Shirou Emyia Is OP As HELL
I find it very interesting both narratively and conceptually that the subjectively main character of a great deal of the Fate Series is by the rules of his own universe practically a failure as a mage and an inconsequential existence among Servants-- the combat 'class' or species depending on your own interpretation-- and yet he is still not only one of the most successful mages and effective combatants in his own verse, but if his same magical skillset were to be imposed on a character in practically any other fantasy universe-- or if he just straight up got picked up and thrown into another universe using a canonical way to do that with the 2nd Magic-- he would instantly be considered one of the most impressive mages and warriors ever.
Seriously, Shirou is one of the mages to have come closest to mastering or at least utilizing the Third Magic, the magic that revolves around the manipulation and manifestation of the soul, by being capable of projecting his soul into the physical world as a Reality Marble. If memory serves this ability is said to be so rare that only a dozen humans in all of history are said to have been able to accomplish the same feat outside of when they come back as Heroic Spirits, in which case it is still considered exceedingly rare.
He is also probably the mage closest to learning how to use the Denial of Nothingness (which is THINK is the Fourth Magic, but I googled it and the Fourth Magic is not named or described, so it might be the First Magic which has something to do with the creation of Metaphysical Energy and/or Substances as opposed to the usage of such things like most if not all other forms of magecraft does... if I understand it right at least... the wiki says the magic is still unexplained in its entirety) thanks to his creation of and growing mastery of Tracing.
Speaking of Tracing, his ability to use that spell/combination of spells comes at least in part from his affinity for and mastery of Structural Grasping, which at his level allows him to instantly learn everything there is to know about a physical object's physical and magical properties along with its communitive history either by just LOOKING AT IT or in some cases by touching it. Though admittingly this is limited by him only being able to instantly memorize and reliably recall and understand that information be it physical or magical if the physical object is a Sword or an object closely related to the concept of Swords such as Spears, Knives, Shields, et cetra (With the seeming exception of Rao Ais which doesn’t seem to have a physical component and is instead a purely metaphysical existence that interacts with the physical world by invoking the very concept of the shield used in the Trojan War). He can then recreate those things at will with his magecraft and enhance or alter those properties with seemingly minimal effort! He's able to do this with ANY non-divine object and can even somewhat pull it off with some divine constructs as well! Though again, he is held back by his own status as a human, though in this case it has to do with his below-average to average levels of magical energy as much as it does the human brain's limitations on what it can perceive and how much information it can store at once.
That's TWO True Magics he's at the very least closer to than pretty much anyone else alive, on top of having so much skill with a spell that for some reason most mages consider nearly useless that he could steal the research of any mage that specializes in using Mystic Codes or otherwise uses them as a medium for their research or spellcasting and by doing so probably figure out some of the flaws that have been overlooked for generations thanks to getting the full rundown of the entire creation process and having COUNTLESS other Mystic Codes and Nobel Phantasms to compare it to practically simultaneously!
AND, let's not forget that the master of the Second Magic once gave the blueprints to his own Mystic Code that straight up uses a version of said Second Magic to the Tohsakas and even after several generations they couldn't recreate even a lesser version of it, and yet in one timeline Shirou was able to do just that in like, a day. This in turn, thanks to the fact that the Code was in the shape of a short sword, means at minimum that version of Shirou if not the others that eventually went to the Clocktower with Rin theoretically has access to at least a watered-down version of the Second Magic as well! And I'm pretty sure that when that happened it was revealed that Shirou's Reality Marble can produce rare or even non-existent materials within its confines that can then be used to make new swords/Mystic Codes that never existed before using Shirous's thoughts and desires in place of an actual forge and that Shirou can then Trace them into reality! The man can literally design magic weapons that should not be able to exist for one reason or another and then pull them out of his soul to use in a fight without having to figure out how to or spend the time required to actually make them. He just needs the final result to work. AND HE CAN THEN TREAT THEM AS DISPOSABLES NO MATTER HOW EXPENSIVE OR TIME-CONSUMING THEY WOULD BE TO CREATE FOR ANY OTHER MAGUS!
And all of this, ALL OF THIS, is primarily focused on how his magic stands in terms of Magical Research, not about how it would affect his status as a terrifying god-tier combatant. Though of course there is some considerable overlap. So WHY is he considered a failure of a mage? Because in the Nasuverse a mage's skill/what rate they are isn't measured or determined by how high their mastery of a spell is or their accomplishments outside of discovering a route to Akasha, but instead by how many different spells they know how to cast and how much power they can put into them. Shirou can only perform I think three or four spells (Structural Grasping, Projection, Reinforcement, and I think Alteration, though I remember some quotes saying he only has one spell, that being Unlimited Blade Works, and all his other spells are just lesser versions of it he is able to use) that are all considered trash tier and is nearly incapable of learning more. In almost any other setting being able to use three or four spells to accomplish what Shirou is able to pull off would be considered worthy of legends and everyone would be scrambling to work with him on the study and creation of Mystic Codes, but he got screwed over by being from a verse that only cares about quantity and rarity, not quality.
