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An immediate note before I get into anything else: yes, goons and this franchise have a very very odd relationship, and I totally get why. Fate, as a franchise, has a habit of throwing up almost hilarious amounts of red flags that make pretty much anyone who's not extremely anime-tolerant run screaming from it, and this is frankly one of the parts of the franchise that's going to sound the worst on paper. However, the wide bulk of those red flags either end up being much smaller issues than they would appear at first glance, or simply get handled a thousand times better than anime in general has any right to, and these movies are very much in the latter of those two categories. I'm asking for a little trust here and really hoping I receive it and don't get threadshat into oblivion; if you don't like the franchise, that's fine, but don't be a dick about it. Also, you can't really talk about these movies without a preemptive trigger warning for sexual violence, similarly to Belladonna of Sadness. They're not anywhere near as unbelievably  as that movie and handle the subject in a way that comes off as much more respectful to 2019 eyes, but if discussion of sexual violence is a trigger for you, maaaaaaybe turn back now. Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel is an animated movie trilogy adapting the third and final route of the original Fate/stay night visual novel (essentially a video game that plays out like a book with music and background images, for those unaware- Phoenix Wright or 999/Virtue's Last Reward would probably be the most well-known examples in the west). In a nutshell, the premise of Fate/stay night is that, underneath the surface of typical human society, there's a bunch of old-money wizard families that get together every couple generations to summon figures from ancient history and mythology and kick the poo poo out of each other Battle Royale-style, with the prize at the end being the Holy Grail (yes, that Holy Grail). Heaven's Feel, specifically, is about all the above going way the gently caress off the rails. It's a story about one participant in the Holy Grail War, a teenage girl named Sakura (pictured), being a victim of some of the most horrifying abuse (sexual, physical, and otherwise) ever put on a page or screen, slowly building up a meager support network, and then that support network doing everything they can to try and help her out of her hosed up situation once they find out. It's an absolutely heart-wrenchingly empathetic depiction of just how badly a life of constant abuse can gently caress someone up, one of the most so I have ever seen, and it feels genuinely important in a way that anime rarely does and this franchise in particular almost never does. It's also the one time I've ever seen a story that deals with this kind of subject matter also include a heavy romantic element, and I actually didn't hate it. While a very, very large proportion of Sakura's support network is made up of the male protagonist, Shirou, he's practically a model of non-toxic masculinity. His job in their relationship isn't "go beat up the abusers," and in fact it's made very explicit that he literally cannot physically hurt one of them and that the other just gets emboldened by it. His job is to be a supportive, caring partner, and constantly affirm Sakura's worth to her in the face of her absolutely horrible self-esteem, and validate her as her own person with agency; it's this that ends up giving Sakura the power to actually try and unfuck things herself. The most obvious cinematic touchpoint I can think of for these is Joker, and in fact I was reminded pretty heavily of it while watching them. Much like Joker, these movies are about the slow deterioration of an innocent person who is going through hosed up poo poo, and their eventual lashing out against what they perceive to be the source of the issue; the biggest key difference is that, unlike Arthur Fleck, there's a genuine light at the end of Sakura Matou's tunnel, and people who genuinely care about her and want things to be better for her. Also much like Joker, these movies use the trappings and characters of a franchise that could otherwise best be characterized as "dumb fun" to tell a genuinely serious and important story, and do so incredibly well. The craft of these movies is also very, very noteworthy; ufotable, the animation studio behind these movies, has been lowkey establishing themselves as one of the best studios in the entire industry, and these movies are beyond gorgeous. Similarly, Yuki Kaijura was already pretty established as one of the best composers ever to score an anime, and she's been particularly on fire with these movies. Frankly, even if these weren't so impressive from a writing perspective, the visuals and score alone would justify me trying to get these in front of more film-nerd eyes. Isn't this that anime franchise that has like a billion entries and it's practically a meme that nobody knows where to start with it? Yep. You probably don't want to watch these unless you have some familiarity with Fate/zero and you've seen at least the first couple episodes of Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works. In the former case, these movies are essentially the payoff to a story arc that gets set up in Zero and never resolved within that series (though, as a fair warning, Sakura's situation is handled in a somewhat less sensitive manner by that series), and in the latter case, there's some overlapping story material that just kind of gets skipped over and relegated to the opening credits under the assumption that the viewer's already seen it. That said, they're both on Netflix, so if you have a subscription to that, you lose nothing but time by checking them out. They're heavier on the dumb fun than this movie trilogy's serious exploration of the psychological effects of sexual violence, but they're very heavy on the dumb fun, and Zero in particular is basically two episodes of slow setup followed by 22 of  (and while Unlimited Blade Works is a little slower to get to the fireworks factory, god drat, what a fireworks factory).Where can I actually watch these? The first two movies, presage flower and lost butterfly, are currently available from Rightstuf (or your preferred online retailer) for... more money than they should be ($40 for the standard-edition blu-rays). They're more or less guaranteed to end up on Netflix at some point (Netflix actually already has a blurb for presage flower), but nobody knows for sure when that'll be, so you're probably best off either getting the blu-rays if you have that kind of money to burn, or resorting to other means I probably shouldn't discuss here (they're not overly hard to find on places that deal with such matters). The third movie, spring song, comes out March 28 in Japan, with subtitled American showings most likely following in April-May and the dub most likely coming around November-December (if the first two are anything to go by). spring song is, frankly, 95% of why I made this thread, because I already have a pretty solid idea of what I'm getting out of it, and if it lives up to any of that it's going to be pretty easily my favorite movie of this year. If you recall how I said there's a light at the end of Sakura's tunnel, spring song is going to be two solid loving hours of that light, including animated versions of two of the most absolutely  things I have ever read in my life (though if I try to explain either of them without context, they're going to frankly sound more like weird shitposts than things that actually happen in a movie).So, yeah. If you have any kind of tolerance for anime, go brush up on Fate/zero and Unlimited Blade Works as much as you feel you need to, and then dive into these movies, because holy loving poo poo, these movies. These have been getting seriously, seriously slept on by the film community, and they really shouldn't be, because it's not super often that something this good comes out of Japan; I'd be pretty inclined to call these the best adult-targeted anime movies since Akira, and when you remove "adult-targeted" from that, they're pretty much only matched by Ghibli's work. It's genuinely sad that these movies have more or less failed to get any attention in the West beyond hardcore Fate fans, and I want to change that, because they deserve it; ufotable is putting way, way too much effort and craft into these for them to only reach a tiny, and generally kind of lovely, audience.
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Jan 8, 2020 07:01
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It’s saw the first one without any knowledge of Fate, and the second in theatres after brushing up on Zero and UBW anime. The animation is the main selling point but there’s also a cool atmosphere to the grail war even though the rapid advancement of the main characters powers seems a bit ridiculous compared to the characters in Zero who had trained their whole lives for this conflict (and if they hadn’t, hid behind their Servants.) I was planning on seeing the third in cinemas but with the current quarantine who knows when it’ll actually be released.
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Mar 30, 2020 04:39
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Ccs posted:It’s saw the first one without any knowledge of Fate, and the second in theatres after brushing up on Zero and UBW anime. The animation is the main selling point but there’s also a cool atmosphere to the grail war even though the rapid advancement of the main characters powers seems a bit ridiculous compared to the characters in Zero who had trained their whole lives for this conflict (and if they hadn’t, hid behind their Servants.) To be fair, out of the three main human characters in this, Rin has been training her whole life for this, Shirou hasn't and is consequently pretty useless at anything except "hit things with a pipe" until a certain thing in movie 2 happens, and Sakura... is complicated. Currently, movie 3 is scheduled to come out in Japan on April 25, with new USA dates still to be announced (probably not any time soon). e: also, count me as fairly surprised this thread got necro'd.
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Mar 30, 2020 05:29
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