I just saw this in theaters, and never before has an anime left me feeling so unbelievably blue balled. I’ll preface this with that there are spoilers that aren’t marked, so don’t read if you’d like to be spoiler free.
I’ll start out with this movie’s strongest point: the animation. Never in my life have I seen animation, fights, just everything with such a jaw-dropping quality. I will never forget the battle between Black Saber, Rider, and Shirou. Each slash, the choreography, Rider’s triumphant horse charge, it was amazing from start to finish. My mere words cannot do justice to how beautiful this movie is. To see it in a theater experience is something that will never leave me, it is easily the best animated work I’ve seen at the time of this writing.
It’s not even that fight specifically either, each and every moment of this movie is eye candy so sweet it will make you pass out in a proverbial sugar coma. Really, it’s worth watching it just for the visuals alone. So why did I negatively preface this review saying I got blue balled? Let’s get into it.
Going from the previous movies, we’re all here to see how Sakura ended up as this dark figure draped in shadow, we’re all here to see what happened to Saber, and most of all, we’re all here to see how it wraps up.
Picture this: it’s the last 10 minutes of the movie. We just saw that amazingly animated fight I mentioned above and in a last moment of clarity, Saber returns to herself before blissfully dying. Rin and Sakura duked it out and then embraced in a way that pulled my heart strings more than anything else in this series. Longfinger Kirk Shirou just resoundingly pummeled Kotomie in a way that crushed everything he stood for, so now what? There’s still the task of taking care of an evil fetus, a supposed “eighth servant” that is supposedly the purest concentration of evil to ever grace the face of the Earth, but Shirou’s a bit messed up. What’s going to happen next?
At this point, Shirou literally has swords coming out everywhere all over his body (a mechanic not well explained either) and looks pretty close to death himself. To seemingly save Shirou, Illyasviel comes out of nowhere draped in white, looking exactly like the angelic Einzbern founding member seen earlier in the movie, and next all we see is a bright column of white and the eighth servant disintegrating. I don’t know about you, but I was on the edge of my seat. I was unbelievably excited to see what happens next, but the last ten minutes just drop the ball so hard it made my heart just sink equally low in my chest.
We are then greeted by Sakura and Rin being siblings together and growing up, making up for all the lost time during their 11-year separation. They then walk around and gradually grow older as they do until they open a crate with a manikin inside, and get this, this manikin eventually becomes Shirou. That’s it, that’s the ending. Shirou died and he’s just a fucking manikin love doll for Sakura. We see over 8 hours of beautiful movies, fantastic artwork, and the most enthralling fights to have ever been witnessed by my eyes, and the end result? Shirou’s a fucking manikin. No loving family moment, we don’t see Shirou become Archer, and Rin is just…doing something? I see Shirou and Sakura hold hands, waiting to see some kind of explanation, some resolution, but no, that’s it. I waited five minutes watching the credits roll, desperately hoping to see some kind of post-credits epilogue, but no, there’s nothing. The lights come on, everyone starts to shuffle out of the theater, and I am left stunned. I have never felt more blue balled by an anime ever before in my life. I was on a roller coaster, the incline started, I heard the click click click as I slowly went up the incline, I just reached the summit, I braced for the dramatic fall down, but then the roller coaster just ends. No loops, no anything, just incline…and then it’s over. That’s what this movie is.
There was so much wrong with Unlimited Blade Works that Heaven’s Feel did right that I could write a full review on it. There’s no annoyingly overpowered Gilgamesh wielding an instant-death stick, the serial rapist Shinji isn’t saved (not to mention that Shinji who raped Sakura for a whole decade is pictured holding hands with Sakura at the end of UBW), and Sakura, the girl who was staying with Shirou for years making him meals, isn’t just suddenly out of the picture. But you know what? UBW honestly has a better ending than Heaven’s Feel. To put it simply, Heaven’s Feel has the best journey, but the worst destination, and UBW has the worst journey, but the best destination. The ending of UBW completely wraps of everything, I was left disappointed by it, but it was a semi-well written and complete ending. But Heaven’s Feel? You are left with nothing but questions at the end and you’ll never get resolution unless you read the light novels or whatever else has the original story for this. I came to Heaven’s Feel to get an ending more satisfying, and I left feeling that Fate/Stay Night is a fundamentally flawed work. Both versions have unexplained mechanics, both versions have an ending where one is left disappointed in some regard, and both versions just off characters with no explanation.
My advice? Only watch Fate/Zero. I cannot think of a single legitimate flaw with Fate/Zero, it has amazing writing from start to finish.
You see:
The list goes on, Fate/Zero is just that good.
Ultimately, Fate Stay/Night is a fundamentally flawed work seemingly limited in scope by its source material. There’s no other reason I can think of for the writing quality between Zero and Stay/Night being as painfully apparent as it is. Should you watch this movie? Sure, the visuals alone are worth it, but if you care about plot resolution and quality writing, prepare to be given balls a darker shade of blue than possibly imaginable.
Disagree with me? See that I misunderstood something? Don't hesitate to let me know, I would love to be wrong about this work.
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