Category: Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya 3rei

I will be the first to admit that this season of this series disappointed me. I still stand by my word on this being better than previous seasons of the show but watching it fold out in animation has made me begin to think I was overstating just how good it really was. Though part of the problem is that Sliver Link really cannot match the level of quality of Ufotables adaptions though at times they can reach it temporarily. At the end of the series it’s clear that the budget or time constraints got too tight and sadly they ended up ruining what was to be the best moment this season had to offer. I will give credit where credit’s due as Silver Link did deliver on providing a new version of the Emiya theme. To anime only viewers this may have been a good scene but to those who have read the manga we know as to how good it’s supposed to be. The events may play out the same but how they were shown is worlds apart. You can take a quick look at chapter 23 of the Drei manga and you will likely see what I mean. You would be surprised in how a change of framing can affect a scene.

Overall the climax played out decently with naturally a Deus Ex Machina by the name of Tanaka needed to turn the tides. Bit confused on why Julian gave permission for Beatrix to vaporize both Illya and Miyu with a thunderbolt when he intends to use them as holy grails. His motives still remain unclear as well as he states that even if Illya can save Miya and the world then that’s all she will be able to save which is a bit to cryptic to pick out his true intent. Still it rather annoys me the small changes Sliver link makes that only really serve to worsen the series. For one they have always tended to cut out a bulk of the humor and treat it a bit more seriously when the manga tended to throw out jokes even at the dire points of the story. If one thing suffered in these adaptations it’s certainly the humor. They also have this strange tendency to add a big friendship speech at the end of each season that was never in the original material.

Here they have Miyu giving one to Shirou which really did feel like they added it merely to eat up some spare time. Another thing is the fanservice, I would say there was no fanservice in the manga because their most certainly definitely was but in these adaptations it really has been turned up a notch. For example this episode had a small extra scene showing Rin and Luvia in the bath for pretty much no real reason. But especially undignified with the Miyu scenes in this season as I notice a small shot in the last episode of Miyu struggling in the mud as it drags her down and they decided to add a blush to her cheeks which seems to suggest that “Yeah, she’s into this”. I am not looking too much into that, go ahead and see it yourself. I am not foolish enough to believe this show got four seasons because it’s Fate related and people were in it for the story. But can we not have some self respect here? If someone calls this show Loli porn I want to be able to deny it without hesitating to think about it.

Now there’s word that a Prisma Illya movie is in the works which actually has me intrigued. The only material left of the manga is a flashback arc with Shirou telling his story as shown by the end of this series. Quite frankly this flashback arc is the best part of the entire series and the choice to make it a movie may have been quite wise. That way they can give it the budget it needs so we don’t have a repeat of what happened here. But also this flashback arc is too short to fit into another season and if they don’t shove anime original content in it then it should fit nicely into a hour and a half or two hour movie. (The only anime original content I want in my Fate adaptations is more fight animation.) The way the flashback is structured as well makes it fairly self contained and manages to provide a satisfying climax which should serve as a great final act for the movie. All and all I approve this move but remain skeptical that Sliver Link can pull it off. I am also more than a little worried that they might try to shove in more fanservice into the story and I have made my stance on that point clear enough.

I am not really in a mood to write a review of this one so I might forgo doing it. Sorry to let down all five of you who actually care about these reviews.(Five may be a generous number) For the most part I covering this series was for my own self indulgence but even then I was surprised at just how little I could say about it. I thought I would be able to blab on and on about Fate material but as the pace slowed down I found myself with little to work with. Maybe I will be able to indulge myself with the fate material coming next year as we ain’t doe with this franchise yet. We got the heaven’s feel movies, a Prisma Illya movie and a Fate/Extra tv series coming. On that last one I couldn’t really care to be honest as the story in that game wasn’t noticeable and pretty much the only redeeming factor would be red Saber. A Fate/Apocrypha adaption would be a much better choice seeing as it’s the closest thing to what people could consider a Fate/Zero 2. Well till then people.

The final battle begins and this show yet again gives me little to work with. It’s funny but being a Fate fan I thought I would be able to go on endlessly about this show with little effort. Yet the pacing of the last few episodes has been dreadfully slow and not a lot has actually happened. That said, what did happen was pretty entertaining. For one our main villain is revealed to not be Darius Ainsworth but instead his son Julius Ainsworth. After being stabbed with Caster’s rule breaker his illusion falls and with it comes what seems to be his original personality. I actually prefer Julius’s now cold serious personality to that of his immense overacting when he was impersonating his father. The question is though, just why was he impersonating his father? Perhaps it as to maintain control of the family after likely killing his own father. What makes this reveal so strange is that this isn’t the first time Julius’s first time appearing as he turns out to be the boy that Beatrix was obsessively fangirling over. She too enters the fray after insinuating that she was just finished enjoying herself and asking to not go into more detail. It’s all too clear just what she was doing but what concerns me is whether all the Ainsworths are related because if so this becomes quite creepy. Well, creepier.

Well I will be damned, Hades really does have a cap of invisibility and here I thought Prisma was making up noble phantasms again. Though the design doesn’t look like it’s from ancient Greece, that’s for certain. What I can say is that it gave Gil some great moments. It’s a pity he’s not taking a more active role but having him bust out Miyu’s brother so the Ainsworths wouldn’t have anything to hold over Miyu was clever. They already knew where he was so getting him out wasn’t a big problem. I do feel bad for Erika this episode as Miyu admitted that she wasn’t her friend but all things considered I understand exactly why Miyu would say that. Erika does not mean any harm but she’s just been too far twisted to really see the wrong in her actions. Seeing her say she would put her trust in Julius just right before getting smothered in what looks like the black mud from the polluted grail was rather heartbreaking. If the parallels to Illya carry true then Erika is likely a holy grail as well so this really doesn’t bode well. Silver Link missed a great chance for some fanservice with servants who failed to get the grail appearing in droves. Come on, we could have had Diarmuid or Castor or Rider show up in mud form but instead we just get a bunch of generic dudes in Armour. Considering the level of power of heroic spirits, there should be no way in hell that Illya and crew should be putting up this much of a fight but we can blame them as being not full manifestations.

Miyu’s brother is revealed and to no one’s surprise it’s alternate universe Shirou. Making an admittedly badass entrance, the boy is ready to hijack the show and I really couldn’t be happier about that. Though I think Sliver Link picked a poor ending point for the episode. Given just thirty more seconds they could have ended this on a much more awesome note. Also it was rather strange to change it so Shirou blocks a hailstorm of arrows on Rin, Bazzet and Luvia because that suggests he can project Rho Aias from a distance. Which I am not certain he can do. The big question is that how is everyone else going to react when the Shirou they know was the lamest version to date compared to what some consider to be the best version of Shirou’s character. It is no joke that Miyuverse Shirou is pretty great as he feels like a combination of Unlimited blade works Shirou and Heaven’s Feel Shirou. He’s almost the halfway point to Archer as evidenced by parts of his skin turning tanned and the small dash of white hair. It’s a pity we won’t see his backstory as that’s for another season. Either way we got a pretty epic battle coming up and I am most certainly ready. Just make sure to play Emiya at one point and this will go marvelously.

Due to the pace of the series slowing to a crawl I decided to delay covering episode 8 but even having done that I find that not a lot has happened in these two episodes. Illya managed to escape doll form and regain her body but in the process picked a fight with one of the most dangerous Ainsworths, Angelica. Coupled with Gilgamesh’s Gate of Babylon and her own displacement magic, she makes for a difficult fight. While there is a good bit of action in these two episodes, the main topic is a moral dilemma. The Ainworths have made their goal clear and as it turns out they are actually trying to save the world. Due to a mysterious cause the world is slowly dying and taking everything with it. While saving the world by helping it regain it’s mana looks to be an impossibility, the Ainsworths wish to transform humanity into a form that can survive the world’s decay. In order to do that they plan to sacrifice Miyu as a holy grail and wish for humanity’s salvation. This does make Illya’s job a lot harder as saving Miyu means damning an entire world to extinction which has naturally cause her to lose her nerve. Though to the viewer this choice may not be as grey as the series tries to make it.

My line of thinking matches that of Chloe who deems that Miyu is worth sacrificing the world for namely for a few reasons. One is that the decay of the world looks to be too far gone and the Ainsworths didn’t really take into account just how humanity is going to live in a dead world. Even if they save humanity, the world will still be a dead husk which is likely not going to be pleasant to live it. Two is that despite all their good intentions the Ainsworths are still being massive assholes in how they go about things. It’s hard to really empathise with their situation when they are being so blatantly antagonistic. You can argue that Illya and crew are the invaders here but it doesn’t justify the Ainsworths picking fights with them and attempting to kill them without even remotely trying reason. As an outsider you can’t really see anything this group of people accomplish as being a good thing. The third thing is that it’s likely the Ainsworths were the ones who damned the planet in the first place as their house does reside in a giant crater no one can quite explain. So this tale becomes less a matter of heroes making sacrifices for the greater good and more about the Ainsworths killing Miyu to fix a problem they themselves created. Which isn’t justified in the slightest and makes Angelica’s spiel immensely hypocritical.

Though the intent appears to be to mirror that of Kiritsugu’s ideals as well as a particular aspect of Heaven’s Feel. Chloe does mention something quite interesting in that in the prismaverse Kerry decided to put Illya over the world and saved her as opposed to following through with the events of Fate/Zero. I also have a theory that they reverted Illya to childhood in order to prolong her life as in the normal Fate timeline Illya unfortunately doesn’t have very long to live. As a result Illya has two personalities. One is Chloe, the original Illya and the other is the illya who grew up with Shirou and the rest to become this shows heroine. Though doing something so cold to the original Illya does seem out of character for Kerry and Irisviel. Angelica does give a small explanation regarding mana but I always did find it rather pointless to designate magic within humans and magic within the atmosphere by two different titles. For one magic is almost always referred to as Mana and od is very rarely ever brought up. Though Od is what mages mainly use to perform magic but once converted by magic circuits in the body it’s then referred to as magical energy. So yeah, what’s the point of designating magic within humans as od? Nasu writing 101, telling you everything but never in terms you can actually understand. Otherwise we got some well animated action and Illya ultimately told Angelica to screw off because she was going to Gurren Lagann through problems and save everything. Next week looks to be the start of the final battle and is getting close to the moment I have been waiting for since the season started.

Oh the sweet sweet irony. Well I believe this qualifies for dramatic irony. You know what, I don’t care if it’s technically irony or not. I am calling it ironic. Though why is it ironic? Well the reason for that is that in this episode Illya had her soul transferred to a doll which exactly mirrors a bad end of the original Fate/Stay Night visual novel. Here in the Fate route, Illya captured Shirou and offered him a deal to become her servant. You are given a choice to accept this offer but if you do then Illya will take Shirous soul out of his body and place it in a doll. On the grounds that now he can be with her forever…as a doll. This is something that makes Erika interesting as she is a representation of what Illya could become. She holds the same kind of skewed morality that Illya does in the main series though in her case her motives are far less malicious. A small scene was left out here of her reacting to how Miyu cried over her showing Illya’s body. Going from joy before slowly feeling ashamed when Miyu didn’t react the way she thought she would. Luvia and Rin are back and even without minds they are bothering others. They annoyed Beatrix to the extent that she went and revealed how to turn them back when she refused to punch them because it would make them go back.

A lot of humor this episode as it mainly details the misadventures of Illya who has been transformed into a doll. It could be my bias speaking but I thought it was quite amusing, particularly Gil reacting to Chloe bursting into his room.  Always magnificent, that fellow is. He even remarked that upon getting his adult self back the first one he would kill is Chloe, which considering how he is in adult form may indeed not be a joke. Though some jokes didn’t quite hit such as the obligatory big boobs vs flat chests joke and Beatrix’s room was more strange than humorous. So the violent girl swinging around the hammer of a god is also a ravenous fangirl for a guy named Julian. The disconnect is rather off putting but I guess we now know why Rei Kugimiya was chosen to voice her. Still regardless of whether the joke is funny or not, Illya’s reaction always tends to get a smile out of me. Speaking of which it seems they first planned to brainwash her before putting her into a doll but couldn’t because Illya was hiding her consciousness in a place which seems to be suggested to be where Choles personality used to reside. The theory that she may in fact be her real personality is starting to get some weight. We are entering the second half of the series and likely when the action is going to kick up a notch. I will admit that this isn’t quite a good as I was hoping but all things considered, as long as a certain part is done well then I will be happy enough.

At the moment I must admit that the Ainsworths are not a particularly interesting antagonists. They are a good addition in that Prisma Illya has an antagonist rather that Zwei which generally had to throw in a makeshift one to take up time. However the Ainsworths as they are now are just evil people being evil for the sake of being evil. THere is likely a better method to their madness but they do come across as rather one dimensional. This episode mainly serves to introduce Darius who has his own meta way of looking at the situation. Claiming the situation to be an act in a play with Illya and co being the stars of the show. He pulls several made up noble phantasms out of nowhere and proceeds to introduce himself to Illya. I will admit that locking himself and Illya in a ice dome with limited air was particularly dark for him. He has pretty much shown the group just how outclassed they are in terms of combat strength so as an obstacle to Miyu’s rescue he works great. However he will need more development on his objective and character to truly stand out as a villain.

The action in this episode was decently animated however I can’t say the action scenes themselves were great. For having the villain just one sidedly beat the heroes doesn’t make a good action sequence. This is the main reason why Bleach’s whole Aizen battle failed so miserably as a climatic showdown. A battle is interesting when both fighters are pushed to their limits and there is an exchange of blows. If one fighter is never injured, never has to try and always has the upper hand then there is no tension. Thus no real interest. Though One Punch Man may be an exception to this rule but even then those battles put Saitama in interesting situations to compensate. Those noble phantasms make Darious a bit overpowered and as Gilgamesh pointed out that the Noble Phantasms he used were not items from his treasury and therefore not real Noble Phantasms. So essentially our villain can pull any power he wants narrative wise and  considering that Noble Phantasms are ridiculously overpowered as it is, this means the heroes are going to have to pull some major weapon out to get on an even playing field.

Sliver Link, was there really a need to make that scene with Miyu even more awkward? My memory of the manga might be a little foggy but I am certain that scene wasn’t quite so…suggestive. Sort of reminds me of that scene in the second Gurren Lagann Movie where they made the anti-spirals treatment of Nia well…suggestive. That really doesn’t make sense. Alright if the point is to get across that Darius is a serious asshole then I am certain the stabbing and draining of Miyu’s blood would have accomplished that. Having him insinuate so much and those camera angles just seems to be fan service for a very select fetish group. Miyu and Erika’s relationship seems a complex one as Erika really can’t seem to see the evil in her family. She’s not a bad girl but she doesn’t quite realise just what kind of horrible things are being done to Miyu and why everyone is trying to save her. She has a kind of childish cruelty. Still despite my gripes with this episode, I appreciate that we are getting more action. The last two episodes were veering towards Zwei territory again and I was starting to get worried.

I guess this is the hot spring episode and as the fanservice escalates I am beginning to have second thoughts. That generally feeling when the thing you thought was great might not actually be all that great is seeping in. Sort of like the anime adaption of Parasyte which was strangely underwhelming despite the source material being so good. Though I think this at least will be the last of the fan service for a while and we will be returning to action next episode. Though I don’t know what’s up with that face the Ainsworth head is making to Miyu in the preview, I really hope Silver Link don’t add something that insinuates that direction. So todays episode introduces a little girl who’s the daughter of the Ainsworth family head and Gilgamesh puts a hot spring on the roof of the school. Gate of Babylon truly has everything though I wish they kept Gilgamesh in the scene as he added lines like trying to make the hot spring match Japanese customs so it didn’t seem that weird and out of place. Plus more Gilgamesh is always a good thing. It’s still poor reasoning to have a hot spring scene but hey it’s better than just having a hot spring randomly on the roof of a school.

Tanaka gives some insight into herself with her hate of Erika which seems to be her recognising that she was an Ainsworth instinctively. Her memory seems to begin at the moment she met Illya which seems to suggest she gained self awareness the moment she ran into her. I still think she is a counter guardian and by rule of thumb they generally work without awareness. The unlimited bladeworks series somewhat contradicts that by showing Archer as a counter guardian being aware of his surroundings but  in reality he learned of what he was doing then by getting a peek at the Akashic Records. The question of what exactly is she is another matter, I doubt she’s some form of ancient hero but she does remind me a bit of the human form of Ciel’s weapon from Tsukihime which was called Nanako.

Gilgamesh seems to know more about what is going on than he is giving away and duly noted by Chloe trying to get some exposition out of him. I am not too fond of this episode with all things considered but I do like how they introduced the main villain. Darius comes across as a silly doting father before revealing his true colours and it gives him more personality rather than just being the arcs villain. Some comedy worked here though Tanaka and Erika’s back and forths got somewhat tiresome. Erika I find to be a more interesting character as this arc goes along though here her main gimmick is playing a game of extreme reverse psychology and that is somewhat charming at first but begins to wear out it’s welcome by episodes end. Not a lot happened here so I don’t have much to say and I would have preferred they just get a move on with the main plot.

~AidanAK47~

Well after a decisive defeat after assaulting the enemy headquarters, Illya and her newly united crew decide to hang around the school. The main bulk of the episode was dedicated to a fight between Chloe and Illya while other parts were mainly the characters clarifying the situation. The main reason behind the fight was Chloe being sick of Illya’s wishy washy attitude and wanting to beat into her the point that the dissonance she is feeling is exactly what Miyu felt at the beginning of the series. Though truthfully I don’t think their anything wrong with Illya wanting to vent her frustration about the situation. For the most part this fight was a motivation beating from Chloe to get Illya to kick herself into gear. Considering the level of effectiveness it might be beneficial for her to pop out of this series and go into another to give a certain someone this season a nice ass kicking so they get their stuff together. I find the reasons for the fight to be a bit flimsy but I rather like the fight itself as it was a great parallel to the main series. The beginning of the fight had Illya install the lancer card and it mirrored the first fight of Fate/stay night were Lancer fought against Archer at the school. The final blow was a nice homage to the fight between Saber and Archer in Hollow Ataraxia as well.

I really disagree with Chloes claim about excalibur being the strongest noble phantasm. My guess is that she mean it more in a metaphor matter but I might as well debunk this as I really hate this whole “Saber is the strongest class” nonsense. Excalibur does have a high level of power but in exchange it requires a huge amount of mana, has a long preparation time and when taken in the context of the holy grail war, is highly unsuited to the battle. In a war which secrecy is a priority, a giant flashy laser beam which lets everyone know who you are is a truly terrible weapon. In terms of power Gate of Babylon, Unlimited Bladeworks and Ionioi Hetairoi beat it easily. Even if we take it as meaning the most powerful sword, It’s nothing compared to Gilgamesh’s Ea. Even Gae Blog is a arguably a more powerful weapon than excalibur seeing as it’s a one shot kill. But well the power levels in the nasuverse are screwed to high heaven. You can debate it to kingdom come and there are many who do.

Of course I can’t avoid talking about what else happened after that can I? This is the reason why I said toned down, as opposed to removed when talking about the fanservice in this season. Fanservice is still there but it’s just not quite a prevalent, yet Sliver Link decided that a three panel shot of Kuro “refiling” mana needed more attention. I guess we can say goodbye to this getting a english dub, not that it had much chance of one seeing as season 2 is still undubbed. Nor is it all that disappointing considering the quality of the first seasons dub which wasn’t that bad but not ideal. Considering the west apprehension towards Lolita fanservice I say a scene with two underage girl heavily making out might make them fear being accused of selling pedofile porn if they decided to publish it. Can’t say I blame them and bloody hell Chloe this is why I don’t like you. There is some value in the theory that she is the personality of the original Illya and the current Illya is a personality that formed after her memories were wiped. But until that story element bears fruit, Chloe is the character who just amps up the Lolita fanservice.

Otherwise this episode had some Other nice little bits. Gilgamesh remains awesome and I like to think that Chloe wearing glasses while explaining things was a reference to Rin, who also sometimes has a tendency of putting on glasses when teaching Shirou magic. That aspect of the original Fate may even be a callback further to Ciel from Tsukihime who had a section of the game where she would teach players about how they went wrong on game choices and what to do to fix it. Really you can find tons of little details like this within the series. Tanaka’s stubbornness with wanting to wear a gym uniform which is the exact thing that Illya wears during the Tiger dojo segments of Fate/Stay Night. Even the fact that Illya’s transformation clothes while installing Saber are that of Saber Lily and Lilys in anime have a common association with…nevermind.(I also mentioned this before in my Fate/Unlimited Bladeworks reviews but Saber Lilys suggested backstory is that she is a saber that was seduced away from Shirou by Caster. So there’s that too.) I have said this before but this is a series mainly for Fate fans, in the same way the Danganronpa animes this season are for Danganronpa fans. Without a certain degree of familiarity with the main franchise they lose a lot in appeal.

~AidanAK47~

Plenty of action this week as we have faceoffs between Beatrice and Illya with Gil and Angelica firing legendary weapons back and forth. I wish there was a bit more fight animation here as while it was the same in the manga, it’s still a shame to have the scene cut away just when the combatants start to fight. True, they shouldn’t blow the budget just yet but the fights in this episode were essentially two people talking and just when they are about to fight the scene cuts over to the other fight where the combatants have just stopped fighting. Still I can’t say there were not great moments in this episode. For one Gilgamesh getting angry at Angelica for using Enkidu, the chain named after his closest friend. I have no idea why but having Gilgamesh say Mongrel just fills my heart with glee. Funny thing is that I think it only became a signature of him when the Fate/Zero dub came out as before it was regularly translated as bastard or lowlife.

I will admit that Illya just so happening to pull out Ruby from a stack of mystical items out of pure chance was a cheap coincidence. But it’s nice that she finally figured out how to install the cards and now we can see Illya cosplay as heroic spirits. Though she says she learned it from Chloe, though how she remembers when she installed archer and how Chloe knew how to do it is still a bit of a mystery. Bah! It’s the nasuverse. Here it follows the logic of who cares as long as it’s cool. If a gym uniform girl can take a direct hit of lightning from the hammer of the gods then who am I to question validity? Speaking of which that seemed odd even to the characters themselves. Tanaka has proven herself to be a strange anomaly as she seems by all accounts to be invincible. She’s clearly not from that world and can’t seem to remember anything besides her mission to destroy the Ainsworths. Considering the world’s current state and it likely being mainly the Ainsworths fault, I say the chances of Tanaka being a counter Guardian sent by the world is high. Despite her being for the most part comic relief, I prefer her to those classmates of Illya as at least she plays a role in the overall plot and isn’t an existence whose only purpose is the pad out the length. Plus she can be genuinely funny at points but maybe that’s because I relate her and illya’s relationship to Taiga and Illya from the Tiger Dojo. Actually in the manga I was certain that Tanaka was a younger version of Taiga due to not seeing her hair colour. If you dye her hair blond she would bare a striking resemblance.

It may be an odd thing to say but I am rather glad that Prisma Illya’s magical girl transformations are much more reserved than that of usual magical girl anime. A particular awkward thing about watching Nanoha is how the transformation sequences go a bit too far with the nudity. I am sure lolicons rejoice but for me it just makes me fear someone walking in and having a huge misunderstanding about my preferences. Illya may be technically eighteen(I assume she is in this spinoff too considering Shirou’s age.) but she certainly doesn’t look it and I have no interest whatsoever. This is why the heavy fanservice aspects of Zwei were particularly awkward for me. It’s a bit like Bayonetta for me, the thing itself is trying to make her as physically appealing as possible but I just am not into that so it just leaves me blank faced and uncomfortable. Well uncomfortable in Prisma’s case; Bayonetta I more just find somewhat amusing. Looks like Bazzett and Chloe are joining in next episode and I hope Chloe is bringing more than just lesbian lolita antics.

~AidanAK47~