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

Unlimited Budget Works Fate/Stay Night Heaven’s Feel is undeniably the most sinister and desecrated masterpiece amongst all three routes. The female lead, Sakura being an oppressed and defiled character subjected to torture since young. It’s no surprise that she begins to reject the one cause of her pain and torture. The world as she knows it.Under the harsh treatment of the Matous, subjected to misfeasance by an incapable and jealous ‘brother’. Defilement by a nonbiological Grandfather even to the extent of losing her virginity to his horrendous insects. Not to mention the disownment by her own biological Father and also being allegedly forsaken by her only biological Sister.

She developed another ‘personality’ one that brings a different perspective of how she will perceive things.

A personality driven by corruption, greed and revenge.

A dark side we call, Dark Sakura.

Lost Butterfly did an exceptional job clearing up majority of the questions viewers potentially had in Presage Flower. For the most part, the adaptation was flawless in its own way.

The reason why this is my favourite route despite best girl being Rin is because Heaven’s Feel is the most well-developed and original route. The other two routes can be depicted as being mainstream featuring ideal heroines and petty squabbles whereas Heaven’s Feel took the explicit and vulgar dark route which not many other anime had.

lost butterfly was seemingly flawless being well-paced and well-explained if not this then what can I call a masterpiece.

So far, in my opinion 「presage flower」was to remove any outliers, remove the extras from the scene as well as lay out the bedding for Heaven’s Feel. What「lost butterfly」did was clear out the creases on the bed made by 「presage flower」and introducing new loose folds on the bed. By answering majority of the questions, 「lost butterfly」also removed more characters again indirectly introducing new ones thereby creating bigger problems for our main characters.

The amount of creativity used in depicting as well as explaining in words and animation was crème de la crème. For example the red and black thing known as ‘Imaginary Space’ in presage flower revealed to be Sakura’s dark side and to show that Sakura is beginning to turn into it, we see her shadow flickering red.

Also, there was a particular scene where she was dreaming and appeared in a ‘fantasy world’ where there were cute animals playing around and she smacked the animals which were being naughty causing them to go poof and drop candy. She then unwraps the candy and immediately the next scene depicts her holding a human organ and her dress covered in blood.

That brought us the understanding that Sakura is unconsciously murdering everyone, bringing her a step closer to Dark Sakura.

The fight scenes were vividly displayed and did not disappoint. With the vast array of visual effects and flashing colours you’d think it to be no surprise considering the ‘Unlimited Budget’.

Much like presage flower there was only one major fight throughout the whole anime with the rest of the fights being short and not as epic. Saber Alter VS Heracles was extremely awesome to watch and hell was it epic!

I can’t deny how good everyone looked and the colours used in the explosive battle, exquisite.

The gore was as well, very well done and the eroge scene was also portrayed unlike the other two routes.

Sakura’s malicious side showed her masturbating and wanting to have sex with Shirou desperately as well as showing a Yandere side and getting overprotective when seeing Rin with Shirou. She’s not your typical nice shy girl alright.

Sakura rejects her malicious side as much as possible until one day for a certain reason, she breaks.

Ufotable animated Heaven’s Feel to utmost perfection and far exceeded my expectations.

Unlike the other two routes, Heaven’s Feel goes deep into the supposed ‘sideline characters’ that play much bigger roles here, such is like Illya, Zouken, even the fucker Shinji.

Still, with more characters to focus on, the story didn’t dilly-dally and everything happened |fast| but was still depicted at a great pace.

Not so unexpectedly, certain characters also had lesser screen time compared to the other two routes such as Gilgamesh whom got destroyed but, he’ll definitely come in handy next movie or I’ll rage and cry in a corner.

Another thing I’m happy about is Illya, as much as it seems like it’s not, Illya is actually my most favourite legal loli in the whole of anime and she was so kawaii here. With her murderous intent towards Shirou gone she finally acted like a real sister. Big Sister or not, that’s a different matter but seeing her pat Shirou on her head really warmed me up.

Illya lost Berserker as well, this time not to Gilgamesh ofc. But Illya didn’t get killed this time and she doesn’t have to rely completely on Heracles as a Friend and for support since here, she has Shirou which made it extremely pleasing to watch.

Another particular scene I loved, no matter small would be when Illya overheard Taiga talking to Sakura and mentioning Kiritsugu saying that he kept flying overseas to look for/protect someone he treasured other than Shirou. That is of course Illya. Illya’s first objective was to participate in the Holy Grail War to kill Kiritsugu because she thought he had ditched her, that small scene made it extremely heart warming to watch as Illya now knows Kiritsugu does in fact love her.

The awesome sound effects and the perfect voice acting of our favourite voice actors also played a big part in perfection.

Personally, I’d like to give a big kudos to Noriko Shitaya, Sakura’s voice actor for her amazing ASMR voice acting, the other voice actors also did a great job so a big thumbs up for them too!

Sakura rarely appeared in the other two routes, the other two routes featured a lot of Rin and a lot of Saber since Saber didn’t die in UBW and Rin was in an alliance in Fate route, there was never a need to show the shy girl so we rarely get to hear her talk or even understand how horrible her lifestyle is.

Aimer’s ending, 【I Beg You】was very nice too but I liked 【Hana no Uta】more but that’s just personal preferences in music.

Finally, apparently everyone was laughing at Shinji being pathetic, nothing new but what particularly got to majority of us audience was the sex. Yes, we never expected sex I mean I did tell a bunch of my friends that there might be a proper eroge adaptation but I always got shot down and I began to believe there wouldn’t be one after watching presage flower.

Guess I believed to soon. But either way, the sex made the development of Sakura’s dark side grow and get more interesting alongside developing Shirou and her relationship together. I really felt this was true love since Shirou really kept accepting her. He even gave up on his ideals as a Hero for her, that really got to me. The scene where he couldn’t bare to kill Sakura, that was when he abandoned his ideals for her. Sakura herself also relied on Shirou to prevent corruption, to fight against it, using Shirou as a reason to be good and to not take revenge. That’s how couples should be, relying on one another, I know the other routes had similar context of relying on each other but this was taken to a new level compared to the other two routes.

I still don’t get why everyone was laughing when they saw sex I mean, the first ecchi scene where Sakura was licking Shirou’s finger, I laughed because that was kinda erotic and I didn’t expect eroticism but afterwards when Sakura couldn’t control her desire and masturbates, I don’t get what’s so funny anymore. In fact it just shows how her malicious intents were hidden behind a soft spoken and cute personality.

Either ways, well done ufotable and Type Moon

Now we wait for Dark Sakura’s proper appearance in 『Fate/Stay Night Heaven’s Feel III. spring song』

This review was written on 04-09-19 and may be outdated. I may have changed my rating due to various reasons.