The movie was good. It was pretty rushed at the beginning. Everything that ufotable already adapted from UBW which was shared content with Heaven's Feel was compressed into a montage. I'm saying all the entire events of UBW episodes 00-03 were shown as a montage, including Lancer vs Archer, Lancer killing Shirou, Rin saving him, Shirou returning home, Lancer attacks again, and summoning of Saber, and Saber attacking Archer. I thought it was really lazy of ufotable to literally recycle the same footage from UBW tv series in this movie but OKAY. You do what you need to do, I guess.

So basically they have a lot of boring classroom life setup in the first 15 minutes of the movie, showing some flashbacks where Sakura met Shirou, and then forwarding to present day with Shirou doing his normal Day 0 stuff. Once Shirou starts cleaning the archery dojo after school, that's when the UBW tv series montage begins, and then the first "new" footage begins right at the church with Shirou and Rin entering while Saber stands watch.

Shirou's talk with Kotomine is extremely abbreviated, just a minute or so. Kotomine reveals the last Holy Grail war ended in the fire, so Shirou without any hesitation decides he's going to fight. Then we get Yorokobe Shounen, and he leaves. Interestingly enough. ufotable added a scene where Ilya is waiting for them outside the church and chatting with Saber while they are in there. She asks Saber if she remembers anything about 'Einzbern', and Saber looks troubled but does not answer. Then Illya says 'Well, you wouldn't remember anyway', not knowing that Saber retains her memories as a Servant because she is not yet dead. Then once Rin & Shirou come out, Illya rather unnecessarily uses her white thread magic to slam the church gate shut behind them. Then, a rather abbreviated Saber vs Berserker begins, nothing like the drawn out battle we saw in UBW, ending with Shirou getting graphically hit in the guts (entrails and everything). The lifted censor restrictions of not airing on TV really allows ufotable to depict some nasty looking blood and gore in this movie, so I'm pleased about that.


Speaking of Illya, the whole movie has heavy callbacks to Fate/Zero in both plot and soundtrack, so you had better have seen all of UBW and Zero in order to understand what the fuck is happening. Also probably at least half the soundtrack is literally the Fate/Zero soundtrack, which IMO smacks of laziness on Kajiura's part. Maybe composing fresh music for three whole movies is too much work, so she's doing half the amount and taking the rest from Fate/Zero?

After the Berserker fight, Shirou wakes up completely healed in a park (?) and parts ways with Tohsaka. It threw me off a bit until I realized that ufotable compressed the timeline by combining Day 3 and Day 4. Instead of Rin bringing him back home and staying through the night, Shirou apparently recovers from a wound that rips out his entrails immediately and then goes on patrol with Saber that very same night and runs into Shinji & Rider, who was sucking Ayako's blood. That fight plays out like the VN, where Saber one-shots Rider because she's super weak under Shinji's control. Fate/Zero track used here verbatim. There is definitely a bit of humor here when it's seen how easily defeated Rider is, and how incompetent Shinji is. Zouken shows up briefly, and shows much less compassion for Shinji here than in the VN. Shirou gets the false impression that Rider is gone and Shinji is done. He takes Ayako back to the church for Kotomine to treat her, and we get a brief glimpse of Gilgamesh just lounging around and smirking. Kotomine treats Ayako and then has another short talk with Shirou, revealing that he was in the last War with Kiritsugu and how that went.

Shirou comes out and Saber also briefly reveals that she was Kiritsugu's servant in the last war, and it's implied she also told him about Illya. But he still wants to become a hero of justice so it doesn't bother him at all.

Then we get Day 5, which the movie compresses alot. I think the first thing we see is Shirou going to school, begging Rin for a consultation. He tells her about Shinji, and that he's worried about Sakura. She advises him to let Sakura stay at their house. There is no visit with Illya in the park, in fact Illya does not show up for the rest of the movie. That night, he introduces Saber as Kiritsugu's acquaintance and pretty much orders Sakura to stay over at his house. Fuji-Nee is okay with it, teasing Shirou about Sakura.

Nighttime on Day 5 - Ryuudou Temple. It's great that we actually get to see what happened at Ryuudou temple in real time, instead of in an interlude or flashback. It's awesome seeing True Assassin claw his way out of Fake Assasin, though I actually expected it to be more gruesome than it was. Lots of blood, it basically looks like an alien from the Alien movies exploded out of Fake Assassin's chest.

Then we actually see how True Assassin took down Caster & Kuzuki. Basically he cut up Kuzuuki to pieces so he was unable to move but still alive, and then threatened Caster with his life. Caster then surprisingly stabbed herself with Rule Breaker, intending to kill herself to save Kuzuki I guess. Assassin then takes out them both. We see the first black thing creeping on the floor but I think that was meant to be Zouken and not the Shadow.

That bleeds right into Day 6 which is entirely skipped except for the scene where Shinji comes to retreive Sakura and slaps her, causing Shirou to get real mad (but not punch him!!) and then Shinji whispers in Shirou's ear "I see you wanted her some more, that's why you kept her!" or something to that effect. So they were really keeping the sexual aspect her, because Shinji is implying that Shirou wanted to fuck her some more and that's why he kept her at his house. This line would have been changed if they weren't going to keep the sexual stuff, so it's a good harbinger of things to come.

That's all Shirou did on Day 6 but we do get this glorious Lancer vs Assassin. I'm not sure why Assassin was out and about but we see him perching in the same harbor/loading area on top of the big red crane where Kiritsugu and Maya were in Fate/Zero for the Lancer fight back then. Lancer finds Assassin and they have this crazy chase/battle sequence that goes through the entire Shinto city, notably on a truck on the highway that's carrying cars which Lancer utterly destroys. I was really perplexed as to why they changed the setting for this battle away from Ryuudou temple, but Assassin eventually led him there, where he gets consumed by the shadow and Assassin takes his heart. It's an absolutely beautiful battle and the best one in the whole movie. I don't think it needed to be drawn out so much but there is not a lot of action in the first third of Heavens Feel so they had to expand on one of the battles and this is the one they chose.

Day 7 - Rin reports to Shirou at lunchtime that she went to Ryudou and saw that Caster had been killed. This is the first time Archer appears in the whole fucking movie, and it's about time.
Rin and Shirou agree to continue cooperating.

Without any explanation as to why he knew to go there, Shirou enters the chinese restaurant to meet Kotomine for a lovely but abbreviated Mapo Tofu scene. Kotomine clearly gets hot and bothered from the food and even unzips his zipper all the way down to his chest in some pretty clear fanservice. He reveals to Shirou that his Lancer has been killed, and urges Shirou to pursue Zouken. Not nearly enough exposition happens here.

At this point I forget exactly how, but Shirou and Rin end up in the park to confront Zouken who is manipulating Caster's corpse. This is a well animated fight scene and Caster's magic looks great. Then we get... THE SHADOW. I had always though the shadow looks so hokey and dumb in the VN, and was hoping ufotable would do something to change its look and make it better. But no, they keep it looking exactly the same. Except, they do have nice animation showing how fast the shadow can expand on the ground and cover distances. The shadow swallows Caster's corpse instantly. Zouken flees in disbelief, after he's cut in half by Archer. Shirou pushes Rin out of the way of the shadow but is clearly shown to step onto it, which gives him the brief glimpse of maggoty rabbits (not clear at all what imagery it was supposed to be unless you've read the VN). Then he returns home with Saber and Sakura's up and waiting for them, and she yells at Saber.

Immediately after, there's a scene which is supposed to contain the important chat between Zouken and Assassin that explains both of their motives, but it's totally chopped short in this movie. Zouken does not explain at all what moves him. He just consumes the unfortunate woman for a new body, and then comments to Assassin that "You must dislike having such a master that must consume people to maintain his rotting body" and Assassin's like "Nope, I don't mind." So.... they must be saving Zouken's motivations for the second movie or something. That part is too important to skip.

Day 8 - final day covered by this movie.
Shirou and Rin meet and school and decide to keep working together to investigate the shadow. Sakura collapses and is put to bed by Shirou. Luckily, she only collapses once in this movie instead of eight million times.

Then, the climax of this movie. Shirou & Saber go to Ryuudou temple at night. It's snowing and the animation is very lovely. Shirou is ambushed by Zouken, in a rather short fight (which is good because the VN dragged it too long). Shirou realizes he can't fight off all the worms with a stick and attempts to summon Saber with his Command Spell. It fails, because Saber just got swallowed up by the shadow. Her battle with the shadow was really short and I was kind of disappointed they didn't show more. Assassin taunted her with Zabiniya but that wasn't really shown either.

Before Shirou can really absorb the fact that he's lost Saber, Assassin comes back to kill him and Zouken leaves. Then we finally get a powerful Rider! Her fight contains the first new music I really remember from this movie, and it's vaguely middle-eastern sounding. Thsi fight plays out just like the VN, with her throwing around Assassin with her chains in circles, and it's great. However, she does not talk to Shirou at all, or help him get home in any way. She only asks if he's okay, and when he says he is, she disappears. She does not reveal that her master ordered her to help him.

On the way out of Ryuudou, Shirou is calling for Saber, not wanting to face that she's gone. Then the Shadow shows up (in its person form, the one that looks so silly). But when the movie drops all sound and has it silently appear in the background, the Shadow can be really creepy as fuck. I still think it looks dumb though. Shirou actually approaches the shadow like the dumb fuck he is, but it disappears before he reaches it. Sakura is shown to be in bed, sweating and gasping during this sequence.

We see a short scene of Saber in the darkness, reaching for something she believes is the Grail. But then her Alter version (no armor) appears and tells her to give up.

Finally, we get the epilogue.

There's a short short scene of Illya in her castle looking out on the forest and telling her maids that she wants to go into town tomorrow. This scene is really random and I think ufotable just shows us this to make sure we don't forget about Illya, and that they haven't forgotten either. I suppose Illya will be in the next movie a lot more.

Shirou staggers home in the snow, and Sakura is outside waiting for him in front of the house with an umbrella. She yells at him for being so careless of his health, and takes him inside. The End, credits roll.
There is not anything of importance said in this scene, but it's beautifully animated and is supposed to be the proper ending of the movie. But to me it's a really weak ending. That's the downside of chopping up Heavens Feel into three parts, where we all know the main meat of the story does not come until at least the latter half of the plot. So the first of three movies was always going to be a weak movie with not much going on. I suppose they only place they could end it is with Saber being taken by the shadow. Still feels unsatisfying though.