On October the 20th 2017, I watched an animation movie called “Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel –I. Presage Flower”. It is a fantasy story about harsh competition to obtain the ‘fake’ holy grail, which grants any desire of someone who finally survived the battle. Competitors callsummon “servants” who are emerged souls of heroes/heroines of any age. It is the first part of the “Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel” trilogy, and the third route animated from an (adult) game “Fate/stay night”. In the first route, “Fate” route, the heroine is “saber”, a genderswapped Queen Arthur herself. In the second route, “Unlimited Blade Works” route, the heroine is Rin Tosaka（遠坂凛）, a girlfriend of the main character Shiro Emiya（衛宮士郎）. The third route now, the heroine is Sakura Mato（間桐桜）, a little sister of one of Shiro’s boyfriends. The initial settings of all the three stories are the same, however, different choices force the characters to the three different endings, investing decoding of the stories interesting.
The main theme of “Fate” is: to respect each other well, even the each stands for entirely different motivations. The desire of Queen Arthur is to diminish the trace of the queen age by herself from the history, in order to select the proper king/queen for Britain once more. This is what Shiro did not understand well, but finally they knew to be able to respect themselves as fate, resulting in safe separation.
The main theme of “Unlimited Blade Works” is: the inner battle between the same persons. A servant archer, is a soul of Shiro himself from the future, who became a guardian of the world fighting throughout the history. The archer is very cruel to Shiro, because he knows himself well, and also what he has done. Even if the surrounding people raised something not good, archer thought he himself should take responsibilities assuming an initial trigger is a kind of seed dropped off from his own pocket. Despite the initial intention is to save somebody, he thought he has to knock down himself due to its mal outcomes. This is why he was selected as a guardian and why he has to battle in every age, against all the prejudices and superstitions. In reality no person comes from future, but one has to battle with the ghosts of himself coming from his past, at every moment.
The main theme of “Heaven's Feel” is still not clear, but it is supposed to be the explanation of all the background settings in this saga. Even in the first episode, the line of the story is very different and a weird space from outer dimensions (?), “imaginary space” appeared from an unearthly silence. I hope in the upcoming episodes, the mysteries are at least partially solved. (Not only in pure mathematics, but also in physics, spaces with complex dimensions are utilized to recognize the interactions in the physical universe. Complex space does really exist in nature. )
One remark for this animation movie is how the creators expressed the scenes of battles. The expressions were so vivid that they cannot be achieved in live-actions. Maybe old people remember the impact of “Princess Mononoke” when it first appeared in the movie; the expressions of released arrows were so awesome. However, the expression has evolved so much in this “Fate/stay night”. Definitely you can get a taste of them only in movie theater. Also, compared with TV animation series of previous routes, the usage of silent and mixing of sound effects in the movie are developed so well as in live-action movies or theater drama. The music is from Yuki Kajiura（梶浦由記）, a composer in “Puella Magi Madoka Magica”, “Kara no Kyokai” and “Fate/Zero”. There are also funny scenes for Kirei Kotomine（言峰綺礼）as expected.
