End of an Era - Fate/Stay Night Heaven's Feel Trilogy Review

 

Fate/Stay Night Heaven's Feel Trilogy Review

One liner: Possibly one of the best film trilogy to be released in recent memory - a classic in the making.

By this point, the fact that Fate has a gazillion different adaptations and is probably one of the hardest franchises to get into has become a meme. I am not even going to attempt to explain the Fate series timeline, because frankly, even though I have been there since the beginning, even I don't know which world each series begin and which timeline each series ends. 

But let's start from the beginning - once there was a visual novel. An incredibly ambitious 100+ hours long visual novel that told the same story - but in three different ways, focusing on three different heroines. The three 'routes' - 'Fate', 'Unlimited Blade Works' and 'Heaven's Feel' - make up the main timeline of the Fate series. And that is the core of Fate - everything else is just extra.

But this is not a post about deciphering what the convoluted conglomeration known as Fate is - this is a review about one of the best anime trilogy that has been released in recent memory. So let's begin.

Heaven's Feel has been adapted into a film trilogy, titled 'presage flower', 'lost butterfly' and 'spring song' respectively. In this review, I will review the trilogy as a whole. In this review, I will attempt to omit all spoilers, however there may be minor spoilers involved.

Art and Animation

The studio responsible for majority of the Fate series - ufotable - has been known to create visually stunning masterpieces. Their Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night [UBW] production was already heads and shoulders above any of the competition, and despite being almost a decade old, remains the industry standard that has yet to be surpassed - earning them the title 'Unlimited Budget Works'. With a increased budget for a full movie production, ufotable has really outdone itself. The art and animation is immaculately beautiful and absolutely glorious. There are insufficient adjectives in English to describe the sheer beauty of the animation. Suffice it to say that it is the best looking work the industry has to offer - at least until their next production.

Plot

Considering it is an adaptation of the Heaven's Feel's route from the original visual novel, I would say that while it is mostly faithful to the original visual novel, it completely missed a couple of essential story beats. Although it is inevitable that they would to shave some elements off the narrative, some of the things they cut was central to the narrative. Some of the best scenes of the visual novel emanated from Shirou's monologue and his state of mind, as well as the explanations for some of the weapons and abilities - and while those are hard to animate - there is no excuse for omitting those things completely. Many of the scenes that were epic in the visual novel felt very lacking in comparison in the movie.

That said, the additions that they made - the movements, sparks and attack animations - more than made up for the shortfall in some of the scenes. And while non-visual novel readers may have absolutely no idea what was happening on screen, they would appreciate the pretty lights that blossomed on the screen, especially during the fight scenes.

Sound/Music

The movie trilogy hit it out of the park. Aimer's three theme songs for the three movies are perfectly fitting and are simply a joy to listen to. The music, directed by Yuki Kaijura, is epic and fits every scene impeccably. I have absolutely no complaints.

Verdict: 9/10 

DEFINITELY WATCH IT.

If you consider yourself, even by the slimmest of definitions, to enjoy anime at any level, you owe it to yourself to watch this movie trilogy.

Bokuten Review - The Fallacy of Love

Bokuten - Why I Became an Angel

Alternative Titles: Boku ga Tenshi ni Natta Wake

Rating: 7/10 (Good)

One-liner: Melancholy, served on a bed of despair and sadness, garnished with depression with a side of sorrow - and maybe, just maybe a tinge of salvation in between.

HOT

• Different from the deluge of sappy, happy and saccharine school-life VNs.
• A powerfully emotional final route.
• Realistic depiction of love and the potential pitfalls of love.

NOT

• Romantic development is just subpar.
• There are heavy themes that are uncomfortable to read.
• Too many characters.

Synopsis:

Kirinokojima Tomoe suffered a devastating event that obliterated his psyche, making him into a jaded, oblivious person who eschews the concept of love, and of happiness. He lives his life aimlessly, rejecting human interaction and continually torturing himself with the memory of his past.

Then he meets an angel, Aine, whose entire purpose is to fill the world with love and happiness - a purpose that is the ultimate antithesis of Tomoe's lifestyle. Tomoe is unwillingly roped in into acting as the angel's proxy, forced to intervene in the romantic lives of others.

And thus the journey begins. A journey to find the meaning of love. A journey to recover what he lost. A journey to discover the meaning of living on.

Review:

Let's get this out of the way: Don't expect happy endings. There are no happy endings in this game. All the endings, save for the true ending, are bittersweet at best. There is no Deus Ex Machina where everybody finds happiness, and no silver bullet that solves all the problems the characters are facing. There is only one ending which I would consider a 'bad' ending, but none of the endings are completely happy.

Now, if I haven't turned you off with the first paragraph, let's continue. 

Even with all the sadness and depression, Bokuten is worth playing. It offers - dare I say it - a more realistic view on love. Love is often accompanied by heartbreak, and more often that not, first loves seldom succeed. Yet, because it doesn't succeed, do people stop seeking love?  

Bokuten consists of six chapters, each focusing on a relationship between a couple. Obviously there are problems between the couple, ranging from as simple as being unable to confess one's feelings to choosing between your dreams or your relationship (and one simply ridiculous one of being too sexually frustrated for your partner to pleasure you - I wish I was making that up). Some stories are quite interesting, but some stories might seriously be hard to read - either because the content is dark and disturbing or you don't care for the characters or their problems. And when they tie back to the main group of friends and Tomoe, you finally get a choice, and suffice it to say, the choices you make in this VN aren't easy. 

The choices you make also determines which girl you get in a relationship with. The three initial heroines are the air-headed senpai Yuri, the tsundere secret-idol-but-geek-in-school Minamo, the genki osananajimi (childhood friend) Naruko. Once you complete these 3 routes, you unlock the final true route that features the titular love-obsessed angel, Aine. The final true ending is not a perfect happy ending, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on whether you think a happy ending would cheapen the experience), but it is powerfully emotional and provides a glimmer of hope after all is said and done.

The recommended route order is

Minamo/Yuri --> Naruko --> Aine (true)

If you are tired of the same old sappy, unrealistic and diabetes-inducing stories of other school-life VNs, this is the VN for you. If you can't stand depressing stories and need emotional cartharsis in all your VNs (no judging here - we all need a palate cleanser that's just happy and fluffy once in a while), you might want to give this a hard pass. 

Verdict: PLAY IT

Reinventing the Wheel - Totono

Review of You and Me and Her (Totono)

Alternative Titles:
Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi
lit. The Love of You and Girlfriend and Girlfriend

Rating: 9/10 (Excellent)
One-liner: Possibly one of the most meta VNs in existence

Synopsis:

Shinichi is a regular high-school student with a bit of an inferiority complex. He is childhood friends with Miyuki, the school's idol, but wants to keep a low profile so as to not attract too much attention. Miyuki, on her part, 'not-so-secretly' harbours feelings for him.

He also meets a strange, pink-haired girl named Aoi on the roof. They become friends, and he tries to make her more normal because she seems completely out-of-touch with reality. Miyuki eventually gets roped in and they become a trio.

And then it all comes crashing down.

Review:

This will be a bit of a different review, because you must go into this blind. Suffice to to say that this game blew apart every other VN I have ever played out of the water. The story isn't amazing per se, but what this VN set out to do is simply unmatched in anything else I have ever seen in this medium.

There are two heroines in the game, as shown in the cover, and you only get to choose one. I mean it. There are no do-overs.

That's really all I can share, because doing anything else would be spoiling the game, and I really don't want to do that because this game deserves every person who is remotely interested in VNs to try out. Try not to use a walkthrough unless you're really stuck, and after you past that point, close it down and resist the urge to touch it again.

Verdict: PLAY IT

P. S. Try not to get too attached to the save function.

VN Vistas 01: Why you should read visual novels

Some of the best anime comes from popular source material - mangas, light novels, video games among others. That makes sense. If there is a market for these genres, it makes commercial sense to make it more mainstream, in order to target newer audiences and fall back on established audiences in the event that it does not prove a popular as believed.

Anime, by definition, is given a far greater toolset to craft its narrative; it has the advantages of colour, sound and movement, just to name a few, to bring the beloved characters from the source material to life. It seems like making an anime adaptation of the source material is almost a sure way to make it better.

That is not a recipe for success, though. Many anime fall through the cracks, producing mediocre anime that is far inferior to the source material. The reasons for that are many - perhaps the storytelling of the source material does not translate well to anime, perhaps the screenwriter decides to cut essential parts of the source material, maybe the anime studio ran out of funds and resources to produce a satisfactory conclusion.

Unfortunately, for every brilliant anime adaptation that excels and surpasses its source material counterpart, there are dozen others that fail to live up to its lofty aspirations, or worse, completely does not do its source material justice. Any nowhere is this more apparent that in anime series that deals with visual novels as its source material.

Visual novels are curious things. Neither a novel nor a game, it straddles a fine line between reading and gameplay, without fully committing to either, creating an experience that no other medium can replicate. A visual novel is ultimately a text-based medium with anime-style graphics and voice-acting to supplement the story. Most visual novels have 'routes' which are branching storylines to romance different characters, and have multiple endings.

Some of the best anime of the era have source material based on visual novels - Fate/Stay Night, Steins;Gate, CLANNAD, just to name a few, but much more have terrible adaptations that simply tarnish the reputation of the original game, which are far more interesting. Of course, not all visual novels are of good quality, but the better ones are usually selected for adaptation, and most of them fail to live up to the source material. Visual novels such as the Grisaia Trilogy, Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm and Tsukihime which are pretty much universally praised in the visual novel community have horrifying poor adaptations that effectively decimates the number of people willing to check out the source material, which is a real shame.

There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, visual novels are fairly long, which means a studio has to made particularly egregious cuts to made the story fit a typically 12-13 episode format. Secondly, visual novels usually have branching routes, which means the visual novel has to favour a certain heroine, thereby alienating the audiences that prefer another heroine. But more importantly, they must twist the story to fit each heroine's main conflict and then move back to the narrative of the central heroine. Thirdly, visual novels usually have a lot of subtext and internal monologue of a character, which gives the reader a clear understanding of a character's thoughts, feelings and dilemmas, but these monologues are usually not feasible in an anime format.

There are many more reasons, but these are some reasons why I refuse to watch any anime adaptation of a visual novel if the visual novel has a chance of receiving an English translation, unless there is beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would ever receive one. There are exceptions, of course, but some narratives, when given the time to develop the characters and understand the motivations and mindsets of characters, can become incredible stories that transcend even the medium, and anime, with its 12-13 or even 24-26 episode constraints just cannot do justice.

Some visual novels have some of the greatest stories I have ever read in fiction, with the Muv-Luv series, Fate/Stay Night and G-senjou no Maou (The Devil on G-string) being some of my absolute favourites. If you are a true anime fan, and want to experience some of the greatest stories that fiction has to offer with a Japanese anime twist, then I urge you to try visual novels.

I took the plunge 10 years ago and have never looked back. Will you?