Fate/stay night Movie: Heaven's Feel - III. Spring Song

Anime has offered many amazing works of psychological and philosophical exploration. The medium is ripe for exploring these themes with the ability of animation to depict the surreal in ways live action cannot. These works demand a certain level of risk, as it's far easier to tell the audience what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear. Heaven's Feel feels like the excited musings of a young fan of this genre that thinks they're ready to join the ranks of the elite but lacks the modesty to understand they have much to learn. It wants to play with the big boys, ... but ultimately risks little. It can't seem to decide on any real focus or theme, but rather throws a half dozen at the screen mistaking quantity for quality. And ultimately, it's an unsatisfying mess of a trilogy

To avoid giving out spoilers, I think the ultimate problem with the Heaven's Feel trilogy it's just too broad in what it's trying to accomplish. If anything, the author (Nasu) seems at his best when he has time to explore singular themes and limited casts to their fullest extent. If you've played the original Fate VN, I think it's safe to say you are aware Nasu is guilty of rambling at times. Heaven's Feel is known to be the result of what was supposed to be two separate stories smashed together into one due to time and budget constraints, and it shows in almost every aspect of the work.

Many have accused the Saber/Shirou romance of being unrealistic, with the author's own writings arguing against the potential of the relationship. If that's the case, the Heaven's Feel trilogy has argued for three movies that the Sakura/Shirou relationship is downright toxic and has led to the near annihilation of the two characters as well as calamitous unintended casualties. And yet, the author seems completely unwilling to admit this, whether he himself doesn't realize it or if editorial mandate from the original work demanded bishounen game fans/shonen anime fans were unable to accept any other ending than the hero gets the heroine. Relationships don't work in reality for a myriad of reasons, even between two genuinely good characters. Most importantly, a relationship built on lies deceit, and surface-level emotional attachment is bound to not end well. It's a lesson the story is begging everyone to understand, yet the author is unwilling to convey, even if it's to the detriment of its two leads. and the end result is catastrophic in a way that is just bizarre. If it wasn't presented so earnestly I'd believe it was satirical

Much like the relationship, the dueling stories of Shirou and Sakura are constantly at odds with one another. They compete for dominance rather than enrich each other. Themes of abuse that have been rightly criticized for being exploitive and over the top at times, though have generally been the most interesting part of the trilogy, are almost abandoned toward the end of the film in favor of more obtuse philosophical ramblings that the author won't ever let breath or create the proper environment to discuss. It's dishonest to create this level of consequence, yet handwave it away in the end due to the ability of the genre to get away with whatever it wants via magic. Meanwhile, Shirou's arc has ceased being interesting at this point. He made his decision in the second movie, and it remains unchallenged throughout the third. Rather, the author just shows the consequence of that decision, never quite realizing this Shirou is barely even a character any more. It's not that he's abandoned his ideal or childhood dream, which is a fantastic theme to explore: it's that he's abandoned his sense of self and redefined himself solely in relation to Sakura. If Fate built up the character and Unlimited Blade Works challenged the character from start to finish, this work simply destroys the character and leaves nothing that can be defined as a person remaining.

Meanwhile, the emotional center of the trilogy has been the relationship between Rin and Sakura, and this part of the film I can say is fantastic. The trilogy at times seems to realize this, moving Shirou to the background to let the adults in the room do the talking. When the trilogy has worked, it has been when it has allowed these two to shine, and it makes one long for what could have been if Shirou had just been the one to go away in the first movie instead of his servant. While I came away not caring much for either of the two leads, I blame this more on the author's insisting everything ultimately be defined through Shirou for the sake of the shonen fan rather than the innate design of Sakura's character.

Then there's the whole weird morality play the trilogy seems to want to explore. This in itself would take a small essay to dissect all the issues with. The problem the author doesn't seem to understand is the moral horizon exists in literature for a reason. You can play around the line, but using the trappings of the fantasy genre to ignore it all together is disingenuous. More to the point, the author doesn't seem to want to allow discussion of this, but rather smother the concerns of audience members unwilling to accept his conclusions. Death of the author exists for a reason. All of this ultimately feels tacked on and has to be ultimately ignored if one is to appreciate anything from the movie.

What shocked me the most, and perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this movie and the entire trilogy is the ultimate pointlessness of Saber Alter. The trilogy turned the moral heart and most popular character in his series into Darth Vader, gave her an amazing introduction with the Berserker fight, and showed Shirou's grief for his former friend and mentor. It was a great setup that makes the audience want to know more about who she is. Instead, Saber remains a disinterested, emotionless zombie that just looks like she doesn't want to be there and can't wait to die. Instead of enriching the original character, Saber's role here just feels exploitive, as if the author can't come up with any other way to make the viewer feel grief than rely on a better-developed character. Most will praise her big fight in this film, and while it is a technical marvel, it's just as emotionally unsatisfying as the most erroneous examples in Hollywood popcorn flicks. Nasu wants to argue this is an evil Saber, but instead of evil it's just a soulless plot device he can't even fit in without downright ignoring on multiple occasions Shirou and co should die to the character. On some level you feel he's trying to express Saber is trying to fight the mind control or whatever he wants to call it she's suffering from, but it's never something fully explored. Simply changing a scene or two would have at least salvaged this.

Saber's ultimate fate feels more like a fallback by the author to pretend he had some level of consequence than anything, but when Saber's conclusion in every Fate route is well-established given the nature of Heroic Spirits, this was a complete waste of time. If I didn't know Alter was in the game originally, I would accuse the author of being unwilling to write the character out because of her popularity. Saber has been dead for two movies. Alter is just the porn version of the character: existing to look cool and exploit and appeal to the base desires of the fandom rather than anything. Considering the amazing character work in another of Nasu's works, KnK, involving the exploration of dueling personalities, I'm just baffled that this came from the same author.

In the end, everything about Heaven's Feel ends up a compromise. Instead of punching home the themes it wants to explore with Sakura, she's shoved aside so we can conclude the entire story of Fate (what many have long-theorized was the cut Illya route). Throughout the three movies, the story has been almost screaming that Shirou is lost in everything going on: his ignorance hurting more than helping, his childish morality being discarded the second it was challenged rather than evolved into something stronger. It wants to be darker and more realistic, and yet of the various Shirou-based Fate routes, it relies on levels of plot armor and logical inconsistencies that the previous two works combined can't create. This Shirou failed to win his own power and failed at every moment of consequence in the first half of the trilogy. To even create a scenario where he can be victorious, the author gives him a devil's bargain: the power of someone else that will cost him his own life. This could have been an interesting idea had it been explored to its fullest, as many have long-criticized the character's suicidal nature. However, in the end the author pulls away from the conclusion demanded the moment he made his choice. Fans will point out there was an in-universe explanation, but of course there was. You can do whatever you want in fantasy works because of fantasy. If the author didn't want the conclusion his story demands, he should have written something else.

The result is instead of giving the anime the ending it needed, we arrive at the ending the fans want: a perfectly happy conclusion where all sacrifice has been ignored, all consequences thrown to the side, and a result that feels more for the audience than the characters. The thickest of plot armor piled on top of plot armor allows for a syrupy sweet ending that comes off bizarrely out of place. And much like the anime itself, it feels like the author isn't ready to take the training wheels off to fully explore the motifs he wants to, resulting in an emotionless, flat work that relies on pity instead of earnest grief and requires two previous works to create empathy for much of what is going on.

If you are a die-hard fan of the type-moon visual novels, I'm sure this movie has something for you. If, however, you have not played through the VN, it will likely leave you confused as to how anybody could possibly sift through the piles of pseudo-intellectual masturbatory ramblings to find the plot. Character motivations are inconsistent and at times non-existent, and not a single one of them is likable. Why did this character do this thing? You won't know but they'll damn sure wax philosophical about it for five to ten minutes, leaving you with more questions than when they started.

In the end, ... ufotable's stellar animation and admittedly high-tier sound design can't save this film from a soap opera plot based around toxic relationships and unsympathetic teenagers.

I’ve already gone through the first two films in this trilogy and now it’s time to look at the third. See if, unlike Unlimited Blade Works, it manages to have a satisfying conclusion. Because I’m honestly getting a little frustrated with this franchise and its great premise, decent build ups and complete letdown conclusions.

Story:

We open with Shirou finding Shinji’s corpse. We quickly learn that the monster within Sakura comes from the Matou family trying to fashion her into a grail and our heroes find themselves in a race against time to save her.

Let’s start with the big problem in this film and one that’s starting to look like ... a common failing of the franchise. The ending is pretty rubbish. The last quarter of the film is almost entirely nonsense. Let me share a revelation I’ve had. This franchise is what happens when you give an amazing concept to writers who are mediocre at best. What I mean by that is that the problems with the endings, both here and with Unlimited Blade Works, come down to the writers not knowing how to build up on things except by making the situation increasingly ore desperate, And once they’ve done that, they don’t have the ovarian fortitude to follow through with the bitter-sweet or tragic endings that would make sense. So they pull some utter bullshit out their asses to get a contrived happy ending. Essentially, it all comes down to the writers not having the skills to build up tension in a less dramatic way or having the guts to follow through with what they do have.

To the film’s credit, the underlying good ideas are still there. And there is some strong build up before the writers screwed it.

Characters:

The characters remain a weakness of the films. Sakura is bland as papier mache. Shirou still sucks, though he actually does get one good sequence when he’s protecting Illya. Kirei is pretty annoying in this one. He just spends a lot of time spouting a bunch of pseudo philosophical bullshit that’s probably intended to sound deep but fails utterly in that regard. The most compelling character is Rin in spite of her being largely on the sidelines.

Art:
The artwork is definitively the best element in the film. One thing the franchise does well is the character designs. This one also has some really good action sequences. Especially the Rider vs Saber fight.

Sound:

The acting continues to be well done. Even the actors who voice shallow characters like Nakata Jouji, Shitaya Noriko & Sugiyama Noriaki give good performances. I do also like the music. Credit to Kajiura Yuki for consistently composing strong soundtracks. Not only i the Fate franchise but in anime like El Cazador de la Bruja and Madoka as well.

Ho-yay:
There isn’t any. This franchise loves its banal het romances.
Areas of Improvement:
1. Figure out the ending that naturally stems from your narrative and use it. Don’t consistently chicken out and force a happy ending. Woman up.

2. More complexity for your major characters. Shirou still sucks. Sakura is still boring. I understand that the focus is more on the cool premise and badass action sequences, but the poor characterisation is still letting the film down by a wide margin.

3. If you’re going to have an antagonist who spends a long time explicating on their motivations, you need stronger dialogue and motivations. All of Kirei’s verbal diarrhoea seems to be to tell us he’s a nihilist who can’t shut the fuck up. If you want to see a villain talk a lot and also have compelling dialogue, look at Aion in Chrno Crusade. And a big part of why he works in that regard is that a lot of his dialogue is persuasive and he has very coherent points. The character also has a charisma that Kirei sorely lacks which makes him come across as even more compelling.

Final Thoughts:

So, at the end of this film trilogy we have yet another disappointing ending with very little improvement on our rubbish protagonist and his dull as dishwater love interest. I’m giving the film a 4/10. Good premise, some strong build up from previous instalments but let down by lacklustre writing.

As a fan of the Fate series, I was SO excited for the epic conclusion to all of the stuff that's happened over three timelines, especially since I found the first two Heaven's Feel movies to be spectacular. Unfortunately, this conclusion is one that takes all of that time, effort, storytelling, passion, and flushes it down the toilet by making final motives unclear and having an ending that takes every possible wrong path it could. It kind of makes me feel like I should've never started the main routes and only watched Zero as that story is millions of times better and didn't feel like ... a waste of time in the end. The only good thing I can really point out is the spectacle, but that's been consistent throughout Heaven's Feel.

I…don’t entirely understand why or how a lot of things happened in this movie. I thought I was an idiot for asking “Wait…what just happened?” as the credits rolled. But after thinking about it, I think the movie’s more at fault than I initially believed.

Let’s start with Sakura. She continues to be the most complicating factor of these movies. She has a confrontation with Rin that’s impactful because that dialogue reminds you of all of the trauma she went through that would lead her to this point. I use “reminds” because I don’t think the movies properly highlight those crippling 11 years of Sakura’s life. ... Obviously you already know her life was messed up even before booting up Heaven's Feel. But for it to apparently be a driving plot device, I think it should’ve had a lot of time devoted to it. Unlimited Blade Works did a better job at showing it and she isn’t even relevant in that timeline! It really just felt like she was simply being possessed by the shadow, which didn’t make for an interesting antagonist (especially when considering the alternative of having Sakura’s insanity be entirely her own).

Maybe it was my expectations, but Saber Alter didn’t feel realized at all. I was hoping in this movie we’d get some character out of her, but she continued to be nothing more than Sakura's threatening bodyguard. I think it’s a big missed opportunity to not explore how a noble character like Saber acts when corrupted.

Rider also didn’t entirely meet my expectations, but she got close. I’m glad she had more of a presence and role in this final movie. The last fight she was in made her sick as hell on top of that. But I think she didn’t have a ton of screentime despite having such a big connection to Sakura (compare with Saber and Archer in Unlimited Blade Works). Plus, exploring her thoughts as Sakura got corrupted more would’ve been nice.

In the previous movie I praised Shirou for doing things without a Servant. It was more about him using brains over brawn most of the time. But this time Shirou’s all about brawn, and I don’t think I was a fan. I don’t want to spoil too much, but he certainly feels weirdly overpowered in this one. He was weirdly overpowered come the end of Unlimited Blade Works too, but I think that one felt more earned thanks to the overall plot of the second half.

There are a lot of other moments that either felt inconsistent or felt like they came out of nowhere. However, I don’t want to specifically list them for spoiler reasons. I’d be surprised if I was alone with wondering how some stuff happened (even after reading a synopsis once this review was written).

To be fair, I can’t help but feel that all of these issues I have with the movie don't exist in the visual novel thanks to it having more time to flesh things out. Unfortunately I haven’t read the visual novel, but I cannot shake the idea that watching only the movies doesn’t do this plotline justice.

Granted, as this trilogy went on, I was thinking about just how crazy it was getting. I never expected an “alt path” to diverge so much from the original. It’s impressive that it makes its own story after the first ~20 minutes of Movie 1. I definitely respect that capacity for creativity.

However, I think Unlimited Blade Works is the better story. The characters and events there felt more whole than Heaven’s Feel while also not having Sakura’s confusing motives muddying everything up. I would go so far as to say that, in retrospect, I don’t think I should’ve watched Heaven’s Feel. At the same time, I feel like I’m writing a great visual novel story off here, so maybe one day I’ll try that.

I watched this with a friend who was new to fate. I hated the last two movies, as well as both stay night series, and I knew I was gonna hate this one too, but I was curious how she would take to it. By the end she was so bored and miserable that she just lay on the floor and cried. Luckily I've also watched the fate grand order movies and this wasn't that bad in comparison. The production is nice. Background artists really put the work in.

If I could make a story suggestion: the movie would overall have been much more enjoyable ... if in the opening scene all the characters had suddenly burst into flames and died.

This movie had a fantastic start, continuing from the second film. I liked where the plot was going; I enjoyed the first fight, and it felt hyped, but the moment it got to Emiya fighting Beserker, it really went downhill. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but the new Emiya's theme sounded so bad it sounded like skrillex directed it or something. I couldn't stand it. A real shame because the scene was a great moment, but I couldn't stand the music. Obviously, that's a personal thing, so that is completely subjective. But for me, that was where the film began snowballing downhill. I ... have never cared about Kirei; I've always found him to be an edgy character with very wishy-washy dialogue, but I will admit his fight was great. All the fights in this movie are gorgeous, as usual from ufotable but I found the fights felt really flat, as in the conclusion didn't matter—the opposite of the last movie. Now the biggest clear issue with this movie was its ending, which made no sense and was unsatisfactory, to say the least. Having to watch a completely different franchise to understand the ending is not something that people should just brush over. How on earth was I, who hasn't watched Kara no Kyoukai (or whatever it's called), supposed to understand what happened with Shirou. Also, I had some friends into Fate explain how the ending worked, and it's ridiculous to expect the average viewer to distinguish what happened just through the visuals. I don't enjoy bashing media or saying negative things about anything, but it was a terrible ending to a good movie, which is a shame because it had some great emotional scenes, especially between Rin and Sakura. There is another plot point that really bothers me that I can't talk about because of spoilers, as well as going into more detail on the ending. There is good stuff about this movie, and I know it's a movie that is great fanservice for the visual novel fans, but as an anime-only viewer, it does not hold up and was just disappointing to watch, especially because of how long I've been waiting for the movie to release.

Conclusion:
A mess of an ending, ruining what would have been an amazing conclusion to the series. It's worth watching for the flashy fight scenes and the parts that are good, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who wants a satisfying ending.

DON'T MISUNDERSTAND ME THIS FILM IS GREAT AND I LOVE HOW IT EXPANDS ON THE VISUAL NOVEL IN THE TINIEST DETAILS ---
BUT! <READ MORE>
The entire trilogy is just WAY WAY lacking of content. The entire point of the heaven's feel route is for us to finally stop idealizing the concept of <Hero of Justice> Emiya Shirou was cursed to bear. That he actually deserves to live amongst humans despite being the only one who lived the Great Fire = and to move on from his survivor's guilt. The visual novel is the perfect way to convey this aspect of the plot because in that ... medium you get to spend a huge chunk of your time doing all of the mundane things with Sakura and Illya - the two anchors of normal life Emiya Shirou has (alongside Fuji-nee of course). However, because of time constraints movie have - the trilogy can only fit in as much plot-relevant details as they could so it sacrificed this aspect of the visual novel. It is an understandable and inevitable decision because it is a consequence of medium difference therefore storytelling is different. But it is important for the appreciation of Emiya Shirou as a character. The first film ended with an anxious note of whether Emiya should give up on becoming one and the visual novel actually tackled this aspect of his character far better than the films ever did - it all felt rushed and tucked away to "the development happened behind the scenes". To be fair. the anime still managed to convey well the relationship of Sakura and Shirou which is important to the plot and supplemented their past really well, but it was done so at the expense of Shirou and Illya bonding. IMHO, the entire point of the route was it was Illya and Sakura's route combined - and for Illya, not because she's the love interest, but because she was the only relative Shirou has left. Illyasviel is a major part of what makes Heaven's Feel work as a narrative masterpiece in the visual novel and I just dislike how she didn't feel as important in here as she did in the novel.

That's my complaint.
IF you want me to read the review SOLELY from an anime-only perspective with my filtered thoughts start here !!!

This trilogy managed to convey one of the most dramatically-intriguing part of Fate Stay Night. It did the visual novel justice and the music and animation expanded a lot on the underlying tone the visual novel had and lacked. The masterfully blended music with its striking visuals managed to create a spectacle to the audience without undermining the story as a whole. The only flaw this trilogy has is you have to have knowledge of the previous routes through watching the previous adaptations of Fate Stay Night and if you're only seeing this it's hard to appreciate some aspects of the characters here. The visual novel has always been made to complement the story through its progressive routes which are made to view in order (Fate to UBW to HF). If you're going to watch the trilogy without at least watching UBW, you will not appreciate this film and I think that's the reason it doesn't stand as a good stand alone anime trilogy in my opinion. To compare it to another well-known trilogy - you don't need to watch Bakemonogatari to appreciate Kizumonogatari. I think that sense of independence is what distinguishes a trilogy film from great to masterpiece and if that wasn't here this trilogy films would've been a masterpiece. Overall, these films still hold weight and will remain as one of the most visually-entertaining piece of media from our generation.