Fate/stay night Movie: Heaven's Feel - III. Spring Song

The Fifth Holy Grail War in Fuyuki City has reached a turning point in which the lives of all participants are threatened as the hidden enemy finally reveals itself. As Shirou Emiya, Rin Toosaka, and Illyasviel von Einzbern discover the true, corruptive nature of the shadow that has been rampaging throughout the city, they realize just how dire the situation is. In order to protect their beloved ones, the group must hold their own against the seemingly insurmountable enemy force—even if some of those foes were once their allies, or perhaps, something more intimate.

As the final act of this chaotic war commences, the ideals Shirou believes will soon be challenged by an excruciating dilemma: is it really possible to save a world where everything seems to have gone wrong?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Toosaka, Rin Main

Ueda, Kana Japanese

Emiya, Shirou Main

Sugiyama, Noriaki Japanese

Kotomine, Kirei Main

Nakata, Jouji Japanese

von Einzbern, Illyasviel Main

Kadowaki, Mai Japanese

Matou, Sakura Main

Shitaya, Noriko Japanese

Rider Main

Asakawa, Yuu Japanese

Saber Supporting

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Archer Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Aozaki, Touko Supporting

von Einzbern, Irisviel Supporting

Ohara, Sayaka Japanese

Takeuchi, Takashi Producer, Original Character Design

Iwakami, Atsuhiro Producer

Kondou, Hikaru Producer

Kimura, Yoshitaka Assistant Producer

Reviews

May 29, 2025

Supersonic_Pain

Recommended

--- note: this is a review of the entire Heaven's Feel trilogy. I won't be going out of my way to spoil this specific movie but HF movies 1 and 2 are fair game for me imo ---

I was pretty harsh to UBW.

I was not a very huge fan and I just kind of assumed this super clean, polished, uber-animated Ufotable style wasn't going to fit Fate as well as the Deen one did imo.

After watching the Heaven's Feel trilogy... to be honest, maybe UBW just kinda sucked because this was even better than Deen, let alone UBW.

It's generally speaking about as well animated as ... UBW in most shots. There are some different/"shinier" lighting choices and the fights definitely benefit from a cinematic perspective but for a jump from TV to movie, it's not, like, huge imo.

The fights do look amazing, I was blown away by the Berserker fight in the second movie. In general, I think the fights look less "cutsceney" than they did in UBW. Obviously, you can tell they poured a lot of budget into it and maybe it's just because I liked Heaven's Feel more in general, but I didn't get that big of a "cutscene"/"budgetslop" impression in this trilogy (which, considering I never had a problem with it in Demon Slayer either to my recollection, it might just genuinely be that I didn't like UBW to begin with).

That being said, I thought the third movie started dipping back into that, especially the fight in the cave. It was kind of disorienting and eventually, I was kind of like "okay, where even ARE we in this cave anymore?"

I think the Aimer EDs for the first and second movies are pretty great, the third one is... okay.

Some of the songs though are really good in the OST. There were some thumping beats which kinda rocked.

Before I get into the characters, I wanna talk a bit about how HF sets itself apart from Deen and UBW tone-wise.

UBW felt like an... alternate path from Deen, so to speak. They both kind of followed a giant death game where Shirou summons Saber, Shinji's a jackass, Caster is Castering and trying to summon her own Holy Grail, we've got the Saber/Assassin fight at the gate, Gilgamesh makes his appearance and everything pivots to stopping him, so on and so forth.

I felt very underwhelmed by, given how much time UBW got (because keep in mind, UBW is longer than Deen by 2 episodes/5 episodes depending on how you count the double-lengths and HF is roughly the length of 1 cour total), how many of the characters I didn't care as much about compared to Deen.

But HF circumvents that by being an entirely different thing. It is technically still about the Holy Grail War, but it feels more like a "horror" movie distorted Holy Grail War. A lot of the characters have completely different roles in the story, the atmosphere is darker, and people can get murdered at the snap of a finger. Instead of someone who can be human or reasoned with like Gilgamesh, they're facing off against this shadow that just CANNOT, you know?

It was a really compelling way to avoid being the third retelling of the same old story.

Speaking of which, for better or for worse, it pretty much assumes you've seen UBW and just kinda skips over retelling the common story threads again which works for me since I've been watching Fate basically all month so I kinda rolled my eyes when they started doing it a little bit in the first movie but they come off it pretty quickly.

So how are those characters?

I liked Shirou a lot more here. He does face actual consequences for being the way he is and I really liked his dynamic with Sakura here. Unlike Deen and UBW, he didn't really do anything here that annoyed me per se.

Saber is one of those characters that has a weird, distorted role in the story. I can't say I liked her as much in this one compared to Deen but it was an intriguing take on her and it contributed to the helpless feeling of the story since Shirou didn't have his pet knight to rely on but she gets some new stuff to chew on in place of that.

For the role she has in the story, I can't say I really cared about Rin all that much. She's not a rival like in Deen and she's not a love interest like in UBW and while she DOES have her place in the story, she took a backseat compared to a surprising character for me.

Illya... was not my favorite character this route. She does get significantly more to do compared to UBW but she's another character like Saber I think is done better in Deen. We do get some nice scenes with her and Shirou but idk, she felt a lot like a plot device, especially since she gets the honorable role of shounensplaining some things that I don't know if they needed to be explained to me personally. I'll talk a bit more about this when I discuss the ending.

Shinji... I called him a sniveling jackass in this story and he sure is but that feels a bit light considering the subject matter. I guess in that sense, he's a good antagonist, but he feeds more into a character I like more than he is a character I liked.

Kotomine is actually kinda cool in this route. I didn't like him in Deen and he didn't really do much for me to have an opinion on him in UBW but he gets to play a sort of "anti-hero" role in HF which I thought was a fresh, exciting take. It's really what I wanted from Kotomine in Deen since Deen Kotomine went from 0 to 100 really quick and I liked his more natural progression in this trilogy.

We actually get a new character that matters in Zouken Matou. Similar to Shinji, he sure is a jackass. He's just kind of a less sniveling, more imposing and gross version of Shinji, he gets to play a significant part in the story and he sure is very hateable. I didn't like him but he also made me look at CGI anime bugs and thank you Zouken, you dick.

Zouken also has a Servant and he was cool for the part he played in the story but I don't really have much of an opinion on his character.

However, you may have noticed (among other characters) I skipped over one.

That's because my favorite character in this route was actually, of all people (although I guess it's not that shocking considering it was her route) Sakura. I was a little put off by the fact that she had her own route considering she was bland as lukewarm oatmeal in both Deen AND UBW, to the point where she wasn't even in UBW S2 until the very end, but the egg has been placed upon my face because yup, she kinda rules here. I feel like Saber and especially Rin didn't really have that much personal trauma going on. Saber's whole deal felt kinda tacky and Rin literally gets called out by Sakura for how little hardship she comparatively had but Sakura had her shit fucked UP. Watching her cling to the one person who ever unflinchingly treated her nicely and fought for her only for that same desire to be corrupted was really compelling to the point where she steals the whole show and becomes arguably the best character in all 3 routes. It makes you feel bad for the poor girl but then she snaps and... yup. Can't really say much else because of spoilers but great character.

Also, Rider is here. I wouldn't say she gets as big of a glow-up but she does get a good deal of screen time and time to show off her stuff so this is still her best route.

I did say, however, I had a bit of a problem with the ending. I do like a little bit of the lore they share with a certain Zoroastrian spirit and the Holy Grail, for all the Holy Grail stuff I didn't want to know, that part was cool. Kinda felt like it came out of nowhere but whatever. My bigger issue is that the third movie uses a decent amount of the film to explain the origins of the Holy Grail and maybe it's better in the VN but other than the mission Shirou needed to carry out, it didn't do much for me. The fuck is the Root?

I thought the actual ending was kind of confusing too. I had to look up what happened on Wikipedia after the fact (idk if that's a me issue or that's because I didn't ~consume~ Garden of Sinners yet but the object they found in the shop... that did not exactly come across to me as what it was) and I'm a little disappointed, it takes a little sting out of what would've been a bittersweet ending.

Overall, I think this was the best Fate/stay night route for me.

It combined the cleaner, more Hype and Aura art of Ufotable with an actually good atmosphere, it was a shocking departure from what would've likely been rote had they played it closer to Deen and UBW, Sakura (and to a lesser extent Kotomine) got the glow-up of a century, this is my kind of Fate. It's kind of darker and more psychological (at least as much as it can be given it's still Fate/stay night) but that's my jam.

It's kind of unfortunate because you kind of have to watch at the very least UBW to see this first but it's a very good movie trilogy, if nothing else, watching Deen (which I liked anyway) and UBW was worth it to see this.

The whole trilogy gets a 9/10
The first 2 movies get a 9/10
I had a bit more of an issue with this movie specifically (more "cutsceney" battles imo, origins of Holy Grail didn't land for me, issues with the ending) but it's still a solid 8/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 29, 2023

Hachannn

Mixed Feelings

If you want a movie with a lot of good animation, go for it, this one is full of that, but as an adaptation it fails in a lot of ways, this is not just an "ok" adaptation, it's essentially a 20 lines essay about a 200 pages book, so the plot might be confusing, the characters be much less interesting than what they actually are, and yes, even the fights mostly lack in comparisson to the original material, so for the true experience i recommend to check out the Visual Novel.
Aside from that, if you don't actually know the source material, you might have ... a pretty good time, visually it's great, soundtrack is cool as well, the plot is still pretty good since the original material is amazing, but it's still like comparing a casual breakfest to a complete Christmas meal, it still has a great taste, but far from the real deal.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Apr 26, 2025

huzrin

Not Recommended

They fucked this up so badly bro 😭😭 Just read the vn please this is not worth it

YES i am ufotable
YES i will make unimportant fights 40 hours long
YES i will make the visuals look like a light show because i can't animate
NO i will not adapt the final right right
NO i will not write the characters correctly

i dont think i have to mention this but the way that ufotable animates type moon characters just looks real damn ugly to me idk why tho.... like they dont get the atmosphere that they were going for in the vn at all

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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