Mono no aware

I made it. The final route of Fate/Stay Night in its brutal, beautiful, painful, compelling entirety. The whole run of Heaven’s Feel after the divergence point is an experience similar to the time I watched the Nausicaä movie then read the manga through to the end, which is really saying something coming from me. The quality and sheer scope of the storytelling meant that I felt an even greater attachment to the characters; if ‘equivalent exchange’ is a recurring theme in the F/S N franchise the same idea applies to the emotional (not to mention time) investment you put into it, which in my case turned out to be one hell of a lot.

She’ll make a man of him yet

Heaven’s Feel was immensely rewarding for me but was the darkest instalment of the visual novel as a whole. That said, even the most disconcerting moments were relevant to the plot and were important in drawing attention to the plight of the central character. Sakura always stayed in the background in the earlier routes, serving little purpose other than to cook meals and blush a lot but this route is the point where she has chance to shine; it really shook up everything I thought I knew up to that point about some of the supporting cast too.

That recurring theme of free will crops up again, this time asking if a weak and cowardly individual deserves to escape blame if his or her negative personality traits are rooted in events beyond their control. As much as I wish Sakura could have grown a backbone earlier, I suspect the abuse she suffered at the hands of the Matous had long since robbed her of the ability to do so. As I twittered recently the sight of dismembered body parts and the fluids within don’t bother me; I find the implications, rather than the depictions, of torture and abuse far more unsettling. There isn’t enough detail provided for me to decide when exactly she could have stopped beating herself up and retaliated instead, but then I don’t want to know the details anyway. All I know is, Sakura is a victim and that makes her deserving of sympathy.

If the Fate route offered an introduction to the worldview and how the Holy Grail War operates, the Unlimited Blade Works route put the male lead’s rationale into perspective. Heaven’s Feel however weaves a completely new story thread, casting a lot of characters and events in a different light in the process (e.g. Sakura’s true heritage and the heartbreaking yet awe-inspiring appearance of Dark Saber), and throws pretty much everything Shirou stands for in Fate and UBW out the window. The first two routes explain his desire to be a superhero and how his philosophy is both flawed and admirable but Heaven’s Feel pulls the rug from under him: by the end I saw his old way of thinking to be naïve and immature in comparison.

“The Force is strong in this one…”

He only really took the superhero malarky upon himself out of guilt for surviving the last war and out of admiration for the man who saved his life: it’s all fine to look up to your parent(s) and aspire to be like them as a child, but what about living your life for yourself later on? Kuritsugu may have approved of Shirou’s promise to follow in his footsteps at the time but he never implanted his adoptive son with a magic crest, nor did he train him fully either. Is it possible he wanted Shirou to be distanced from the constraints that bound him to the Holy Grail War? After all, Rin in contrast was so closely tied to that duty that she felt she needed to go as far as killing her own sister, thinking like a magus first and a human second.

Shirou on the other hand was prepared to throw away an admirable ideal and follow what looks like a more selfish desire at first glance, but doing so I think requires a peculiar kind of courage in itself. Yes, it involves greater sacrifices and potentially makes matters worse but the honest foolhardiness of it makes it all the more heroic somehow. I guess deep down the idea of risking your very life for the one you love is undeniably stupid but at the same time utterly awesome in my eyes. Call me an old-fashioned romantic beneath the layers of tsunderisms and cynicism, but there you go.

Shirou’s only justification for this is that he made a promise to protect her because he feels partly responsible for her current situation, and is prepared to take the flak if he fails. It’s not that he doesn’t care about anyone else – as soon as you make decisions in the game that would be out of character for him you hit a Bad or Dead End – but the simple, single-minded fact that the life of the woman he loves is in danger is what pushes him to lose his mind, body and soul; if that sort of resolve isn’t heroic, I don’t know what is.

An over-amorous Sakura is fine too: domestic bliss is heartwarming, regardless of the sauce. You have to admit the outfit suits her though

I don’t think even he knew at the time what the said flak entailed, but for me this resolve fits in with all that archery jargon we were exposed to early on. It was an example of the interconnected symbolism that the game was so fond of throwing at you, this time drawing parallels between the mindset of the sport and Shirou’s own way of looking at the world. Making a decision like those he did, relying on one’s own judgement and physical abilities, is very much like archery as the prose of the VN describes it. You weigh up the variables, aim for the target and after a certain point of no return the course of the arrow is beyond you control. Saving Sakura, and preparing himself for watching the course of the arrow – the arrow of fate I guess – is a nice foreshadowing of the type of Archer he’d become. Or maybe I’m putting two and two together to make five.

Taking a step back from the over-analysis

I thought the character designs were excellent overall and enjoyed the presentation as a whole more than I expected – could this be the game that gets this non-gamer into video games? The use of semi-static images (as in, stills that give the impression of movement by sweeps, zooms and pans) was wonderfully effective, especially in portraying the kinetic nature of the fight scenes. And damn, they didn’t skimp on the details either! During these moments the game’s sadistic streak was less exploitation and more awesome, which sat better with me. The exposition was overdone at points though and the, how should I say, clumsy and awkward descriptions in the H-scenes are something I’m still undecided on. As an aside I kinda forgot to install the vocal patch but selecting my own BGM from my laptop’s archive of Einaudi, Mogwai and My Bloody Valentine did the job just fine (I also used the extended hours of gameplay to remind myself how much I love Pearl Jam and Muse).

At this point I feel the need to soften the blow of all that angst with comic chibi goodness for some reason

The short OP movies, which must have led many people to scream “You HAVE to make an anime out of this now!” at the time of the VN’s intial release, featured This Illusion, a great electronica-based vocal effort that sounded like a collaboration between Yuki Kajiura and Joe Hisaishi or something. As far as I can tell neither were involved but I thought it was fantastic all the same, especially in cheezburger flavour. Enjoy!

In Closing and Acknowledgements

As a sort of emotional defence against seeing characters I grew sentimentally attached to suffer, I started to pay more attention to the way that the F/S N story plays around with the historical side of things. The very mention of the Holy Grail had me quoting Monty Python at the screen, Sakura’s transformation made me realise that Indiana Jones had it easy and Saber’s true identity is still, for me, one of the coolest plot devices in recent memory. Certainly, I now see the legend involving Guinevere and Lancelot in a whole new way: a shoujo-ai love triangle? In MY folklore? Makes me proud to be British for a change!

So, what’s next? I’m still experiencing the dazed feeling that comes after experiencing a powerful and well-written story but I have vague memories of the Tsukihime anime being atmospheric and intriguing (not to mention being greatly amused by the fanboy raeg that it spawned) so it looks like I’ll have to somehow track down a copy of the VN that inspired it. @Owen: I’ll be in touch about it. @IKnight, the other guy whose opinions of F/S N got me this far, this one’s for you. ^_^

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