The answer? You don’t. There is no prep for Shirou Day. The Shirous come for you. No preparation can change anything. You will become the bone of your sword, whether you like it or not. You will become a fellow Shirou and raise to claim the internet. Well, at least for 24 hours.

You might have heard the term “Shirou Day” thrown around in October for the past few years, and even if you’re a fan of Shirou or the Fate series, chances are you still might not have any clue what it is, or what you even do. All you know is that you celebrate Shirou. That’s about it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case because this is very much an unofficial celebration that’s primarily centered around Twitter on October 20th each year. Really, there isn’t any uniformity to it at all besides the fact that everyone runs around with a profile picture as shown in the video below.

I’m going to directly quote what I said for last year’s Shirou Day because it’s about the best way to describe the origin. So, back around three years ago on the 19th of October 2019, ExtremeSManpig created the above video. This spurred a bunch of people, primarily on Twitter, to run wild with profile pictures featuring the Shirou Emiya from Fate/Stay Night. Throw this in with plenty of memes, and Shirou Day was born.

Yes, it is no more complicated than that. Someone did something dumb. People found it pretty funny. Way more people got in on the joke and now for one day a year, a bunch of “Shirou avis” take over Twitter notifications, likely confusing most people because of how niche this still is.

I participated last year. I got in on the memes and made the one shown above, which did really good for some reason. People loved that. I’m trying to think of other potential Shirou Day memes, and I plan to take part in the festivities as well. So, now you’re likely wondering how you can get in on the fun?

Really, there’s no one way. Don your Shirou picture, either the default or with some variation, and just have a good time, meme, and share your love of the Fate series or Shirou. I honestly saw a lot of wholesome stuff come from it and people became actual friends or play games and build connections with other Shirous. It was sweet.

While it’s a really dumb thing in concept, and execution, really, at the end of the day, it’s just an excuse to have a fun little community event and share your love of this piece of fiction. And I’d say that’s actually pretty damn wholesome, even for all the bone and sword talk, wouldn’t you?

Thank you very much for reading

See you there, sword brethren