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.

The first route of F/S N was the main inspiration for the TV series but what’s unlocked at its completion, Unlimited Blade Works, isn’t represented much there so came as a pleasant surprise to me. It goes off in a different direction that’s just as interesting in its own way and expands on themes that were merely touched on before, making some clever parallels between characters and bringing in a startling variant on the underlying fate vs free will theme. Additionally, rather than making Ilya and Berserker the main antagonists it’s Caster and her master who drive the events along this time around.

Epic foreshadowing? You betcha

Shirou’s relationship with Saber is played down to give his screentime with Rin room to breathe but at the same time there’s the all-important explanation of Archer’s origins that gave this route its true impact and makes the story focus on Shirou’s fight more than Saber’s. It goes without saying that what’s coming up is as spoilerific as hell so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

My blogging kohai has a lot to answer for. With one full story thread of the Fate/Stay Night visual novel under my belt I can see where he’s coming from in terms of the connections that hold everything together, although it’s taken a fair while in getting there. Since I’m not a gamer the idea of spending hours and hours on something like this is pretty alien to me but as I said in my warm-up post the interactive nature of the VN works wonders in bringing the story to life in a way that the TV version couldn’t (although my not being sloshed this time around must have helped). It’s only part of the full picture of course: there are two other routes to follow afterwards but this one concentrates on the Shirou/Saber relationship in particular.

“..into the uncertain divine/we scream into the last divide…”

I wasn’t as fascinated by Saber in the TV show but when the events are geared towards portraying events from her and Shirou’s point of view I had a much clearer picture of her circumstances and personality so felt for her predicament much more keenly. While Rin is the tsundere character (not a bad thing I might add!), Saber is I think someone even more interesting, with a imaginatively-realised backstory that I can’t help but admire on so many levels.