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

I am awestruck at how beautiful this movie is. Taking inspiration from the detailed background art of Makoto Shinkai, the character shading of anime OVA’s from the 80’s and 90’s as well as putting a hefty budget behind studio Ufotable's signature style, has created one of the most ethereal and modern aesthetic anime. The highlight of the entire film is how it designs the plant life in the backgrounds. Keep in mind that plants and nature are in no way themes or plot important to the movies story or even setting, it does after all take place in an urban Japanese city, albeit a small one.Whenever trees or bushes appear on the screen I squee at the mastery of color and shading. The greens and spots of oranges complement the dark, dingy, and man made surfaces that fill the rest of the frame. The film's best scene is when Zouken and Emiya are having a serious discussion, not because of the content of the conversation, but because it takes place in a beautiful exotic greenhouse.

Perhaps I’m jumping the gun, but the TL;DR version of this review is watch Lost Butterfly for the plant art if nothing else.

I have not played the original visual novel, and in fact I have the pleasure of being unspoiled as to how this particular fate route ending goes. Because of this, this review will mostly be based on this movie as a movie and not as an adaptation.

The sad thing about anime today, as well as most mainstream media like the marvel franchise, is that cinematography is nearly nonexistent. Rarely are big budget productions incompetent in this regard, but it’s rarer for them to excel. Lost Butterfly, like the previous film, Presage Flower, uses the power of camera angles, closeups, wide angle shots, panning cameras, and every tool in the trade to communicate the films tone. Fear, anxiety, even dread; this is what the film communicates through its cinematography, and I applaud Sudou Tomonari for putting in the effort to make the film stand out in a way that is sadly uncommon

I already mentioned the plants, but the rest of the art is good as well. Ufotable is well known for their use of incorporating cgi and digital art into their work, and they spare no expense here, giving everything from the slick streets in the rain, the rusty metal gates on doors, and the individual bricks in walls a look that is so detailed that it’s better than realism. As I also already mentioned, the shading on the characters is excellent. Not only are multiple levels of shading and reflection shown in some areas, but the shading even has hues of blue to it that give the characters a vaguely impressionistic feel to them. Its not strong but it is there. It’s nice to see that this style of anime character design isn’t completely lost to us in a world where the OVA has essentially gone extinct.

This is all important because this film, like the rest of the series, has made the very specific, and in my opinion smart, decision to focus on adapting the mood of the story rather than the plot. From what I understand, there's about 40 hours of plot and exposition that these movies are meant to cover. That means that there should be scenes flying by at the speed of light, with paragraphs of lore and backstory being heaped onto you. Lost Butterfly cuts all of that out, reducing the story line to its barest minimum, and it even adds in a few anime original scenes. What it's staying true to is the tone, and in my opinion this is the best form of loyal adaptation. Plot is irrelevant, what makes you FEEL is still here. This and the original deen adaptation is what I feel is the closest to the original tone of quiet and fearful that Fate/stay night is meant to be. Unlimited blade works, while excellent, never achieved that mood, and you can forget all of the Fate spin offs, they don't even try.

This is compounded by the fact that this is also probably the most willing adaptation to delve into Fate’s darker themes, except perhaps Fate/Zero. Rape, domestic abuse, victim complexes, and PTSD are all major themes at work here. Not to mention, they FINALLY actually added a sex scene! This must be the fiftieth Fate anime and only now is Emiya actually banging the girl like he does in the original novel. I don’t get why all of the others didn’t do this. I get they don’t want to be pornographic like in the game, but you can at least imply that it happens! You have to respect the film for this addition if nothing else.

I truly hope the anime industry takes note of how Lost Butterfly excels compared to most mainstream anime, and incorporates it into other projects. We need more big budget beauties like this and less dividing the budget into a dozen half baked productions. Please see this movie to send that message.