I just finished watching Fate/Stay Night Heaven's feel: Spring Song at the movie.
If you don't know about FSN, I recommend you to take a look at the franchise. It is probably one of the most popular anime franchise in Japan produced by TYPE-MOON. Originally a visual novel, but the company has expanded its universe into various anime and games. Heaven's feel is the third route of the visual novel, which has never seen an official translation to the west.
The premise of FSN is quite interesting: a bunch of magicians in a fictional city in Japan summoned heroes from various periods of human's history, battling to death to win the ultimate prize: The Holy Grail which is said able to grant any wishes to its winners. However the rules of the games are not really that straightforward. Given that this is a fantasy anime, TYPE MOON established a lot lot lot rules into its universe, which may or may not be consistent, and there always new plot device being introduced to resolve magic-related plot. I like how the aesthetics and references they used to establish their universe, however at the same time I cannot really fathom whether they follow their own rules.
Anyway, back to the main topic that I want to focus on this blog post, Heaven's Feel route.
This route focuses on the relationship of the third girl in FSN: Sakura Matou
Care to guess the character personality from that image alone?
Sakura Matou is set up as your junior. She's there to call you "senpai" throughout the series and as you suspected, has always harbored a feeling toward you.
Sakura has always been considered as a polarizing character as her role is never clearly defined in the previous FSN installment. She's just there as the girl who will love you no matter what you're doing.
However, Sakura's true role has been obscured because Heaven's feel route only recently being adapted into anime, and we finally know the depth of Sakura as a character.
It turned out when Sakura was a child, she was separated from her true family, Tohsaka family. Under the "care" of Matou household, Sakura became a subject of abuse and magical experiment. She was basically a rape survivor.
Her passive and submissive personality stemmed from the trauma and the abuse she withstood throughout the her childhood. However, this is where I think the writers miused the rape as drama trope. Even though Sakura has always been subject of abuse, not even once during the series, her abuse was addressed properly. In the 2nd movie, she confessed to the main character (Shirou) that "she is no longer a virgin". Here we have Sakura, who has a history of sexual abuse and mishuman treatments, and the first sign of help she said to her love interest is "NOT A VIRGIN". WTF writers??
Unfortunately, this is where the writing goes downhill. Rape as drama is used to accumulate Sakura's hatred to the world which made her the arc villain. She killed people who abused her and wanted to destroy the world. However, it is quite clear that Sakura's tragic story has never been about being a rape survivor, it's about male fantasy fulfillment of being solution to rape survivor problem: all you need to cure your "abuse" is to find the guy who "make love" to you properly! (she was raped by her stepbrother numerous times).
While I could appreciate the visual style of the movies (it's ufotable!) but honestly how the writers treat Sakura in this series is a garbage. Sakura is not really a bad character, her writers are just sexist and the only way they know to portray a strong woman is to made them suffer through sexual abuses and insert a male companion to "cure" all the traumas.
This trope needs to die.
If you don't know about FSN, I recommend you to take a look at the franchise. It is probably one of the most popular anime franchise in Japan produced by TYPE-MOON. Originally a visual novel, but the company has expanded its universe into various anime and games. Heaven's feel is the third route of the visual novel, which has never seen an official translation to the west.
The premise of FSN is quite interesting: a bunch of magicians in a fictional city in Japan summoned heroes from various periods of human's history, battling to death to win the ultimate prize: The Holy Grail which is said able to grant any wishes to its winners. However the rules of the games are not really that straightforward. Given that this is a fantasy anime, TYPE MOON established a lot lot lot rules into its universe, which may or may not be consistent, and there always new plot device being introduced to resolve magic-related plot. I like how the aesthetics and references they used to establish their universe, however at the same time I cannot really fathom whether they follow their own rules.
Anyway, back to the main topic that I want to focus on this blog post, Heaven's Feel route.
This route focuses on the relationship of the third girl in FSN: Sakura Matou
Care to guess the character personality from that image alone?
Sakura Matou is set up as your junior. She's there to call you "senpai" throughout the series and as you suspected, has always harbored a feeling toward you.
Sakura has always been considered as a polarizing character as her role is never clearly defined in the previous FSN installment. She's just there as the girl who will love you no matter what you're doing.
However, Sakura's true role has been obscured because Heaven's feel route only recently being adapted into anime, and we finally know the depth of Sakura as a character.
It turned out when Sakura was a child, she was separated from her true family, Tohsaka family. Under the "care" of Matou household, Sakura became a subject of abuse and magical experiment. She was basically a rape survivor.
Her passive and submissive personality stemmed from the trauma and the abuse she withstood throughout the her childhood. However, this is where I think the writers miused the rape as drama trope. Even though Sakura has always been subject of abuse, not even once during the series, her abuse was addressed properly. In the 2nd movie, she confessed to the main character (Shirou) that "she is no longer a virgin". Here we have Sakura, who has a history of sexual abuse and mishuman treatments, and the first sign of help she said to her love interest is "NOT A VIRGIN". WTF writers??
Unfortunately, this is where the writing goes downhill. Rape as drama is used to accumulate Sakura's hatred to the world which made her the arc villain. She killed people who abused her and wanted to destroy the world. However, it is quite clear that Sakura's tragic story has never been about being a rape survivor, it's about male fantasy fulfillment of being solution to rape survivor problem: all you need to cure your "abuse" is to find the guy who "make love" to you properly! (she was raped by her stepbrother numerous times).
While I could appreciate the visual style of the movies (it's ufotable!) but honestly how the writers treat Sakura in this series is a garbage. Sakura is not really a bad character, her writers are just sexist and the only way they know to portray a strong woman is to made them suffer through sexual abuses and insert a male companion to "cure" all the traumas.
This trope needs to die.
