially fucking weirded me out how in both Tsukihime and Hollow Ataraxia, the women who are threatened with rape deliver almost identical lines about how totally unbothered they would be if that threat was carried out, which felt like a direct projection of the writer's desires. The obsession with it is by far the biggest blemish on the franchise and the setting as a whole, and I can't tell how much of it is fetishism vs lack of creativity. I'm not sure I would even wanna know the answer.
And I don't get how some people are totally unwilling to think critically about that. Like, you're still allowed to like Nasuverse stuff even if you acknowledge that the writers have a concerning/problematic understanding of consent. These are still some of my favorite stories in all of anime, but I'm not gonna make excuses for the stuff that I think makes it worse.
Yeah, I love Nasuverse and that is why I don't like Nasu being reliant too much on rape even more.
I support you purely because I hate the Nasuverse in it's entirety.
I love Nasuverse lol. And this is why I hate this thing even more. The writing quality of his works are always peak. If only he didn't have this itch to add rape in almost every work he creates.
I stand with you. Fate doesn't get enough hate.
Aww, hope they find out a sad person cure soon.
Mine is being free from the Nasuverse.
So i don't need to justfy why they turned Attlia the hun into an alien loli~
Okay bud
I think they're talking about the reborn version of Altera, Altera Larva from Fate/Extella?
Larval Altera is functionally not Atilla the Hun.
I would agree. But most people that complain about Fate's changes would not know that.
Why would anyone need to justify that?
Nasu did that.
And Personally, it's not even the worst one.
Nero comes to mind; A well documented historical figure. now a saber clone i have to see every christmas
despite FgO being about saving the timeline for some reason they never go after the person replacing historical figures with clones of Artoria Pendragon.
You mean giving an in-story reason for the discrepancy? That sounds just like storytelling to me.
And... Nero is actually interesting because Fate is actually one of the only IPs I've seen that acknowledges that there's a very good chance that he was slandered by political opponents.
For the purposes of making it okay to fuck her mind you. Despite him being well depicted as a male and no there's RARELY A reason for the discrepancy.
which is important; works for mythological characters better which is why Artoria is... tolerable.
In-story reason, specifically, outside of the story? No need to justify anything, it's simply a writing decision like any other and allows to use the character in different ways.
Fate fans i swear to GOD-
What makes a historical figure notable?
well, what makes any human notable? I never met someone who wasn't important, but hisgtory remembers people who, by thieir own will and circumstances were able to change the world.
Atillia the Hun did not need to be a fucking alien Loli to drive empires to their needs. SIR Francis Drake was notable because of his skill and connections.
history is amazing, it's people are still peopel. good bad, normal, ect ect THAT is what makes me Love history.
and when you use history you must be careful. You MUST be respesctful.
It's one thing to insult a historical figure (so long as you're accurate about it) but it's another thing to turn historical figures into gooner material espcially when well documented.
as someone who teaches history, i find it insulting.
MUST we? Really?
Fate is, in the grand scheme of things, a small franchise. Freaking PAW Patrol is bigger. Add to that, almost all of Fate's popularity and revenue comes from a single country. It is not an earth-shaking piece of media with grand influences upon the world of culture. Most importantly, it does not sell itself as historical fiction.
It doesn't pretend to be real history. It makes clear very early on in every entry they are an alternate history. They also go out of their way to explicitly state the heroic spirits summoned are not the actual people, instead being a combination of their (in-universe) history and the myths around them. Even the fan-made wiki will immediately inform you that Francis Drake was a man in the real world, even though ultimately a wiki only needs to be about its own topic. The franchise and people who follow it actively volunteer the information at every corner. They aren't taking anything away from history because they aren't history and are very clear with that fact.
No one alive knew these people, even the most recent servant Tesla. Their image is not being tarnished for their friends. You are not showing their lover them as a lion-man. You are not showing their daughter their father as a woman in a skimpy outfit.
So why must we be respectful, this far removed? No one is being tricked into thinking Fate's history is the real one. No one is altering their perception of the real figures because of Fate. The types of people who would do so are already off their rocker, at which point you are blaming their choice of gun, not the shooter.
Did these characters NEED to be extremized versions of themselves, with added features for flavor? (Said flavor frequently being breasts, admittedly). No. Certainly not. But it is what makes the franchise unique and itself. There are plenty of franchises where Attila the Hun is represented honestly, or even as a caricature. Is it a crime to break from the mold, and to think it might be interesting if he was an alien woman with a laser cannon? (Not a loli btw) Is it harming anyone? It really isn't. So why yuck the yum?
Edit: Fixed weird capitalization autocorrect of Fate and added wiki link.
I can understand thinking and seeing the fate go era as kind of exploitative and insulting with the billions they rake in goonifying and genderbending many historical figures.
But before and aside from that can you also not respect the fate franchise for getting people interested in specific historical figures, myths, locations or eras to begin with?
One of the main reasons, why I never could bring myself to "love" the Fate series despite knowing it has quality writing here and there: Sexualization of real life people.
Like, was it really necessary to sexualize Boudica, Nightingale, Wu Zetian and all the genderbent characters?
On a related note, I find it hilarious how in the Fate universe Nero's first wife conveniently committed suicide instead of, you know… being killed on her husband's orders.
Wait Atilla the Hun was an alien…wtf? Fuck off Nasuverse.
you seem awfully informed about the nasuverse for someone who claims to "despise" it so much
Would you prefer someone hate something they know nothing about?
Why do you hate the Nasuverse? Just curious cause I don’t like it myself lol.
How it treats historical figures comes to mind but also just... more personal disagreements with it.
also a friend of mind tried to get me into it when i was writing to the point i dreaded going into the thing to write because I knew it would start and I do not vibe with it at all.
What characters do you disagree in the way they are treated? Im curious, becasue he tends to be quite faithful in his interpretations, and if not faithful, at least does an interesting take on them.
You know it's my fault i dared to say I don't like this hentai/ecchi series but to be blunt I think, as a historian, if you use historical figures in your work you probably shouldn't turn them into lolis and gooner bait. espcially when they're pretty well documents as men and them being the opposite gender would radically alter events.
I also notice i don't see Marie Antoniette as a muscular baker beating people to death into cake.
Yeah it’s the same for me to. I totally understand get why you hate it.
heres one reason jack the ripper in fate /apocrypha,
also the series making OC waifus then just adding a random historical names to them
Fate zero is onlt one i enjoyed
I liked that one guy killed a lot of Magi: the only good Magi in this universe is a dead one. for their own good.
Fate zero was a mistake
It gave us Iskandar so I'm happy with it
most things in the franchise are a mistake yes.
Nasu does have a pretty open rape fetish in his earlier works, yeah. He is very indulgent in his writing.
That’s why you don’t see it now, since he’s moved on to his giant women fetish.
Nasu never portrays rape as a good or justifiable thing and never fetishizes it but he does use it a lot because he found out it's an easy way to make audience sympathize for (female heroines) and hate ( male antagonist)
I agree with you he used it too much back then.
I agree. I don't exactly know the name for the type of chunni visual novels or doujin works like nasuverse but they use rape as a narrative device in a juvenile manner.
However does nasu still do that? In tsukihime remake and witch if the holy night?
Tsukihime remake tones down this but still has rape threat. Witch on the holy night doesn't have any rape.
None of Nasu FGO chapters have rape in them outside of like 1 kind of joker sence and nothing actually happends.
I also hear some of his othe rneq works hasn't got rape either
Chunigee is a popular fan term , but its really just "action fantasy", which for some reason also do not have a true name in manga
ie. Shonen manga is used for them...when shonen is a demography. To see how bizarre it is, D.N.Angel was published in Monthly Asuka , which would made it a Shojo.
And let's not even go to CLAMP and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, the shonen adventure manga that runs side-to-side with a Seinen Manga (xxxHolic) and where the big reveal is that everything is the fault of Clow Reed, yes, the guy from the hit shojo series Card Captor Sakura.
Action-Fantasy is the closest we get, but it feels weird to use the label when it has tropes that are much more than that. And you can't use "Urban Fantasy" either because there are tropes that exist outside settings set in modern-esque societies
I think people exagerate how many times it happens in sao or atleast in the novel, it only happen 2 times, maybe 3.
One thing that bugs me about Nasu's writing is the gender essentialism. You can kind of see that he thinks being raped is something exclusively for women.
Uhh not really both Shiki (had sex with an adult while underage pretsukihime, and drugged/assaulted by Kohaku) and Shirou (from Ilya in a bad end using him somehow) get hit by it too.
I also dont think he uses it as a crutch tbh, the only time I've seen him do it poorly is with Fujino in KnK, but still handled better than most JP authors.
The way he frames it between the men and women is just different enough to bother me. I'd need about 20 pages to go in depth about my thoughts on the link between gender essentialism and video game writing, lol. I agree though, the way he handles rape is still a cut above other VN authors.
Well, those were his older works, when you reach EXTRA CCC you see that anyone can get raped (melt bad end)
No he just likes his heroines tragic
Nasu was only like that before he made the first Melty Blood game, back then before 2002. Since Nasu made the first Melty Blood game on 2002, his works/products/visual novels/games (including the remakes of the lewd visual novels) usually do not have any sexual content outside of some skimpy outfits (most of which are exclusive to Fate/Grand Order) and some occasional heavily censored ecchi joke that is played for laughs.
It seems like as if the Nasu haters have never read/played anything that Nasu made after 2002.
Yes and No
These are older works of Nasu and back then he kind had to do ecchi stuff so that his works "survived". Haven't played the Tsukihime remake nor the original (although I'm somewhat aware of the story) but I haven't heard about sex stuff here.
As for Fate/Stay Night , I think you miss some stuff :
Gilgamesh is an ancient king, very ancient. There is a reason why he is called the King of Heroes. So, he "kinda" have an outdated worldview... in a way... yeah.
Also saying that "he just wanted to rape Saber" is in a way a simplification of what actually happens. What actually happens ties with Gilgamesh character : he believes that he possesses everything and everything belongs only to him... except one, Saber. In Fate route when he dies after his fight with Saber, he said something like "some things are beautiful only because you can't have them". Which in a way at least partially contradicts your claim about F/SN Gilgamesh. Yes, he still behaves like a big big narcissistic asshole in the VN, however his main reason for attraction to Artoria is a sense of "admiration" and not "ha ha I want to rape her".
As for the other routes,there are reasons.
In Heaven's Feel it should be pretty obvious : he fucking lost against Sakura and fucking died lol.
As for UBW, Gil takes a much more proactive role in activating the Grail(unlike F/SN where it was Kirei instead). His feelings toward Saber haven't changed.He also tells Shirou that he won't use Ea against him again because "he doesn't want to sully it before he faces Saber"—he's just preoccupied with completing the Grail, especially after Kirei dies and there's nobody else around to do it for him.
A bonus for HF : Fate/Unlimited Codes(not sure how much canon it is)states that Gil has no interest in Saber Alter because he stops finding her beautiful if she gives up on her ideals.
As for Medea, why she puts Saber in those clothes and etc there is this :
Source: Fate/side material (2004-1-30), p.063 Fate Dictionary
The interlude where Saber was captured by Caster. The pure white dress was due to Caster's tastes. It seems she was crazy about Gothic Lolita fashion, but since she couldn't pull it off herself she enjoyed playing around with young girls instead. ...Does she not have a spell for restoring youth? (Also, Saber's dress wasn't Gothic Lolita.) If you ask me, it was the most erotic scene in the whole entire game. Way to go, Caster. Keep it up!
So in other words, Medea is just freaky.
As for Shinji, I don't know if you actually read the VN, but it was stated that Shinji wasn't always like that. He used to be a normal guy or at least a somewhat normal guy(he even was friends with Shirou at some point), but the problem is that in which family he was born.The Matou family. Holy shit this family is crazy as fuck (hello Zouken). Why? Because of the thinning of their bloodline, the Matou are no longer capable of producing heirs naturally capable of sorcery.
Due to living in such family, it had an impact on Shinji.
So while yes he rapes Sakura, there is an explanation in the form of a chain of events that lead to this. This does not justify his actions, but the environment in which he grew up explains them.
As for KnK I haven't read the novels nor watched the movies and I'm less familiar with the story compared to Tsukihime.
While yes, the "rape" aspect is a flaw, but it's not always the case(I know it sounds weird) and it seems like you oversimplify the content for the sake of a Reddit take
This is very blatant Doylist justification, from a Watsonian perspective it sounds very silly. Retroactively it makes the scene dumber to me than if Caster was just doing it to humiliate Saber.
Notice how it was from 20 years ago
Just for context, most of these works were written in the 1990s when Nasu was a young adult. At that time, irresponsible use of rape as trauma fuel was rampant in fiction in general and Nasu learned to write in that environment.
I feel like these aren't even the biggest flaws in these older works. The over the top edgyness and fairly pretentious dialogue without a lot of substance (at least half of the time) are far graver sins, despite it being somewhat charming/meme nowadays. Kara no Kyoukai is the worst at this, OG Tsukihime slightly less and Fate considerably less, it's a gradual evolution.
Not to mention the absolutely horrible sex metaphors like calling a girl a "mollusk" in the middle of a scene. It's so bad it reads like parody.
I also wouldn't mention Fate/Zero because that was written by Gen Urobuchi, who is overall a more competent writer than Nasu but suffers from similar issues, just hides it better.
Nasu seems to enjoy torturing women. Just look at LB6, almost every female character has to suffer and die horribly (Morgan, Baobhan Sith, Coral etc) while men like Boggart who attempted to rape Mash is treated with respect by the narrative. Even Beryl, one of the most vile characters, doesn't die in a gruesome way despite his evil misdeeds.
I mean everyone kind of suffers in Avalon le Fae, that’s frankly kind of the point, that world was a shit show that was destined to burn even when it wasn’t
Correct but it's mostly female characters who suffer terribly. Their suffering is portrayed on screen and even their end is terrible.
Tbf those were his older works from a younger, less experienced Nasu
Rape is like every woman’s worst nightmare. It adds more gravity to the threat instead of just killing.
I want to point out that Kotomine Kirei, although clearly a villain, did not sexually assault anyone in the story. In my opinion, he's completely asexual.
Kirei doesn't rape anyone on screen but he's the type of person to do rape someone and he doesn't give a fuck when his own servant (gil) tries to do it
If u read trash u get trash tropes,most manga are trash
Not even talkinf about manga here
famous manga Fate/stay night written by the famous mangaka Nasu
Massive L
Yeah, that was rough in his first few works, but thankfully its not really a thing in his more recent works from what I gather. I'm guessing the reason for Nasu using it so much was because it was fairly early on in his writing career, but thats just speculation on my part