Anime has offered many amazing works of psychological and philosophical exploration. The medium is ripe for exploring these themes with the ability of animation to depict the surreal in ways live action cannot. These works demand a certain level of risk, as it's far easier to tell the audience what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear. Heaven's Feel feels like the excited musings of a young fan of this genre that thinks they're ready to join the ranks of the elite but lacks the modesty to understand they have much to learn. It wants to play with the big boys,
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but ultimately risks little. It can't seem to decide on any real focus or theme, but rather throws a half dozen at the screen mistaking quantity for quality. And ultimately, it's an unsatisfying mess of a trilogy
To avoid giving out spoilers, I think the ultimate problem with the Heaven's Feel trilogy it's just too broad in what it's trying to accomplish. If anything, the author (Nasu) seems at his best when he has time to explore singular themes and limited casts to their fullest extent. If you've played the original Fate VN, I think it's safe to say you are aware Nasu is guilty of rambling at times. Heaven's Feel is known to be the result of what was supposed to be two separate stories smashed together into one due to time and budget constraints, and it shows in almost every aspect of the work.
Many have accused the Saber/Shirou romance of being unrealistic, with the author's own writings arguing against the potential of the relationship. If that's the case, the Heaven's Feel trilogy has argued for three movies that the Sakura/Shirou relationship is downright toxic and has led to the near annihilation of the two characters as well as calamitous unintended casualties. And yet, the author seems completely unwilling to admit this, whether he himself doesn't realize it or if editorial mandate from the original work demanded bishounen game fans/shonen anime fans were unable to accept any other ending than the hero gets the heroine. Relationships don't work in reality for a myriad of reasons, even between two genuinely good characters. Most importantly, a relationship built on lies deceit, and surface-level emotional attachment is bound to not end well. It's a lesson the story is begging everyone to understand, yet the author is unwilling to convey, even if it's to the detriment of its two leads. and the end result is catastrophic in a way that is just bizarre. If it wasn't presented so earnestly I'd believe it was satirical
Much like the relationship, the dueling stories of Shirou and Sakura are constantly at odds with one another. They compete for dominance rather than enrich each other. Themes of abuse that have been rightly criticized for being exploitive and over the top at times, though have generally been the most interesting part of the trilogy, are almost abandoned toward the end of the film in favor of more obtuse philosophical ramblings that the author won't ever let breath or create the proper environment to discuss. It's dishonest to create this level of consequence, yet handwave it away in the end due to the ability of the genre to get away with whatever it wants via magic. Meanwhile, Shirou's arc has ceased being interesting at this point. He made his decision in the second movie, and it remains unchallenged throughout the third. Rather, the author just shows the consequence of that decision, never quite realizing this Shirou is barely even a character any more. It's not that he's abandoned his ideal or childhood dream, which is a fantastic theme to explore: it's that he's abandoned his sense of self and redefined himself solely in relation to Sakura. If Fate built up the character and Unlimited Blade Works challenged the character from start to finish, this work simply destroys the character and leaves nothing that can be defined as a person remaining.
Meanwhile, the emotional center of the trilogy has been the relationship between Rin and Sakura, and this part of the film I can say is fantastic. The trilogy at times seems to realize this, moving Shirou to the background to let the adults in the room do the talking. When the trilogy has worked, it has been when it has allowed these two to shine, and it makes one long for what could have been if Shirou had just been the one to go away in the first movie instead of his servant. While I came away not caring much for either of the two leads, I blame this more on the author's insisting everything ultimately be defined through Shirou for the sake of the shonen fan rather than the innate design of Sakura's character.
Then there's the whole weird morality play the trilogy seems to want to explore. This in itself would take a small essay to dissect all the issues with. The problem the author doesn't seem to understand is the moral horizon exists in literature for a reason. You can play around the line, but using the trappings of the fantasy genre to ignore it all together is disingenuous. More to the point, the author doesn't seem to want to allow discussion of this, but rather smother the concerns of audience members unwilling to accept his conclusions. Death of the author exists for a reason. All of this ultimately feels tacked on and has to be ultimately ignored if one is to appreciate anything from the movie.
What shocked me the most, and perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this movie and the entire trilogy is the ultimate pointlessness of Saber Alter. The trilogy turned the moral heart and most popular character in his series into Darth Vader, gave her an amazing introduction with the Berserker fight, and showed Shirou's grief for his former friend and mentor. It was a great setup that makes the audience want to know more about who she is. Instead, Saber remains a disinterested, emotionless zombie that just looks like she doesn't want to be there and can't wait to die. Instead of enriching the original character, Saber's role here just feels exploitive, as if the author can't come up with any other way to make the viewer feel grief than rely on a better-developed character. Most will praise her big fight in this film, and while it is a technical marvel, it's just as emotionally unsatisfying as the most erroneous examples in Hollywood popcorn flicks. Nasu wants to argue this is an evil Saber, but instead of evil it's just a soulless plot device he can't even fit in without downright ignoring on multiple occasions Shirou and co should die to the character. On some level you feel he's trying to express Saber is trying to fight the mind control or whatever he wants to call it she's suffering from, but it's never something fully explored. Simply changing a scene or two would have at least salvaged this.
Saber's ultimate fate feels more like a fallback by the author to pretend he had some level of consequence than anything, but when Saber's conclusion in every Fate route is well-established given the nature of Heroic Spirits, this was a complete waste of time. If I didn't know Alter was in the game originally, I would accuse the author of being unwilling to write the character out because of her popularity. Saber has been dead for two movies. Alter is just the porn version of the character: existing to look cool and exploit and appeal to the base desires of the fandom rather than anything. Considering the amazing character work in another of Nasu's works, KnK, involving the exploration of dueling personalities, I'm just baffled that this came from the same author.
In the end, everything about Heaven's Feel ends up a compromise. Instead of punching home the themes it wants to explore with Sakura, she's shoved aside so we can conclude the entire story of Fate (what many have long-theorized was the cut Illya route). Throughout the three movies, the story has been almost screaming that Shirou is lost in everything going on: his ignorance hurting more than helping, his childish morality being discarded the second it was challenged rather than evolved into something stronger. It wants to be darker and more realistic, and yet of the various Shirou-based Fate routes, it relies on levels of plot armor and logical inconsistencies that the previous two works combined can't create. This Shirou failed to win his own power and failed at every moment of consequence in the first half of the trilogy. To even create a scenario where he can be victorious, the author gives him a devil's bargain: the power of someone else that will cost him his own life. This could have been an interesting idea had it been explored to its fullest, as many have long-criticized the character's suicidal nature. However, in the end the author pulls away from the conclusion demanded the moment he made his choice. Fans will point out there was an in-universe explanation, but of course there was. You can do whatever you want in fantasy works because of fantasy. If the author didn't want the conclusion his story demands, he should have written something else.
The result is instead of giving the anime the ending it needed, we arrive at the ending the fans want: a perfectly happy conclusion where all sacrifice has been ignored, all consequences thrown to the side, and a result that feels more for the audience than the characters. The thickest of plot armor piled on top of plot armor allows for a syrupy sweet ending that comes off bizarrely out of place. And much like the anime itself, it feels like the author isn't ready to take the training wheels off to fully explore the motifs he wants to, resulting in an emotionless, flat work that relies on pity instead of earnest grief and requires two previous works to create empathy for much of what is going on.
Oct 17, 2020
Anime has offered many amazing works of psychological and philosophical exploration. The medium is ripe for exploring these themes with the ability of animation to depict the surreal in ways live action cannot. These works demand a certain level of risk, as it's far easier to tell the audience what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear. Heaven's Feel feels like the excited musings of a young fan of this genre that thinks they're ready to join the ranks of the elite but lacks the modesty to understand they have much to learn. It wants to play with the big boys,
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