ace of swords

The movie absolutely expects you to be familiar with the previous Fate anime: they skip Lancer vs Archer and cram Shirou getting stabbed by Lancer at the school all the way to Rin, Shirou, and Saber going to the church in an opening montage without any dialogue. Yes, that means there's no “Are you my Master?”

(I will note though, that my friend I watched it with had no prior knowledge of Fate other than my 10 minute rundown pre-movie and really enjoyed it, so there is that.)

The movie starts out with new scenes from the get-go. Shirou is at the archery range, getting bullseyes, and his teacher comments on how he's kind of...”off”. Then Shirou gets injured, and probably my favorite addition to the movie follows: Sakura starts showing up at his house. We see Shirou be awkward with her and tell her she doesn't need to come over and he's fine on his own. Sakura doesn't even talk; she communicates through nodding and shaking her head. Then there's a montage of Sakura showing up every day, and Shirou slowly teaching her how to do all the household duties, and eventually he and Taiga start expecting her to be around, and Sakura starts smiling and talking to them.

The following is a pretty faithful adaptation of the VN (as someone who just skimmed/reread the first third of the route yesterday to prepare for the movie). Mostly they cram multiple conversations/scenes into one scene, or one day. Like, Shirou and Saber battle Berserker AND Rider on the same night, proving Shirou is the Energizer Bunny. Other examples are that there's no classroom conversation between Sakura/Shirou: there's only the shed scene where Sakura tells Shirou about how she first saw him on the field AND we get the “would you forgive me if I was a bad person?” convo.  Other than that, I didn't note any glaring differences: although I would have liked to see the Kiritsugu&Shirou moments fully animated: they're just voiceovers or little cuts in this movie. Again, probably a “eh they already watched UBW” thing here.

(Oh, and in the Rin sex dream, it uses vampirism, and then Rin changes into Sakura partway through, lol.)

Also another small but great addition for Sakura: we see a montage of Sakura trying to avoid going home by hanging out at the park/going to the fish store/etc. Baby :(

Another new scene: Saber meets Saber Alter after she gets swallowed by the Shadow.  I didn't like this addition as much, because I liked having the gut punch of Saber being truly gone at that point in the route rather than foreshadowing her return right after she gets swallowed. And also how it kind of...implied Saber and Saber Alter are different people, rather than just corrupted!Saber.

They did take out pretty much every early Illya scene, although from how they handled scenes in the movie I'm assuming that they'll just have one “long” scene in the second movie involving her meeting up with Shirou and talking.

Also, because everyone wants to know where the cut-off point is: the night Saber dies and after Shirou walks home, Sakura is waiting for him.

Probably the most impressive fight scene was Lancer vs True Assassin, IMO. Although Rider's fights were also super amazing visually. The chains are just so cool! However, there's no “major” fight scene in the movie, and mostly just a lot of skirmishes. They were absolutely beautiful though, as expected.

The tone of the movie is really dark: there's a lot of blood and gore and creepiness. The happiness is concentrated at the very beginning, but once Shirou becomes a Master there's not much of a break. It was very...somber, which I don't really mind, myself.

OVERALL: very happy with this adaptation, because obviously the production values were A+, the rest was faithful and preserved everyone's characterization, and the extra scenes were very good for Sakura's character. I'll be rewatching it, and can't wait for “lost butterfly” next year!

Small little things:

Shirou doesn't let go of Sakura's hand after she collapses and they have their convo as she's lying in bed. DAWWWW

Sakura constantly plays with her ribbon! FEELS.

Yes, they kept mapo tofu, including Kirei sweating profusely as he eats it.

Tony stopped in his tracks, and contemplated walking back out.

“What is that thing doing in here?”

“Snowball's not a thing,” Steve said primly, running the brush across the horse's coat. “He's a proud member of the NYPD Mounted Unit, and has served them for the past five years.”

“And,” Tony circled around, confirming that yes, the horse was in the middle of the living room still, “is there a reason Snowball cannot continue serving the NYPD's pony police at their department?”

“The Shadow Nixes' attack left their headquarters unsafe for the horses,” Steve said. Well, really, the attack of the Asgardian power-guzzling creatures had put the whole city at risk, without any electricity.

“The rest of them are being transported to emergency stables outside of the city,” Steve continued. “But they wanted to see if there were any options to keep any horses in the city. Good for morale, and tourism.”

“So, you volunteered?”

“They said I can patrol around for the next few days by myself!” Steve grinned, and yes, Tony could see that doing wonders for the city's bottom line.

“That's... great, but uh. Where are you going to keep it? We're not exactly equipped to house a horse. Wait, how did you even get it up here?”

“Thor, and Thor's room,” Steve said. “There's a stable in there, apparently, and room to ride.”

Tony couldn't even be surprised. “Well, whatever. Just make sure to control it. I don't accidentally walk into a room behind Snowball and get kicked and die.” He turned. “I'll be in my lab.”

“Oh, c'mon, Tony, don't be like that.” Steve held out his hand. “I have some sugar cubes, try to make friends with him. I'm sure he'll like you.”

Unfortunately, Tony was unable to resist Steve's smile when he was being earnest. He walked over next to Steve, and looked right into the creature's big, beady eyes.

Steve handed him a sugar cube, and Tony cleared his throat, feeling ridiculous as he held his hand up. “Eat up, big guy.”

Snowball leaned down, almost chomping down on his fingers, and only Tony's sense of self-preservation prevented him from snatching his hand away from those gigantic teeth. Snowball raised his head, staring straight at Tony, and Tony wondered if staring back could be perceived as a challenge.

“Great!” Steve praised, and Tony wasn't sure whether he was talking to him or the horse. Steve offered Snowball his own sugar cube, and Snowball actually licked it up, no sign of teeth. Then the horse sniffed at Steve's hand, nudging his hand, then his shoulder when Steve didn't give anything up.

“No, boy, I'm all out. We should get you some real food, though, let's go.” Steve cooed at his new best friend as he led him out. Snowball whinnied in response, as they left Tony alone in the room, blinking after them.

“JARVIS?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Did my boyfriend just ditch me for a horse?”

“I believe there's a TV program with a similar premise. 'It's Me or the Dog.'”

“Right. TiVo that for me.”

---

And that was how things went. On the first night, Snowball was nervous about his temporary housing, so Steve had stayed with him, until the horse had finally laid down and got some sleep. Tony had ran his hand through Steve's hair the next morning in greeting, and came away with a fistful of hay.

Then Steve patrolled the city with his new companion, and caused a sensation. Tony had seen, because the news reporters had found him and Snowball, being followed by what felt like a city block of children and their caretakers. When they'd interviewed Steve, he had nothing but praises for the mounted unit division and how much good they did for the city, and of course, taking the time to plug in various state horse rescues. Websites went down from the traffic, and donations to the organizations reached record levels.

“They asked if I wanted to go on a patrol every Saturday!” Steve told him, as Tony looked over the wall to watch him clean Snowball's hooves.

“That's great, Steve.”

Steve stood up, patting Snowball on his side.

“Are you sure you don't want to try riding him? He's a very calm horse, they wouldn't let him on the city streets otherwise.”

“I'm good, thanks.”

Steve looked a bit disappointed, and he better not keep that up or else Tony really would give in. “Bad experiences?”

“Not really. Mom had some interest, signed me up for equestrian classes when I was a kid. I was in the middle of my Arthurian phase, so of course I was all aboard.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying that phase is over?”

Tony ignored him. “Dad had no interest, of course. So then I got into cars, even though I couldn't drive then.”

“Right,” Steve said. He walked to Tony, leaning over the stall door, and brought Tony in for a kiss.

“What was that for?” Tony mumbled, when Steve let go.

“I felt like it,” Steve smiled.

“Oh, I'll show you what I feel like doing,” Tony grumbled, pulling Steve back in.

Steve began laughing halfway through, and Tony doubled his efforts to stop him, but Steve quickly broke the kiss, wheezing.

“That tickles, boy!” Steve laughed, rubbing Snowball's neck as he kept getting nuzzled. “Okay, okay, here, you get one too,” he said, and he leaned in and kissed the side of the horse's face.

Snowball raised its head to stare at Tony, and fine, if it was going to be like that, Tony was just going to stare right on back.

---

Steve was carefully cleaning up his grooming kit, looking forlornly at each brush and set of clippers before he set them away.

“You'll see him on Saturday,” Tony offered, feeling slightly guilty he was relived Snowball had gone back to his trainer and home. Just slightly.

To be fair, Snowball had seemed pleased, too, in whatever counted for happy in horse language, although he'd given Steve quite a number of nuzzles before being led off. He'd even snorted in Tony's direction until he was given a sugar cube, which counted as love.

“Yeah,” Steve said, and no, they were not going to have the dog, cat, turtle, or goldfish discussion again. “Well, I guess it's for the better. You not being a horse fan and all.”

“I don't dislike them,” Tony said. “I just prefer putting my life in the hands of something I can trust.” Like, say, the armor, or really, just the repulsor boots themselves were fine—

Tony wouldn't admit how loudly he yelped when the world went sideways. Steve grinned down at him, proud of ambushing his team leader with a sneak bridal carry.

“So, you mean, like this?” Steve asked.

Tony was dipped down even further, blood rushing to his head, barely a foot from the ground, but he couldn't find it in himself to care when Steve had finally decided it was time to kiss him.

“You're so embarrassing,” Tony mumbled when Steve righted him.

Steve just smiled. So, Tony had to make it as difficult as possible to carry him, wriggling and being distracting with his mouth and hands and making it generally difficult to hold onto. He knew Steve would never drop him.