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3rd Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel Anime Film Packing Theaters Despite Government Warnings

Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike made an urgent request on Wednesday for the people of Tokyo to stay indoors this weekend, after 41 new cases of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) were confirmed in Tokyo the same day — the largest spike within a single day. Koike said that Tokyo is facing the risk of seeing an "explosive" rise of infections unless proper steps are taken to slow the spread of the virus.

Despite the governor's warnings, theaters playing Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel III. spring song, the third film in the Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel film trilogy, are selling out. Multiple sessions for the film's opening day on Saturday were completely full as of Thursday morning at Tachikawa Cinema City, Toho Cinemas Shinjuku, Shinjuku Wald9, and other major theaters.

Image from Tachikawa Cinema City online ticket booking service

Japanese distributors have delayed the release of such recent films as Shimajirō to Sora Tobu Fune (Shimajirō and the Flying Ship), Eiga Doraemon: Nobita no Shin Kyōryū, (Doraemon the Movie: Nobita's New Dinosaur), Gekijō-ban Ultraman Taiga: New Gene Climax (Ultraman Taiga The Movie: New Generation Climax), Eiga Precure Miracle Leap: Minna to Fushigi na 1-nichi (Everyone and the Mysterious 1 Day), Onward, and Dolittle. They have also delayed the release of the upcoming films Sonic the Hedgehog, Little Women, No Time to Die, Mulan, A Quiet Place Part II, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway and Looking for Magical DoReMi.

The first Heaven's Feel film, Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel I. presage flower, opened at #1 at the Japanese box office by both attendance and box office earnings in October 2017. The film sold a total of 980,000 tickets to earn 1.5 billion yen (about US$13.5 million). The second film, Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel II. lost butterfly, opened in January 2019. The film has sold more than 1 million tickets and earned more than 1.5 billion yen.

Tomonori Sudō (Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works, Fate/Zero animation director) directed the films, and ufotable animated them. Yuki Kajiura (Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works theme song composer, Fate/Zero music and theme song composer) composed the music. Takahiro Miura provided the storyboards.

The first reported cases of COVID-19 were in Wuhan, China in December, and then the disease began to spread in varying rates and intensities across many parts of the globe through incubation in human hosts. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a world health emergency on January 30, and announced on March 11 that it is classifying the outbreak as a pandemic. As of Wednesday, the WHO reported that there are 416,686 infected individuals worldwide. 18,589 individuals have died from the disease.

As of Wednesday, the WHO reported that Japan has 1,193 cases of COVID-19 with 43 deaths, including 65 new infections confirmed in the past day. These numbers do not include the number of cases from the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Yokohama. That cruise ship had 712 infected passengers with seven deaths.

[Via Yaraon!]