YMMV / Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel

• Adorkable: Shirou, Saber, Rin, Taiga and Sakura all have their moments:
  • Whenever Shirou is dealing with the opposite sex.
  • Taiga and her very embarrassing actions.
  • Saber thanking Sakura for the food and asking if she can help in any way.
  • Rin getting surprised when Shirou asks for her help.
  • Sakura not used to being asked by others for her help or advice.
  • Shirou interacting with Sakura and Rider during breakfast.
• Awesome Music:
  • Yuki Kajiura's score captures perfectly the ominous atmosphere of this route.
  • Aimer's ending theme for the first film, Hana no Uta ("Song of the Flower"). This is also composed by Kajiura, by the way.
  • The song that plays during the fight between True Assassin and Lancer stands out for how unique the track is, mixing different styles, styles, and moods into the song.
  • "She is Her Hero", the wonderful and triumphant instrumental piece that plays as Rin and Archer charge in to save Shirou and Sakura. It wonderfully encapsulates how much Sakura still idolizes her big sister despite her jealousy and their estrangement.
  • She Rules the Battlefield and He Comes Back Again and Again, the epic themes that play during the battle between Berserker and Saber Alter.
  • I Beg You, the ending theme of lost butterfly perfectly captures the view and despair of Sakura Matou's life throughout the film. Another knock out from Aimer, and it made the #1 spot on the Oricon music charts upon the movie's release in January 2019, the first time she's achieved that.
  • "Hope and Despair", which as the name puts it, befits the desperate nature of the fight and aftermath, especially as it becomes clear who Archer is as he says goodbye to the unconscious Rin and sacrifices himself to save Shirou.
  • We only have a teaser version of "Haru wa Yuku" ("Spring Goes"), Aimer's theme for spring song, but even in just the small snippet we have, the raw emotion is astounding. The full version is also a rare case where something manages to be awesome, heartwarming and a Tear Jerker at the same time. A perfect fit for the absolute roller-coaster ride of emotion that makes up the last third of Heaven's Feel.
  • The Four Rings and the preceding She Holds the Black Holy Sword, two incredibly awesome tracks that plays during Saber Alter and Rider's clash, the former involving a One-Woman Wail as the battle begins and Rider uses her speed to strike Alter from multiple angles and the latter having a full-on orchestra with Ominous Latin Chanting that reached its peak as Rider invokes her Noble Phantasm Bellerophon and burst through Alter's Excalibur (which annihilated her in the Fate route back when she was regular Saber) with the help of Shirou's Rho Aias.
  • And He Came Back Again is a great call-back to Berserker's theme in the previous movie, this time appearing as Dark Sakura summoned a blackened Berserker to chase down Shirou, Kirei and Ilya
  • She Came to Save You, a short yet fitting theme for showcasing the Jeweled Sword of Zelretch Rin was using to dispel Sakura's giant summons.
  • Why I fight, or in other words, Yuki Kajiura's version of the legendary Emiya theme, which appears on the third movie when Shirou finally releases Archer's arm to defeat Berserker, taking his remaining 9 lives in a single blow. Pretty much all VN readers agree this was one of the highlights of the movie, even if the scene is kind of short and doesn't let the theme to shine as much as Hideyuki Fukasawa's version for Unlimited Blade Works.
• Broken Base:
  • The intro to the first movie is a lengthy backstory to the relationship of Shirou and Sakura, namely how they met, and why Sakura developed feelings for Shirou. On one hand some viewers loved the Adaptation Expansion of their relationship, as well as argue it was necessary since unlike Saber and Rin, Shirou already had a bond with Sakura before the start of the story, so having the audience see them getting together would feel jarring without context. (And speaking of context, it also provides a bit of context for the relationship between Shirou and Shinji, making it a bit clearer how they were once genuine friends who drifted apart as Shinji grew bitter over his circumstances and over Shirou's skills; many people appreciate this.) The other side of viewers dislikes it, mainly because it takes up a good chunk of the movie and comes across as Padding, while also being, for some, unnecessary to tell since most people seeing the movie will have no problem figuring out that Sakura and Shirou have a connection and already existing bond. The one thing both sides seem to agree with though, is that the sequence is just a bit too long for the length of the film.
  • The film trilogy as a whole is seen as either an excellent adaptation which expands on some of the most interesting parts of the original route, or a glorified highlight reel of all the route's most important scenes that takes out all of the character moments.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • In Lost Butterfly, right after pushing him away from Sakura, Shirou gets to land a clean punch right into Shinji's face (with an injured hand at that) that sends him right to the floor. The amount of satisfaction of the audience goes off the charts at that moment!
  • Kirei destroying Zouken after effortlessly defeating True Assassin. As horrible as Kirei is, Zouken's so much worse, so Zouken being burned to death by Kirei's prayer is awesome.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • To promote lost butterfly, ufotable put out an endless clicker browser game, Kokuinchu Buster, where you protect Sakura from her infamous worms.
  • Sakura eating Gilgamesh as a sign that she is beginning to fall to the Shadow? Yikes. Sakura performing a cheerful little "nom" while doing this? A bit cute, if a little funny.
  • Also from the same scene as above: Gilgamesh having his leg ripped off by Sakura? Horrific. Gilgamesh having his leg ripped off, and being more insulted that he almost fell and bowed his head to her? Some of the finest Black Comedy of the year.
• Fan Nickname: "Heaven's Funds", continuing the tradition of "Unlimited Budget Works".
• She Really Can Act: Cristina Valenzuela is a somewhat divisive voice actress, but her performance as Sakura in the English dub has attracted universal acclaim, to the point where some even think she's better than the original Japanese seiyuu.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • Shirou falling in love with Sakura was rather rushed in the original novel. He just suddenly finds Sakura super hot and within a short time, he's so in love with her, that he's willing to throw his ideals away to protect her. It comes across less as Shirou awakening to a Childhood Friend Romance he just never noticed, but instead having a switch go off by the writers to make him fall for Sakura. The films heavily focus on their backstory in an effort to specifically avert this.
  • Byakuya Matou was portrayed in the novel as a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who pretended to care about Shinji only to cut all ties with him after he found out the truths of the family. The manga adaptation of Heaven's Feel shows Shinji's backstory from a neutral point of view (while in the novel it was told from Shinji's point of view); revealing that, while distant, Byakuya did care about Shinji at some point, or at least wanted him to have a normal life away from magecraft.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Lancer's particular way of running while chasing True Assassin has caught on the fans and staff members alike to the point Delightworks made a web-browser game out of it. Play it here.
  • Meet the Kouhai^{Explanation (SPOILERS)}The scene where Sakura Matou dreams about being a princess only to reveal that the "candy" she was supposedly eating is actually human limbs has been compared to TF2's Meet the Pyro.
• Narm:
  • The first time Shirou has a flashback to the Fuyuki city fireworks to establish his thoughts and feelings on the situation, but every time it's repeated after, it reduces the impact for viewers and comes across as kind of annoying, and funny after a certain point.
  • The battle cries made by True Assassin during his fight with Lancer are just too funny sounding for how intimidating he is supposed to be, as his cries sound far more out of pitch. Thankfully he talks normally after said fight, but it's still jarring.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Just like Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works], it's inevitable given the original visual novel with several possible love interests.
  • It's Shirou/Sakura's time to shine as the Official Couple of this adaptation, and while it's certainly popular, there are viewers (particularly from the UBW anime) who think Shirou has more chemistry with Rin or (For Fate route fans) Saber.
  • There are also those who think Saber Alter would make a very interesting girlfriend for Shirou given how they both abandon their former ideals. This gets more fuel poured on it in spring song when during their battle, Rider taunts Saber Alter by suggestively teasing to her that she (Rider) knows Shirou better than his former Servant did, which evokes a near jealous response from her.
  • Not to mention Rider, who gets paired with either Shirou, Sakura, or Shirou and Sakura.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The decision to remove most of Shirou's bonding scenes with Illya in lost butterfly, particularly the "Die Lorelei" scene, struck a lot of VN readers the wrong way considering their relationship forms one of the key emotional cores of Heaven's Feel. The director's official explanation for why they were cut was that they would take away from Shirou and Sakura's relationship, which fans felt was unjustified and a form of Die for Our Ship.
  • The third movie, Spring song, is the one that shows the most obvious signs of being a heavily Compressed Adaptation, with the skipped content from the previous two movies catching up with it, as a result. In particular, VN readers were most unhappy with the final fight between Shirou and Kotomine being greatly shortened and simplified as it is the culmination of all the themes of the Fate/stay night trilogy while anime-only viewers were completely perplexed at the trilogy's ending of how exactly Shirou was able to be revived after destroying the Greater Grail thanks to the movie only using a brief montage of events with vague narration that doesn't actually explain anything.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: A criticism shared by the source material. Heaven's Feel is by far the darkest route of the game, and the sheer amount of characters who either die horribly and/or become evil is so high, it goes straight over the top for some people, making it difficult for them to care about what's happening. The first two films, even though they try to lighten the mood in a couple of places, are still so incredibly dark overall, they have the exact same effect, sometimes even more due to the graphic violence displayed, which holds no punches. Spring Song has somewhat alleviated this, adapting the happier ending of the visual novel route; however, the fact remains that the first two movies are extraordinarily dark and somewhat hard to watch at times.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: It's made by ufotable, after all. All the fight scenes look amazing. Of particular note is the Lancer vs True Assassin fight. And even that pales in comparison to the Saber Alter vs. Berserker battle in the second movie. Then the Saber Alter vs. Rider fight in the third movie makes those look like amateur work!