Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma☆Illya

Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma☆Illya

Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma☆Illya anime poster featuring Rin, Luvia, Illya, and Miyu
Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma☆Illya Poster

Overview

There are currently four seasons of Prisma Illya out; however, this review will only be covering the first one. The next two seasons, 2wei! and 2wei Herz!, will be covered together and 3rei!! will be covered on its own.

Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma☆Illya is the magical girl entry of the Fate series. It’s also the best entry of the series and features my favorite character, Illya as the protagonist. Although the genre of this entry is different from the others, it still has many similarities with the rest of the entries such as characters and the classes of heroic spirits.

However, in Prisma Illya, there is no Holy Grail War in the same sense as in the other entries. Further, heroic spirits are not summoned and contracted to a mage in the same way either. Instead, there are cards that have the essence of a heroic spirit in them which can be used to gain the noble phantasm of that spirit.

Prisma Illya also introduces the Kaleidosticks, Ruby and Sapphire, which make contracts with girls and are then used to turn them into magical girls. With the help of the Kaleidosticks, the magical girls must collect all of the heroic spirit class cards by defeating the spirits who are summoned by them.

Characters

Illyasviel von Einzbern, or Illya for short, is the protagonist and titular character of the series. You may remember her as the daughter of Irisviel and Kiritsugu from Fate/Zero and the master of the Berserker class servant from Fate/UBW. She is also the younger sister of Shirou Emiya from UBW as well.

Illya was a normal elementary school girl until she was tricked into forming a contract with the Kaleidoscope Ruby. She often wishes she could go back to her regular, peaceful life before she became a magical girl.

Miyu is the other magical girl in the series and has a contract with the Kaleidostick Sapphire, Ruby’s sister. While Illya is very dramatic and overreacts to everything, Miyu tends to show little emotion and thinks things through rationally.

While she is the same age as Illya, her background is unknown. After becoming a magical girl she is taken in by Luvia who builds a mansion across the street from Illya’s house.

Rin and Luvia are the original owners of the Kaleidosticks which are now contracted to Illya and Miyu. Due to their constant arguing, the Kaleidosticks broke off their contracts with the pair of older girls as a way to rebel against them.

Rin, as you might remember from UBW, is a classmate of Shirou Emiya, Illya’s older brother. Luvia is another one of their classmates and the rival of Rin. Together, Rin and Luvia work as the mentors for the new magical girls and use them to collect the class cards which was originally their task.

Illya and Miyu in magical girl form from the anime Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma☆Illya
Illya and Miyu

Conclusion

Although I prefer Prisma Illya over UBW and Zero, I still ended up giving the first season a 7/10 as I did for those series. While it is better than those, it’s not better enough to warrant scoring it any higher.

If you’re a fan of the magical girl genre, I highly recommend Prisma Illya. It’s more of an action-based magical girl series since it’s still part of the overall Fate series, but it also makes jokes about many of the magical girl tropes found in other series.

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