Fate/stay night Movie: Heaven's Feel - II. Lost Butterfly

The second installment of the Heaven’s feel route, arguably best route of Fate/stay night.

Before I start: For those who are uninitiated, I’m a huge fan of the entire Fate series. It is one of those anime that I cannot shut up about, but you’d still have to hear me talk about it because you’d pity me for having only two hobbies despite the countless number of things to do on Earth. I think I know enough to individually list grade stats for all the Servants in the Fate franchise, minus perhaps the numbers, because I was crazy enough to read every single page in the Fate wikia, and most of the pages in the Fate/Grand Order wikia.

Okay, so you’d probably get it by now. I’m pretty crazy about Fate.

As such, I’ll probably refer to other works within the Fate franchise in this review, alongside some very minor spoilers. If you read the next line, and discover that it is a spoiler, then the rest of this review would probably be spoiler-ish.

“Lancer ga shinda!”

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Okay, still with me? Great. Let’s continue.

Archer's Unlimited Blade Works | Source: Kotaku

Fate/stay night and Ufotable is a godly combination; especially when fight scenes are involved. Among all the anime adaptations within the Fate franchise, Servant battles in this movie are escalated to a whole new level, and you could feel the sheer magnitude of the battle from the vibrations the speaker produces to the whole cinema. I’ll tell you this much: I’ve got goose-bumps the entire movie.

This was also the movie that I thought Archer was really, really badass; his timing for Rho Aias is impeccable, his sixth sense is some kind of GTA cheat, and his entire existance itself is a cheat. A story-progressing cheat, but nevertheless, a cheat.

Artoria’s power is boosted a few magnitudes, and Heracules is just Heracules. They’re quite powerful in the normal Fate/stay night franchise, but in this movie, their true strength is adapted well on to the cinema screen. Spoiler Alert: really damn powerful.

Illyasviel finally gets some development to her background story, and Shirou gets a massive character development boost.

The movie was an eye-candy with its beautiful visuals and is lustrous to the ears, which made me quite disappointed when I felt that some scenes were too rushed. Relationships seem to escalate too quickly, which I believe is not an issue with the original visual novel, but with the animators deciding to rush those parts so that the next movie can start at the next arc. I don’t blame them though, because of the time-constraint nature of a movie, however, the damage is done and will be taken into consideration.

About the beautiful visuals and wonderful sound: you can actually keep track of everything that’s happening on the screen during battles despite the fights being fast-paced. You can hear each sword clash, feet stomping, and even clothes fluttering within the fight scenes. It’s really incredible what Ufotable has done here, and I expected nothing less. There were a few slow motion scenes, and you could see the intricate details on each water bubble in a downpour; it was pretty amazing to me.

Reading some of the reviews on MyAnimeList, it seems that some of the viewers, who are veterans of the Fate series, are confused about the characters that appear in this movie, although it was not an issue for me, so your mileage might vary.

Factoring in everything I have said so far, I rate the movie a 8.5/10, and the reason why I penalized 1.5 points is due to the abnormally fast relationship development. Other than that, good story-telling, literally perfect visuals and sound, and great, great franchise.

Watch it at your local cinema , and support Ufotable for making this wonderful movie!

Happy Coding,

CodingIndex