Pira's Tumblr Hellhole

oh now THIS I can do

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN. often called the most boring route which, I guess yeah because it’s the first route of the first game so it ends up being exposition central. it has its moments and it’s not bad per se but it hasn’t aged that well and the rest of the series has caught up with it since it’s not the entry point for new fans anymore so like half the route’s content and plot twists end up being stuff that is already known from other installments. I still think it’d be nice if ufotable made an ova or something just to complete the set, and also because heaven’s feel actually mirrors fate route on a lot of points so I feel the hf movies aren’t going to be at their best if you haven’t gone over fate route beforehand. if you skip over the outdated exposition you can easily fit all of it in ~10 episodes cause it’s pretty short. 6.5/10 if looked at on its own, but its importance as the base on which later routes build can’t be underestimated 

my personal favourite route even tho its heroine is the worst part of it. with fate route getting the exposition out of the way ubw can go at a faster pace and is more action oriented. the shirou-archer and related archer-lancer conflict is one of my favourites in all of fate and “here I come, king of heroes- do you have enough weapons in stock?” is ICONIC. rin got massively gimped as heroine cause nasu didn’t seem to dare actually letting her be flawed and shirou ended up too focused on his own conflict to form like a real bond with her but that’s a horse I beat to death long ago. the examination of what makes a hero is in general one of my fav themes in fate and ubw obviously delivers there but what I especially love in ubw is the theme of “don’t ‘welcome to the real world’ me asshole, the real world shouldn’t be like this”. 9/10 would be a 10 if rin had like, any character development

this one is… so stressful to read, which is GOOD cause that’s the point but that also means my reread is going at a pace of 3 scenes per 4 months. heaven’s feel throws every convention that fate and ubw set up out the goddamn window by immediately killing off like half the cast including powerhouses like gilgamesh and turning an ideological conflict into a really viscerally personal one. the final conflict isn’t a hero versus a world ending calamity, it’s a bunch of traumatised kids with bad blood between them and the rest of the world caught in the crossfire. “the embodiment of all the world’s evils was a victim” is a really powerful statement to make and where fate and ubw only really asked “what makes a hero” hf hammers in the corresponding question of “what makes a villain”. 8.5/10 it’s an incredibly strong thematic ending to the game as a whole but it’s just, not my favourite

jesus christ look what you did, you got me started. here’s a readmore to save your dashboard and rip mobile users cause I got some opinions on fate alright