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

Fate/Stay Night: Heaven's Feel - Lost Butterfly is the second of a trio of movies that takes place in the Heaven's Feel timeline. I'll assume you've seen the first movie for the purposes of this review. Story: This second movie takes place right after the first, and already we're dealing with a Holy Grail War that is very quickly ramping up so much that it feels like it's going out of control. After I mentioned in my review of the first movie that it feels like they were introducing us to this war, I can safely say that this takes very little time inthrowing us right into the thick of things. Many servants are already gone and instead of giving us more content on more servants, this movie focuses on a pretty small cast. This, of course, includes Sakura, who we now see why she is the focus of this path. She goes through a lot in this movie and not all of it is super clear. Luckily, they keep explanations pretty brief and instead, we are exposed to either character interactions, or battles, both of which were well done here.

That being said, they try and get really fancy with everything revolving this mysterious shadow figure and, like I previous said, explanations are brief. At this point, you kind of have to trust that Part 3 is going to reveal all your answers. I welcome it for now, but I'll be disappointed if the next movie doesn't explain some of these things to us.

One thing that feels weird is that with how powerful the servants are, you kind of wonder how many angles the story can go when the series seems pretty content in putting them out of commission so early. We've already seen servants like Caster and Lancer kick the bucket in the first movie so I almost feel like they might be backing themselves in a bit of a corner here. We've seen different series bring out the "OP thing that only appears at the end" card too often and if that happens after the next movie, I feel like I might be disappointed.

With only one movie left, I really liked the direction this movie decided to go. There are plenty of fights, the show never felt like it dragged too much and there's enough here that we want to see how it ends. The character interactions are still good, even though I question what they do with so few characters and the dark, dark nature that this movie quickly turns into is easily my favourite setting in any Fate series yet. (8/10)

Characters: As previous mentioned, Sakura is the main star of this movie and she has to deal with a lot. After being somewhat irrelevant in the first movie, I'm not sure what more they can pile on her. She's obviously not a character that audiences would flock to as a favourite character and she struggles with what's happens to her during almost the entirety of the movie. So much so that the movie does push you to feel sorry for her and I think they did that really effectively. One thing anime tends to do is portray them as weak, but they thankfully keep that to a minimum. Shiro, in contrast, is still the same guy we saw in the first movie and he's mostly fine. My one complaint is that I feel like they're focusing a little too heavily on him. His time to shine was in Unlimited Blade Works and if the next movie focuses on that same stream, I'll be very disappointed.

Illya and Kirei were also featured a bit with an elevated role here, but after a certain time, I kind of wonder why they're still in the story. Neither inspired me much and it doesn't feel like they added much after a certain point. However, Shinji feels like a character that we could have done without aside roughly the 3/4 mark of the movie. We know who he is, he's annoying and he was mostly the same as in the first movie. You can only handle so much of that.

Fate has a history of bringing us fascinating characters - be it servants or their masters - and I'm glad they live up to that. They change up some of the servants powers a touch from Unlimited Blade Works and those differences make the watching experience feel fresh. The whole feel of the series does make you uneasy and there were times when I was thinking to myself "this moment feels off". It's a credit to both the story writing and characters. (9/10)

Art: ufotable is awesome and that's still present here. If there's one spot I'm going to poke holes it, it's with Berserker's fight. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I feel like they got a little lax with the animation in that fight. It almost feels like the final Lancer of Red Battle in Apocrypha. Lots of textures of the same with a few static moments. Now, it wasn't nearly that level of "bad", but it's a little disappointing for such an awesome fight. (9/10)

Sound: Sound is solid throughout, in terms of the music, and VO work. Cristina Vee (Sakura) was really strong here, something I don't say too often when she's using her voice at that tone. However, I can't really point to anything and say it was poor here. (9/10)

Overall Enjoyment: You can kind of wager a guess at where they're going with the story, but I'm very interested at what surprises they might be able to bring us. This is a really strong step after the setup in the first movie and I love the darker tone of it all. (8/10)