Heaven's Feel Movies

[GarlandGreene]

They should have replaced the rape with a drug addiction and called it Heaven's Feel: Oblivion Recording. Pretty sure I read that in one of the early pages from this thread. Gave me a few chuckles.

Honestly, its pretty much because people have a filter that tries to say life can't be that bad, so if you go over a certain threshold the filter goes off. I echo the sentiments that this is a universe where shit is this bad, all the time. Children being used to experiment with magical disease, a guy who knocks up a one year old homunculus he basically molded into his wife and having a half breed homunculus daughter who was modified in the womb and then experimented on outside of it, orphans rotting in a basement alive, the list goes on. And I also echo the statement that there are far more extreme scenarios that people don't really blink an eye at and just read the story.
They distinctly show that she is a magical experiment, and that the scenes that show the familiars making her body respond with stimulation also say that she is being asphyxiated. Its uncomfortable because if someone was experimenting on the body of someone you knew like that, it wouldn't be pretty or nice. It would uncomfortable and vile, but that would be the point about why Sakura retreats from people, because its hard to feel proud of yourself when you are that degraded(kinda hot take, but its why Rin is terribad actually bringing her up out of the depression, trying to force her to feel dignified but not really grasping why its hard for her to feel proud, to have confidence, Shirou kinda sorta points it out but his admiration of Rin stops him from really hammering that point home for her).
That alienation would suck to live with, and its a part of her character that you have to see in order to get the whys and how's of her thought processes.
That said, Nasu does say that her story is sexual in nature, but its doesn't mean what's depicted isn't harmful. Sadists likely could get off to that, but people can get off to anything, so what's the point?

Don't forget the whole "taking out children's intestines so that they can be played like guitar strings" part to make sure the audience knows for certain that we're dealing with a sadistic killer here.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Honestly, its pretty much because people have a filter that tries to say life can't be that bad, so if you go over a certain threshold the filter goes off. I echo the sentiments that this is a universe where shit is this bad, all the time. Children being used to experiment with magical disease, a guy who knocks up a one year old homunculus he basically molded into his wife and having a half breed homunculus daughter who was modified in the womb and then experimented on outside of it, orphans rotting in a basement alive, the list goes on. And I also echo the statement that there are far more extreme scenarios that people don't really blink an eye at and just read the story.
They distinctly show that she is a magical experiment, and that the scenes that show the familiars making her body respond with stimulation also say that she is being asphyxiated. Its uncomfortable because if someone was experimenting on the body of someone you knew like that, it wouldn't be pretty or nice. It would uncomfortable and vile, but that would be the point about why Sakura retreats from people, because its hard to feel proud of yourself when you are that degraded(kinda hot take, but its why Rin is terribad actually bringing her up out of the depression, trying to force her to feel dignified but not really grasping why its hard for her to feel proud, to have confidence, Shirou kinda sorta points it out but his admiration of Rin stops him from really hammering that point home for her).
That alienation would suck to live with, and its a part of her character that you have to see in order to get the whys and how's of her thought processes.
That said, Nasu does say that her story is sexual in nature, but its doesn't mean what's depicted isn't harmful. Sadists likely could get off to that, but people can get off to anything, so what's the point?

This is why I hesitated to say it. I know that no matter how much I think life can't be that bad, it can be, and worse. I would hate to trivialize anyone's suffering, real or fictional, because of that. And yeah, I did feel distinctly uncomfortable during those Crest Worm scenes as most do and as was probably intended. Again, I'm not knocking on Sakura here.

[Altima of the Gates]

I might have worded that wrong. Really, I think Nasu got into the trap of using rape as a shorthand for grimdark in HF, even when he didn't need to. If I were to rewrite HF, I would have removed either the Shinji rape or the very sexual aspect of the Crest worms, but not both. The Crest Worms mechanics feel so hyperspecific to make it affect women in a kinky way, as opposed to men, who just get eaten.

Ah, but read the wording carefully on what the worms do, females who cannot sustain the them also die, that doesn't change, and again, before the school part, it said how they rummaged through her body trying to find energy and she was suffocating slowly. Plus Sakura upfront tells Shirou if she couldn't endure her "training" she would have died. They even have the wording made even more implicit in FGO, literally saying the host dies a hellish death.
I think I said this awhile ago, but maybe the memes occur more often because people think Sakura is having some orgasms and chills and thats it? When its implicitly said that she has known horrific pain? I mean, this is a girl who smiled as she ripped open her heart, giving mummy grandpa the chills. The one who said she was beaten to the point she could sense when people had hostile intent against her even while asleep(the scene where Shirou was coming to her room with the knife).
Thinking a person that damaged is just having some jolly orgasms is I think being slightly obtuse.

[TheSeaDragon]

Ah, but read the wording carefully on what the worms do, females who cannot sustain the them also die, that doesn't change, and again, before the school part, it said how they rummaged through her body trying to find energy and she was suffocating slowly. Plus Sakura upfront tells Shirou if she couldn't endure her "training" she would have died. They even have the wording made even more implicit in FGO, literally saying the host dies a hellish death.
I think I said this awhile ago, but maybe the memes occur more often because people think Sakura is having some orgasms and chills and thats it? When its implicitly said that she has known horrific pain? I mean, this is a girl who smiled as she ripped open her heart, giving mummy grandpa the chills. The one who said she was beaten to the point she could sense when people had hostile intent against her even while asleep(the scene where Shirou was coming to her room with the knife).
Thinking a person that damaged is just having some jolly orgasms is I think being slightly obtuse.

Trust me, Altima, im not defending the memes, they are super lame, i just wondered if they could have been avoided with some changes without affecting the essentials .

[Altima of the Gates]

You'd think that if it was something that nothing tangentially related to sex but you'd be wrong, but let's say the familiars were bees or something. No sexual connotations whatsoever.
Still lines up because Zouken uses a lot of bug familiars(we know now he also had giant spiders and it wasn't just worms or the cicadas/bee..things in Zero), the main thing is that her body is filled with a parasitic organism, so the people who dislike her anyway would just move to bee related memes (she still has a large bosom, so the slut memes wouldn't stop, they just would be bee related).
Its not a fair thing, but by virtue of being more curvy, the interpretation you see in a lot of media is that the curvier one is less intelligent, a slut or evil, hiding her vices from the MC.
Its kinda why I am rethinking a lot of things Nasu has said in the past based on these recent revelations. He said that HF was about how a man's dignity forgives a woman's transgressions which was already pretty yikes, and CCC being about the dark passions of women was basically seeming like he took Utena and went absolutely ham. So no, I don't really think just taking away the worms or the sexual nature of the route would eliminate the jokes.
Despite dark humor being quite a prevalent thing amongst this company's fandom community, I've been around long enough to see hypocrisy in more than a few instances.

[TheSeaDragon]

You win. I really cant argue

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Ah, fair. Yeah, I can't win either, and I take back most of what I said.

[Inuhanyou]

So I'm not the only one who thought Sakura's ordeal was slightly over the top? Either way, I do still feel for her and was invested in her struggle in HF, though I agree that HF seems to invalidate Shirou's growth in other routes and seemingly does not allow for middle ground between giving up his dream entirely and becoming Archer as a result.

I dont think it does. But its something that can be mistaken by the reader which i think is a flaw. In truth the end of each route shows a shirou that has surpassed archer(who is the barometer). And in this way is validated by having pride in the path they chose for themselves.

But of course how all 3 shirous get there is different. The main thing is that shirou must choose his own life and not just ape someone else to find some fake fufillment for his empty self whether its through choosing the heroic path or not

[warellis]

Ah, but read the wording carefully on what the worms do, females who cannot sustain the them also die, that doesn't change, and again, before the school part, it said how they rummaged through her body trying to find energy and she was suffocating slowly. Plus Sakura upfront tells Shirou if she couldn't endure her "training" she would have died. They even have the wording made even more implicit in FGO, literally saying the host dies a hellish death.

I think I said this awhile ago, but maybe the memes occur more often because people think Sakura is having some orgasms and chills and thats it? When its implicitly said that she has known horrific pain? I mean, this is a girl who smiled as she ripped open her heart, giving mummy grandpa the chills. The one who said she was beaten to the point she could sense when people had hostile intent against her even while asleep(the scene where Shirou was coming to her room with the knife).

Thinking a person that damaged is just having some jolly orgasms is I think being slightly obtuse.

Honestly, the worms were always creepy. They were just made worse I feel when somehow Zouken had them designed to integrate with females while with men, they just cripple them.

And it makes you wonder why the hell would would a 500-year old bug lich put in such a weirdly specific gender preference for his disgusting familiars.

Sakura feels like Nasu kind of wanted to go even more disturbing than the stuff with Kohaku or Fujino, like he had to one-up himself. Except the sexual aspects of the Crest Worms turn it into something almost gratuitous.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

I mean, the explanation does sort of make sense, since female bodies are designed to carry life and whatnot? The arousal parts, those come off as slightly gratuitous.

Also, you said my previous points better than I did.

[weeblord]

Since they decided to link sex with magecraft with the whole mana transfer aspect, the sexual nature of the worms makes sense to me. but the only girls get horny ;^) is silly.

[Altima of the Gates]

Well that's just it, the problem is that its not that much different, since the end result is the same. Having your brain stem eaten or being stimulated to the point of brain death while your life force is being sucked out of you still means death.
But Kariya is used as an example for males when even he says flat out that Sakura handles this better not because she is female, but because she has better potential, meaning you'd need someone male with the same or more equal potential as Sakura to have a good comparative example. Plus Zouken specifically was surprised Sakura didn't bite it the first time she was assimilated.
That is my main point there warellis, I think peeps get the wrong idea entirely. Again Sakura says it with Shirou when they talk one on one in HF, it didn't matter to her how tough it was, if she couldn't endure it she would have died. Women won't be let off, they will also get brain death and die, becoming husks. Its essentially a logical argument, the better host lives (but in this case all hosts will succumb eventually anyway based on the verbiage about them from that fgo craft essence, and Sakura did imply she would succumb eventually in one of the early interludes, Nasu himself pretty much spelled it out clearly when asked in that interview from HF2 iirc) the worse host dies.

[TheSeaDragon]

I dont think it does. But its something that can be mistaken by the reader which i think is a flaw. In truth the end of each route shows a shirou that has surpassed archer(who is the barometer). And in this way is validated by having pride in the path they chose for themselves.

But of course how all 3 shirous get there is different. The main thing is that shirou must choose his own life and not just ape someone else to find some fake fufillment for his empty self whether its through choosing the heroic path or not

Yup, and thats the relevant part of each rute not the "horny" bits , they are just the hook

[GarlandGreene]

not the "horny" bits , they are just the hook

Wait, you're telling me that three characters dropping their pants and doing the horizontal mambo in the middle of a life threatening escape sequence isn't part of the protagonist's development?

[Inuhanyou]

The waifus are there to to fundamentally help shirou in each route sure....horizontal mambo not exactly neccesary to that end

Crafting realta nua must have been pretty easy for nasu considering its almost delete drag and drop

[weeblord]

On the other hand takeuchi and tsukuri were putting in big work

[Inuhanyou]

Some of their best work in the vn in certain instances imo

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

The H-scenes or Realta Nua?

[Inuhanyou]

Latter

[Altima of the Gates]

Makes me wonder how many versions of Realta Nua we will get, since it wouldn't surprise me if they do a total remake and just name it something else.