It took a while, but I'm finally watching Fate Stay/Night: Heaven's Feel, the last Fate series made by Ufotable. It's a pretty fantastic trilogy, and an even better end to this series of Fate adaptations.
Presage Flower: Heaven's Feel is basically the third route of the Fate Stay/Night visual novel. The main premise about Shirou joining the Holy Grail War where the same few families bring in historical figures to duke it out is the same, it's just the events that play and who of the three main female leads Shirou ends up with that differs. In Heaven's Feel, the Holy Grail War gets a wrench thrown in it when a mysterious shadow starts to kill people involved in the war, and the main focal heroine is Sakura, Shinji's childhood friend who starts off having the least involvement in the war. Sakura never got much focus in Saber or Rin's routes, and while she still doesn't do too much here, the movie does a great job at fleshing out her relationship with Shirou, who's also a lot more interesting than he was in UBW. Heaven's Feel puts a lot more focus on Shirou's PTSD from being orphaned, likely to parallel Sakura's abuse from her family, and seeing them support each other through their trauma is just really heartwarming. Shirou and Sakura just feel the most natural together, there's a really personal bond between the two that Presage Flower does a great job at selling the viewer on.
Unfortunately, that kind of comes at a cost. Presage Flower starts with an extended prologue about how Sakura and Shirou met, not inherently a bad idea, but the prologue takes a full half-hour, an entire fourth of the movie! Even more, once the prologue ends, the movie skips past Shirou meeting Saber and Rin through a title montage. Like, sure, I know I've seen that scene a few times already, but that just feels really clumsy and messes with the pacing of the movie. Thankfully, once that time jump is gotten out of the way and especially once the shadow comes into play, Presage Flower becomes a ton of fun, even if it's still pretty blatant that the plot hasn't fully ramped up yet. There's a great balance between fun character interactions and bonkers action scenes, and the final act packs a pretty massive twist that should drastically change how the next two movies play out. However, I'm not entirely sure if Presage Flower works as a standalone film, since nothing really gets resolved in the ending. Assassin and Zouken are still alive, the Shadow is still killing people, and as a whole, the movie just felt like a highlight reel of the Holy Grail War up until the big Saber twist kicks off the change. Just because it's part of a serialized trilogy doesn't mean a movie shouldn't also tell its own contained story, and it doesn't help that the sequels do a much better job of this.
As far as the presentation goes, the entire Heaven's Feel trilogy is absolutely fantastic. Ufotable's visuals are even better than in Zero and UBW because they got a whole movie budget to do these films and it shows in some of the fluid moments of animation and bonkers action scenes. Presage Flower, in particular, has a crazy chase sequence between Lancer and Assassin that stands out as probably the highlight of the whole movie. The music is also fantastic, since Yuki Kajiura is back as composer. While there aren't as many memorable cues as in Fate/Zero, it's still a massive improvement on UBW, and Kajiura makes sure to go hard on pretty much all of the action scenes. Overall, Presage Flower is a solid first film with well-written characters, great action, and an amazing score, but it suffers from wonky pacing and an inconclusive ending that makes it easily the weakest of the trilogy. It's still a fun time though,
3/5 Stars
Lost Butterfly: Lost Butterfly is a lot to take in, it's a truly relentless film. It's stuffed with nonstop action, plot twist after plot twist, and reveals entirely new and unflattering facets to pretty much every cast member. But despite all that, I actually think it stands on its own better than Presage Flower. That movie was blatantly an introduction to the trilogy, but Lost Butterfly is pretty much entirely a psychological character study for Sakura. We learn about her past, delve deep in her abusive relationship with her family, and discover her connections to Rider, Rin, and most importantly, the Shadow (Yeah, I know most of this was in Fate/Zero but it's been a while and I forgot, okay?). She spends the whole movie slowly losing her sanity culminating in that dark ending where she gets corrupted. It's such a tragic character arc, but the movie does a good job at keeping Sakura incredibly sympathetic even as she gets worse. The movie is filled with these character reversals, like seeing Illya and Rider be good guys who also get a lot more screentime as a result, and the fascinating arcs about Shirou considering losing his ideals to solely protect Sakura and Rin contemplating killing Sakura despite knowing she's her sister.
It's interesting how Lost Butterfly actually has less action than Presage Flower, yet it feels more action-packed. Part of this is because of the sheer amount of plot crammed into the film (seriously, there's like a plot twist every five minutes). It also helps that the action scenes we do get are lengthier, flashier, and better than most of what we got in Presage Flower. The production looks even better this time around, and Kajiura's score is an improvement as well. I really can't understate how well her musical style fits dark stories like this and Madoka. But despite all of that intensity, Lost Butterfly is still almost entirely focused around Sakura and Shirou's relationship, which I think was a pretty good call. When compressing a lengthy visual novel campaign into a six-hour trilogy, Ufotable chose to prioritize the central relationship above all else. However, I do have one issue with Lost Butterfly, though, and that's in regards to Sakura's sexuality. While I appreciate how the film tries to tackle Sakura's rapes and the complexities that prevent her from opening up about them, her whole subplot about the crest worms making her aroused really messes with that and makes for some incredibly uncomfortable scenes. It's generally hard to tell Fate was originally an adult game (something I'm perfectly fine with since I've never been into that sort of stuff), but the remnants like mana traversal and sexually arousing crest worms feel pretty jarring.
Overall, though, I still really liked Lost Butterfly, and I thought it was a massive improvement over its predecessor. The darker tone, blistering pace, abundance of big plot twists, more development for Sakura, and better production values made for a really strong entry in the Fate series. I'm still not a fan of the sex stuff, they came really close to ruining the movie for me, but the rest of it was so good that this didn't happen.
4/5 Stars
Spring Song: Ultimately, I think Lost Butterfly left the biggest impact on me due to its crushing sense of dread, but Spring Song is definitely my favorite of the three films, on top of just simply being the most fun. Focusing on the main cast fighting to save Dark Sakura and stop her from unleashing Angra Mainyu, the whole movie just feels like this grand finale to not just Heaven's Feel, but Ufotable's Fate "trilogy" as a whole. There are just so many amazing moments here, both big and small. In terms of sheer badassary, there's that whole Nine Lives Blade scene, Rider vs Saber Alter, and Shirou's fight with Kirei. In terms of impactful drama, there's that brutal opening, Rin and Sakura's entire confrontation (especially that hug), and Illyasveil's sacrifice. There's even what is possibly the funniest moment in any of Ufotable's Fate adaptations when Kirei punts Shirou through a window. It's just such a massive crowd-pleaser of a finale, it feels so rewarding knowing how dark and painful much of Heaven's Feel (especially Lost Butterly) was. It even brings in a character from an entirely different Nasuverse story at one point, which I'm glad I happened to stumble upon or else the ending would've felt like one hell of an ass pull.
What I found especially interesting about Spring Song is that, since Sakura spends much of the movie as a bad guy, the film focuses more on the core sibling relationships within the cast. Shirou spends a lot of the movie with Illyasveil, with the entire first third devoted to him and Kirei teaming up to rescue her from Sakura. They have a nice dynamic, and it pays off in a pretty powerful sendoff for Illya at the end of the movie. Rin and Sakura also get a surprising amount of focus, with Rin being the one to confront Sakura in the movie's climax rather than Shirou. More than in the two earlier films, it becomes very apparent that Rin cares about Sakura more than she lets on, and it leads to, once again, some great emotional moments as well. There's an awesome parallel between Rin and Illya, they're both older siblings who, after years of being distant from their siblings, make a grand gesture in the finale to give them a better future. Not to say that Shirou and Sakura's relationship is shortchanged either, though, since they get what is probably the happiest ending out of any Fate route, if not the whole franchise. That cherry blossom scene is perfect, and once again, it feels like a perfect way to end off Ufotable's weird lopsided "Fate trilogy".
Overall, I really enjoyed Spring Song. It doesn't have that consistently oppressive tone that made Lost Butterfly stand out, but it makes up for that through sheer fun. It's full of fantastic action and badass moments of payoff, while also nailing the emotional moments by revealing that the true heart of the trilogy isn't Shirou and Sakura's relationship like I thought. It's about the sibling relationships.
5/5 Stars
Overall, I thought the Heaven's Feel movies were a massive improvement on Unlimited Blade Works, though I still think Fate/Zero is the peak of the series. Heaven's Feel may be darker, but the characters are more complex and nuanced, and their struggles are more personal. Where UBW treats justice as this grand world-saving endeavor, Heaven's Feel focuses on finding justice for the ones you care about, especially family. The themes are genuinely fascinating here, on top of the fantastic direction, stunning presentation and music, and the ridiculous amount of plot twists.
Sure, I still had by problems with the trilogy, particularly the pacing and the sex stuff, but I found that each movie was better than the last. Presage Flower is super action-packed but had a slow start and aimless story progression, Lost Butterfly was grippingly dark and confidently messy but it had some really gross and uncomfortable plot decisions, and Spring Song brought it all home for a fun and satisfying finale that revealed what the trilogy was truly about.
4/5 Stars
My ranking of the Heaven's Feel movies is:
Spring Song > Lost Butterfly > Presage Flower
My ranking of the Fate series is:
Fate/Zero > Heaven's Feel > Unlimited Blade Works
My favorite fight scenes are:
- Saber vs Lancer (Spearhead)
- Saber vs Rider (Knight On Two Wheels)
- Kiritsugu vs Kirei (The Last Command Seal)
- Saber vs Assassin (The Reward For The Fight To The Death/Incarnation)
- Shirou vs Gilgamesh (Unlimited Blade Works)
- Lancer Vs Assassin (Presage Flower)
- Rider Vs Saber Alter (Spring Song)
- Saber is my personal favorite as a character. Obviously it helps that she gets the most fight scenes, but I also really enjoyed her moral dilemma in Zero, and the fact that she's displaced from her time period allows for a lot of great moments of levity. Of course, since she's not from her time period, I think she's the worst for Shirou. Also, one of the best things Urobuchi ever did was give her a suit and motorcycle in Fate/Zero, utter genius.
- Rin doesn't really fit as just a love interest, instead her charismatic and complex personality makes her full-on protagonist material, and I would've loved to see a version of UBW where Shirou didn't show up. She even keeps stealing the show when it's not her route, like her solo episode in Fate/Zero and her arc in Heaven's Feel. I think Rin is a bit too serious for Shirou, if anything I feel she fits better with Saber (because of course I had to start shipping a random queer pairing).
- Sakura is probably my least favorite of the three (though that's not saying much), but she's also incredibly complex. Flawed and sympathetic, but most importantly, I think she's the best for Shirou. As I mentioned several times in my review, I like how supportive their relationship was (at least in the first two movies), and how they helped each other through their trauma. The fact that they're childhood friends means they have a stronger bond and sense of history than Rin or Saber too.
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