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

Note: The following will be very spoilery in the scope of this movie only. Let me get the good parts out of the way; overall as a package, I give this movie a 9/10. It definitely does the visual novel justice with bombastic action, great line deliveries and intense pacing. I welcomed the new changes to the plot, like the part where we get to see Sakura's POV where she gobbled up humans in Wonderland. However, I strongly feel you're doing yourself a disservice by not reading the visual novel: -The pacing of the movie was too fast. Understandably, there's a lot of material to cover in the spanof 2hrs, but this resulted in strong plot points being overlooked. For example, the first time Shirou and Sakura had sex, it was incredibly passionate and steamy, but subsequent intercourses got increasingly eerie as he'd have more visions of the Grail's shadow sucking his energy that juxtapose with the hot sex.

-And on that note, the movie quickly revealed Sakura as the shadow responsible for devouring people in Fuyuki, while the visual novel had the readers guessing because Sakura would vividly dream about eating humans, but would always wake up in bed as if nothing truly happened; It wasn't until Gilgamesh showed up and shred her in the alley that we realize Sakura was actually sleep walking in the city.

-As mentioned by other reviewers, we don't get to hear Shirou's inner monologues. It resulted in him appearing shallow or confusing at times, such as when he asked himself "Are you going to betray?", which alluded to whether he was going to betray his ideals as a hero of justice. The audience will never truly understand his heart ache when he pointed that knife at Sakura after he had previously resolved to protect her from Rin after Kirei revealed the worm crest embedded in her body will eventually drive her mad.

-I really disliked how they made a joke of Shirou losing his arm by jump cutting to a scene where he stands at the entrance and nonchalantly explains to Sakura he got into a scrap with the enemy. In the visual novel, this was an incredibly low point in the story, because not only does he have no servant, but now one of his arm is useless. He no longer has the means to fight, yet I did not feel a sense of helplessness like I did with the first movie when he lost Saber. This contributes to the last problem:

-The movie lacked a sense of urgency. I felt this was due to the amount of crazy stuff happening; Sakura is a master, Rider stone gazes everyone, Sakura impales herself and Shiro in an outburst, Saber Alter kills Heracles, Archer dies, Sakura is revealed to be the culprit behind the black shadow, Gilgamesh gets eaten, Shirou attempts to murder Sakura, Shinji reveals he had repeatedly raped Sakura and gets rekt, and Sakura merges with the shadow. There are so many shocking events to digest in 2hrs! But again, it's the fault of the medium and that's why I recommend people read the VN!