Fate/stay night: Heaven’s Feel – II. Lost Butterfly

Fate/stay night: Heaven’s Feel – II. Lost Butterfly

Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel - II. Lost Butterfly anime movie cover art
Fate/stay night: Heaven’s Feel – II. Lost Butterfly

Movie Overview

Fate/stay night: Heaven’s Feel – II. Lost Butterfly (劇場版「Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel] II.lost butterfly」) is the second movie in the Heaven’s Feel trilogy. This is the Sakura Matou route, which means it’s for people who are into girls riddled with worms.

Cutting to the chase, I thought this was a very bad movie, which goes against the consensus. But I’m not some Fate series hater. I’ve been playing Fate/Grand Order since 2017 and I believe I’ve seen all the main Fate series anime other than the movies (and the original stay night).

I’ve seen Unlimited Blade Works, Zero, Kaleid Liner, Apocrypha, Extra: Last Encore, Babylonia, and even Lord El-Melloi II Case Files. And out of all of these, Lost Butterfly is tied for the worst with the ending of Extra: Last Encore.

Normally, I don’t look at other reviews on a series or movie until after I’ve reviewed it myself. I don’t want to unintentionally be influenced by someone else. But since my opinion of this movie is the opposite of seemingly everyone else’s is, I decided to take a look.

What I found was that the things I hated about this movie are the things other people seemed to love. Apparently, the fact that this movie has a dumbed-down plot, barely any world-building, and a female lead who just wants to have sex 24/7 made this a good anime.

I couldn’t disagree more. I think Lost Butterfly tossed aside what’s good about most Fate anime. The characters aren’t very compelling, I had no idea what was going on most of the time, and it doubled down on the fact that Fate is originally an eroge, but still played it safe.

Sakura the Sex Addict

I’ve never been a huge fan of Sakura Matou as a character. Her character type simply doesn’t appeal to me. It’s the same as how I never liked Hinata from Naruto. The shy girl who’s obsessed with the protagonist is a boring character archetype.

With that said, there’s more to Sakura than just that trope. Sakura has a tragic backstory that involves being sold by the Tohsaka family to the Matou family and then verbally, physically, and sexually abused. That’s an interesting setup for the heroine because it’s nontraditional.

Usually, the main heroine is pure and perfect. Sakura isn’t and that’s why she could be a good character in Heaven’s Feel (less so in the other routes because she’s not the female lead).

The problem is that “Fate lore” got in the way. We could have had a great story about this girl who’s been broken in every way possible. Instead, we got a story about a girl who’s obsessed with sex because she needs mana, and semen is the best medium for transferring mana in the eroge that is Fate.

Sakura Matou hallucinating from the anime movie Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel - II. Lost Butterfly
Sakura Matou hallucinating

Lost Butterfly basically has a hentai plot. Most Fate anime distance themselves from the original visual novel. This one didn’t, and I think it came across as pretty cringe — like all other anime that have hentai plots but censor everything.

Yes, we got a Sakura masturbation scene and a sex scene. And from what I understand, people loved that about this movie. But it’s not like we saw anything. This wasn’t like SAO -Ordinal Scale- in which we got a few frames of Asuna’s uncensored nipple for fan service.

The fact that Sakura is just extremely horny all the time was a major plot point that made the movie feel more on par with something like World’s End Harem (the censored version).

No Idea What’s Going On

I’m sure there are going to be a lot of people who disagree with my complaint about Sakura. But a hentai plot without the hentai just makes for a bad anime. Go all in or avoid making that the main plot.

This brings us to the next major complaint I have, which is that most of the movie made no sense. So much time was spent focusing on Sakura’s sex life that we didn’t really have time for any other plot. It’s not like the action could be cut to make room for it.

Based on my understanding of what I watched, Sakura has been dead for a while. At this point, she’s just a skin sack filled with bugs and Shirou’s semen (some people are into that, I guess). And because those bugs and semen are full of mana, she’s transforming into a corrupt Holy grail.

Saber Alter vs. Berserker from the anime movie Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel - II. Lost Butterfly
Saber Alter vs. Berserker

Now, this development might have made more sense if I watched this movie directly after Presage Flower. I’m reviewing it 696 days after I reviewed the first movie. And it came out 455 days after the first movie. I don’t remember what happened in Presage Flower and at no point in this movie does it attempt to remind us of what happened in any way.

I’ve gone into this movie just accepting that Artoria is now corrupt and Medusa is alive even though I’m pretty sure she died twice in the first movie. Also, I don’t remember Sakura playing a major role in the first movie, so I guess she’s just been inserted into the plot now for the sex aspect.

And just because I can, I’m also going to complain about the action in this movie. The fight between Artoria Alter and Heracles was only cool because I like how it showed Heracles’ resurrection ability. The fight itself was pretty boring and I think the first movie had better animation.

Conclusion

Fate/stay night: Heaven’s Feel – II. Lost Butterfly is a 3/10. That’s 5 points lower than what I rated Presage Flower. And I’m assuming that Spring Song is going to be better. But there’s really not much I can say is good about this movie aside from the music and animation.

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My review of Spring Song is available now.

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