Kinoko Nasu
Writer Kinoko Nasu created Shirou and Saber in stories he had written as a teenager. Nasu was worried that the story would not work as a "bishōjo" game because the main character was a girl. Artist Takashi Takeuchi suggested switching the genders of the protagonist and Saber to fit into the game market. For the anime adaptations following "Fate/Zero", the staff wanted to make the character more serious in his interactions with the other characters while also giving him a more cheerful personality in contrast to the original visual novel. Shirou is regularly voiced in Japanese by Noriaki Sugiyama as a teenager and Junko Noda as a child; multiple voice actors have voiced him in the English releases of the anime adaptations.