#hf: presage flower

[lastencoregraphics]

@giftober 2024: DAY 8 - HOME

This is your home, Sakura.

[brave-symphonia]

Saber defeating Rider here is really cool. Love how it’s shots are arranged and how it’s animated.

I wonder if there was significance in Saber defeating Rider so effortlessly at the beginning, since Shirou and Rider have to face her as their last challenge.

Shirou and Saber vs. Rider at the start, and then Shirou and Rider vs. Saber at the end.

[mochidoodle]

I saw Heaven’s Feel 2 in theaters last week and to sum it up, this is the only thing Gil did:

[the-anime-void]

With the second Heaven's Feel movie hitting the States this week, I thought it was a good time to talk about the first one

[kurozu501]

Heaven’s Feel Presage Flower thoughts (with spoilers)

Ok, so im gonna list out everything i liked about the movie, and everything i felt could have been better. Can’t really say there was anything i actively disliked in this movie besides a few brief things, so its more a list of pro’s and nitpicks. As there will be spoilers galore, the rest will be under the read more.

THE GOOD

The entire opening montage showing how Sakura became a part of Shirou’s life

Seriously i owe that entire sequence my fucking life

It was a great way of showing how important Sakura is to him, how she became part of the family, and by showing it to us, the audience, convince us of it

The parallel of Shirou coming home to an empty house at the start vs coming home to sakura and smiling. The parallel of him at the start lying in the shed alone with no one vs lying in the shed listening to Sakura and Taiga talking in the distance and smiling, rip me.

She is his home, she brings his empty life peace and fulfillment, this movie gets that. 

“my hero…” THE HABIT SAKURA HAS OF HOLDING THE RIBBON IN HER FINGERS WHILE THINKING ABOUT RIN AHHHHHHH IM DEAD

Santa Taiga, the group photo, ayako recruiting sakura for archery club, there was so much little great stuff like that that ufotable added!

shoutout to all of shinji’s stuff in the prologue with shirou being really, really easy to interpret as him having a big gay crush on shirou and no idea how to healthily express that bc he’s a shit and a mess. The part where he honestly was about to ask shirou to join his night on the town but then got cut off and all mad about it was amazing. I still hate shinji ofc, but it felt like there was more nuance to their interactions then in ubw and thanks.

I liked how this movie had a thing where it would show two events happening at once to ramp up tension as well as save time? Having the “Gil approaches Sakura” thing happen simultaneously with Shirou getting drawn into the grail war for example. I liked having those side by side as if to show both of their normal lives falling apart at the same time.

I liked the moment they showed Sakura killing time at all these places to avoid going home, but i felt like they could have made it a bit more explicit, like have an aquarium employee approach her saying they were closing and ask if her family wont be concerned with her being out so late, to which sakura just puts on a fake smile and demurs. Something like that would have helped the audience get it i think.

The way the gate that Sakura goes through to enter the Matou house sounds like the slamming of a prison door. Excellent sound work, it made me shudder every time.

The fights of course are excellent. Brutal, fast paced, and a joy to watch, but unlike A1′s apocrypha fight scenes, you could actually follow what was happening. Not much else to say there.

The majority of Rin’s scenes in this movie were dedicated to setting up her relationship with Sakura and i really, really appreciate that was what they choose to focus on instead of romantic tsundere hijinks with Shirou. 

Saber wearing a kimono instead of her usual white and blue outfit was nice, it was a good look for her and it helped make this route feel different from UBW

Shirou’s sex dream happens but thankfully not only is it RN version so nothing more then a boob grab happens, but the movie even has it change from Rin to Sakura at the last second, which i appreciate A LOT.

The stuff they did with corpse puppet Medea was pretty well done, as it gave us a moment for Shirou to focus on Rule Breaker (which was very important) and also showed her as very powerful, which was a nice gift for Medea fans after having to watch Hassan stab her a dozen times. 

Speaking of that scene, THE SHADOW. i like how it seems to be a mix of cg and normal animation. I felt like they could have done a better job making it feel truly out of this world powerful and disturbing, but it was good. Im looking forward to seeing it again in movie 2.

 Lancer’s fight scene practically screamed that ufotable loves Lancer ha ha. I’m glad they gave him some cool shit to go out on. 

Speaking of good fights, Rider owning the FUCK out of Hassan at the temple was awesome. 

All in all the film has some weak points, and the minor stuff gets neglected like the kirei talks being cut down, Rider not sticking around after saving shirou, etc. But the core of the story, Sakura and her relationship with Shirou, was rock solid and it was a good film. If this is what i can expect from the next two movies i’ll have nitpicks but be satisfied. 

THE NOT SO GOOD

this list might be long but honestly thats only because i love it so much that i have to critique the weaker bits.

first off, this movie is very confusing for new viewers. I don’t necessarily mind that, but i do worry that will drive away potential new fans. Pretty clear that someone needs to have at least watched the first two eps of UBW before seeing these films. A friend of mine who isnt into fate came with me to see it and she was totally lost. 

This movie has kind of a pacing problem, where the first sequence of everyday life is very slow and drawn out, and then the rest of the movie is a lot of rushed shit going down. Like i said i owe that opening sequence my life, so i don’t mind it, but a lot of the nitpicks on this list feel like they could have been solved if the scenes had had more time and werent as rushed.

Examples of rushed moments include; zouken just popping up to mention the einzberns to shirou before walking off, Rider not sticking around and talking to Shirou after saving him, Sasaki not getting his great dying line, Zouken showing up after Shinji and Rider are defeated but NOT doing any sort of complicated negotiations with Shirou and Saber, Kirei and Shirou’s talk about kiritsugu being rushed, etc. All of this is nitpick that only someone like me who read the VN would complain about, but still. Many of these things would have been easily fixed with an extra line or two or more time for a scene to breathe.

While the stuff with Medea was ok, i was sad the movie didn’t have time to do the frame up situation where Shirou and Saber stumble on the scene and are lead to believe Medea killed Kuzuki. That scene is a great example of how hf subverts the usual heroism stuff. Shirou/Saber think they are stopping an evil witch but really they are playing right into Zouken’s manipulations and killing a woman who was victimized and framed. It plays into the themes of Medea’s character in a horribly tragic way too. Having Hassan kill them works just as well (and makes him feel more menacing, which is good) but having Saber oneshot first Rider, then Caster was part of what makes her feel so powerful in hf, which makes the loss of her all the worse. 

Gross perv stuff was very low thank god, but im still mad they had to keep in Illya’s line to Berserker about violating Saber’s corpse, (which i guess is meant to be a really menacing threat but sheesh you could have stopped at beheading) and Taiga randomly mentioning Sakura’s bust size to Shirou. Especially that last one, even as a taiga comedy moment, felt very out of place and jarring. Taiga has always shipped Shirou x Sakura yeah, but there could have been a less gross way to establish that she’s ok with them getting together. 

Sakura’s health declining was not really focused on as much as it should have been? We don’t even see her collapse, just have Saber come running in and tell Shirou, and i cant recall if the bit where she passes out in the bath was supposed to have happened yet, but if it was it was entirely cut out.

Like, the subtle underlying thread here of “Sakura collapses because Rider was nearly killed by Saber and is having to take a lot of her mana to recover -> Shirou’s sex dream is actually Rider draining him of mana to avoid having to take more from Sakura” is lost in the movie. Especially since Shirou doesn’t even seem drained at all after the dream happens. 

No illya park scenes. :( I get it guys, for some reason you only made this movie two hours long instead of 2 and a half hours, and you don’t have time to include it but come on. Shirou’s sibling relationship with Illya is equally important to HF as his romantic relationship with Sakura. They did good establishing how shaken Illya is by Shirou’s selfless behavior, and they showed her planning to go into town at the end, but it doesn’t seem like it would have been hard to have at least the first park scene between them happen here. I really thought it was going to happen in that one moment but then Rin sat down behind him instead.

Sort of hard to describe, but there was an awkwardness to the way certain scenes and movements were animated. Shinji just walking away after Rider lost to Saber (as opposed to fucking running away like in the VN) Cu just sort of standing rigidly still as he was dragged underwater, Assassin showing up to hit Shirou after Saber lost, Cu’s running pose in that one moment that people are making jokes about, etc. The one with Assassin hitting Shirou actually made my theater burst into laughter, which was odd since its not really a funny moment. i guess because it made Shirou look pathetic?

When Rider saves Shirou, it would have been easy, so so easy, to add in a single line from Shirou mentioning that she’s clearly much more powerful then she was when she fought Saber in the alleyway. If you have to cut out Rider’s interaction with him after the fight AT LEAST do that. Without it the audience could miss the fact that Rider was acting as Sakura’s servant in this moment instead of Shinji’s, here on orders from Sakura to keep Shirou alive. This could be mitigated in the next film but it’s still weird how they cut so much from one of Rider’s big moments. 

i already went into it in this post, but it feels like saberhype kept the climax from feeling as dramatic and gutting as it really could have been

Also the fight between her and Hassan was oddly short. Again, pacing issues, but it was literally just “she chases him for a few seconds, tries the wind blast, gets shadowed and thats it.” i guess they were saving time for the Rider vs Assassin fight. 

The whole scene between Shirou and Sakura in the shed was pretty excellent, but i feel like they missed the chance to explain WHY shirou doing the bar jump was so inspiring and amazing to Sakura, namely because he never gave up on doing something that was obviously impossible. That was a big deal to Sakura because she was struggling to find a reason to go on in the face of her impossibly hellish life. They sort of implied that by the look in her eyes as she watched him, but it would have been so easy to just have a line from her saying that.

So yeah, overall just a lot of nitpicks which, frankly, is the best i could hope to come out of this movie with. Heres hoping the next two films keep things good!

[coe-lilium]

Presage flower...

was good.

Our Saber va is a blessing. Thank you Dynit, you did such an amazing job with the dub.

[toskarin]

rewatching the HF movies since I feel like I didn't give them a fair shake as individual films on my first go-round. haven't rewatched Spring Song yet, but my opinion already shifted to the nuance of "Lost Butterfly is a sharp decline in pacing, where Presage Flower was actually a pretty good film adaptation"

I actually can't remember how much of my opinion on Spring Song was colored by the quality of Lost Butterfly, so I'll have to think about it in isolation and work out a semidefinitive ranking in my head

Lost Butterfly really fucks up by misunderstanding a lot of important moments and keeping the wrong parts of them, all while wasting time trying to fill in the information gaps it created with less elegant metaphor

[thepurpleblossom]

i. presage flower

ii. lost butterfly

iii. ????

[golden-nocturne]

Me, hammering the replay button on Hana no Uta for the 18th consecutive time: Wonder if I’ll get bored of this in the 6 months it takes for the movie to hit European shores

[vanquishedvaliant]

Fate: okay yeah Fate and Unlimited Bladeworks are sketchy as fuck and have bad adaptations

Fate fans: but it’s all worth it for Heaven’s Feel, trust me

me, normal sensible person: yeah right lol doubt.jpg

me: how could the third route be so different to justify all of that meandering crap

HF Movies: come out

me: well might as well humour them

me, watching Presage Flower: hmm

Me, watching Lost Butterfly: oh no

Me, watching Spring Song: god damn it

Me, tearing up: god fucking damn it

Me: they were right the whole fucking time

[kamadaeva]

do you think we’ll have to wait the whole 6 months for that HF blue ray release still?

if you dont buy it through amazon jp yeah. the bd has english subs by default (or at least presage flower and lost butterfly did) even on the jp bd.

[lastencoregraphics]

—IT ISN’T THE STORM THAT MAKES THE OCEAN DANGEROUS.

[brave-symphonia]

Just realized that Sakura was waiting for Rin to come save her for so long and Rin never came. But she found Shirou and being around him saved her, but then he even asked her to stay at his house, saving her again.

Not to mention that Shirou repaired her and Rin’s relationship and showed her genuine compassion and freed her from her abusive family.

What I’m basically saying is that Shirou is basically a perfect hero for her. He completely turns her life around in every way.

[nekonotabi]

2 more weeks HF Lost Butterfly BD will be out so I’ll go back to being a Sakura stan. Need to rewatch Presage Flower.

[chaldeaslunchbox]

Idk if it's a request or something but how is your spoiler policy and how up to date are you on Fate verse spoilers? Don't think any of us wants to accidentally spoil you on something

Thank you so much for asking! You’re very considerate. For spoilers, the only thing I don’t really want to hear is any Heaven’s Feel spoilers. I don’t read the visual novel so I’m only getting to know the story through the movies. 

What I’ve seen so far (aside from F/GO):

-Fate/Zero

-Fate/Stay Night UBW

-Fate/Stay Night HF: Presage Flower ONLY

-Fate/Extra Last Encore

-Fate/Prototype (drama CD)

-Garden of Avalon (drama CD)

-Fate/Apocrypha

[thirdmagic]

uhhhhhhhh mildly spoilery lost butterfly rant

other Cool Trends ufo continues from not only ubw but as early as zero: oh no the narration in this scene describes kirei as having Feelings and Caring about things and being troubled, maybe even having sympathetic qualities, oh no we can't have that, better suck ALL the emotion dry out of it and COMPLETELY change everything about it because that's Wrong

like................... look............... i Get that there was no way to translate the flashback with risei visually from prose and that there was no time but come O N how in the world did you take 'kneels down and looks up at the sky with anger in his eyes as he declares an intent that exposes a deeply rooted anger and frustration with the world that's been built up in him his entire life' and turn it into 'stands around monologuing dryly and with no emotion literally just saying words' that is so. fuckin..... transparent.... after turning tokiomi's death from 'kirei laughs and smiles with genuine cheer and happiness while tokiomi is vaguely confused at what's going on up until the last second of his life' to 'kirei is  EVIL and BAD and tokiomi is SHOCKED and BETRAYED', to completely removing him legit crying when he found risei's corpse and that he was upset and terrified and thrown completely off balance by it all because he was just then thinking of confessing everything, and then even ignoring the few seconds or lines you could have added in presage flower where he talks about his motivations to shirou......... yeah I Don't Know What I Expected but i really thought!!! i really thought mayhaps they've learned their lesson since then!!!!!! that MAYBE they stepped up their game since it's been years since then!!!!!! like obviously i have no way of actually knowing WHY these changes are made but it sure as hell looks like the very concept of kirei showing Feelings and sympathetic qualities and emotional vulnerability and openness and genuine human traits is just so alien to someone up there that it needs to be removed even when it's staring you straight in the face through the narration, and i genuinely.... don't understand........ how could you look at fate and then find the concept of a complicated and sympathetic villain so alien......... they sure weren't afraid to go there with shinji and still never even once pretended to try to justify him and managed to find the balance between displaying these sympathetic aspects and making us understand what he's going through emotionally and why, so whyest the fuckingest hellest would kirei be any different i literally just CANNOT understand........... esp when this is the same director who actively objected to nasu himself wanting to change things because he wanted to be accurate to the vn........... like, who do i have to kill to get his story and characterization adapted properly just goddamn once............... (i don't remember what hf manga did with him thus far bc i don't think it got to most of the relevant parts yet but)................... i'm just............. i'm not even mad anymore i have no more energy left in me to be mad about this it's been years and it's just making me go ???????? at this point........