July 9th, 2016 
AstroNerdBoy e Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA 3rei!! Episode 01 REVIEW
Fate/kaleid liner プリズマ☆イリヤ 3rei!!
Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 3rei!! 01
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
After completing their homework at Miyu’s house, Ilya and friends return home. Miyu joins Ilya and Kuro at their home, where she’s invited to stay for dinner. As the trio relax in Ilya’s room, Rin and Luvia burst in, reporting a emergency. Luvia’s butler drives them back to the site of their battle. The crater is gone and everything restored to normal. Even as powerful as the Church is, they could not have done this, especially so quickly. Arriving at the site, they discover Bazett is there. The restored ground comes from another world and is unstable.
With that, the ground changes and two female figures appear, both of whom Miyu appears to recognize. Miyu attacks, but it quickly separated from Sapphire and captured. The girls attack, but are beaten back. The tall girl in golden armored leggings and a bikini top bows to “Miyu-sama,” saying they are to take her back. Miyu doesn’t want to go and gets stepped on by the short, red haired girl. The two take Miyu off, but as Ilya gives chase, she finds it is now snowing and no longer summer. Not understanding and not seeing her companions, Ilya races to town to discover a massive crater in the center and her home not there.
Ilya runs into a girl wearing gym clothing named Tanaka. Tanaka doesn’t seem to know anything, including why there’s a crater in town. Further, she’s not cold despite wearing summer gym clothing. The two take shelter in a kid’s park, where upon hearing Miyu’s name, Tanaka states Miyu is held captive by the Ainsworth after having previously gone to a parallel world. Tanaka doesn’t know why she said that and she doesn’t know more with that. It is then that the short red haired girl from earlier reveals herself to Ilya with a sinister grin.
Thoughts/Review:
And so we return to the world of Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya. Based on this first episode, it looks like this series of the franchise could be the best yet.
I like how this first episode picks right up where the last episode of the Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz! series ended. It is fun seeing all of Ilya’s friends right from the start. However, based on how this episode went, I seriously wonder when we’ll see them again.
Because the first half of the episode was basically comedic fluff with a mildly ecchi overtone, I’ll pass on making any further comments on that. It is the story that I’m interested in here. (Though feel free to comment on the fluff if you want.)
This episode really does a good job of setting up things to get the viewer into the plot quickly. One doesn’t need to know about the battle they’d gone through with the kid Gilgamesh. It is enough to know there was a battle, the evidence of the massive battle was gone, there are Class Cards, and there are magic girls involved.
I dislike how easily Miyu was defeated in this episode. Her wand gets batted away like nothing and that’s that. I felt badly for her as she begged Ilya to save her.
The two villain girls are interesting. The tall girl that looks like Asuna from Negima! looks to be wearing part of Gilgamesh’s armor and necklace. She can’t be a version Gilgamesh because there’s no way that Gilgamesh would bow to Miyu and address Miyu as Miyu-sama. And even though she stepped on the Gilgamesh Archer card and appeared to absorb stuff from it, she already had her golden armor on before that. It will be interesting to learn more about her.
As to her psycho companion with the massive arm and even larger war hammer (reminding me of Thor’s Mjolnir), she comes off as cliched a bit. But giant arm and war hammer gives her a pass for me. 😛
Anyway, what really got my attention about this episode is the fact that Ilya is by herself in the parallel world. We know Miyu is around somewhere, but where are the others? Also, what the heck happened to Ruby? Initially, Ilya is in magic girl garb and holding Ruby in wand form. Then she’s back in civilian form with no Ruby. That’s something that made no sense to me. I suspect it was to put Ilya at a disadvantage and thus give more drama to her situation.
Since none of Ilya’s comic relief friends are here, I guess Tanaka gets to take their place. Having Ilya make snappy comebacks at some of the things Tanaka says made me think of the delightful D-Frag manga series (which I’ve slowly been reviewing).
Unlike Ilya’s old friends, Tanaka actually appears to serve a purpose beyond comedy. Is she an android of some kind? Is she a Class Card of some kind? She’s certainly different if she radiates body heat, is not susceptible to the cold, and she has no memories except when needed by the plot. OK, I’ll buy her. 😉
Finally, I don’t know if it will end up meaning anything, but Rin has jewel pendent from the Fate/stay night franchise. She not only had it, but the episode wanted to make sure we saw that she had it. Notice this, people!
In the end, Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 3rei!! 01 was quick to get me back into the plot of things. I’ve heard the stuff gets really good in the source manga, so I have high hopes for more plot, less ecchi.
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“I seriously wonder when we’ll see them again.”
Don’t keep your hopes up. I’m not sure if this counts as a spoiler, but the ongoing manga is still in the parallel world.
I don’t consider that to be a spoiler. To be honest, while I like them, they are just comedic fluff.
Still, knowing the current manga is still in the parallel world makes me think that unlike the previous series, which are 10 episodes each, this current series might go the full season.
Oh… You have no idea haha….
This is “Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited [GIVE MIYU BACK!!!] Works” Edition.
You can’t believe how things turned like that but it is awesome.
The thing is: I don’t know if the anime will turn as dark as the manga, because it is difficult to adapt it on the same tone of the past TV seasons.
I think that there will be several filler episodes, with ecchi and comedy, as there is not enough material on the manga to pull 12 episodes at this pace.
And the other thing is that in the current manga you can easily think that the protagonists changed and it is another type of manga: Shoujo/Sliceoflife to Shonen
This is a monthly series and there are 42 chapters at 25+ pages per chapter, right? Just for fun, I looked at chapter 1. Because of the filler at the first half of the anime episode, episode one only gets to page 20 of the first chapter. As I see it, we should easily get through 12 episodes. But then I don’t know how things go in the story.
Actually, I think the series is a seinen one. 😉
Well, yes. My bad. It says shounen on mangaupdates so I was confused, but it clearly is not for young boys 😉
But there is a gap between this season and the previous ones.
There were comments on the web that hinted at each season being similar to one of the arcs of the original Fate/Stay game + some things from other iterations. And as I didn’t finished the game I didn’t want to spoil me. So we had Stay/Night, Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven’s feel. The last one remaining without anime is being made to a movie by Ufotable and it’s probably the most similar to Illya 3rei.
Yeah, someone else was mentioning Heaven’s Feel in regards to 3rei. I don’t know the story of Heaven’s Feel, other than it is Sakura’s route and Ilya ultimately plays a much different role from the other two routes.
Random thought:
When I first saw the headline paired with an image of !Gil-ko (twintail bikini-top gold-armor girl) and !Thor-ko (psycho-looking ginger hammer shark-tooth girl), I thought you were making a joke about the fanservice.
I haven’t gotten a chance to watch any of the KLPI series yet (though it really is high on the list), so my strongest impressions of the first two are “twisted Fate comedy” + “mahou shoujo parody” + “loli ecchi”. I thought you might be drawing a contrast between the loli ecchi and !Gil-ko, alluding to this image. (^_~)
Ha!ha! Yeah, I can see how that could be, especially since previous series in this part of the franchise have been full of loli, ecchi fanservice.
Your impression of the earlier Prisma Illya series isn’t far off the mark. The first series is more of a parody, but the story was interesting enough. The story got more interesting with the two 2wei series. And now there’s 3rei, which looks to be the most story-centric of the lot.
Drei is the darkest of the Fate Prisma series so far. it’s also the first arc that cuts Illya off from a good chunk of her social support for extended periods of time, and the effects of that can be seen on Illya’s face this episode, after she ended up in the parallel world. It’s a testimony to her mental fortitude that she can still act rather than completely freaking out and panicking like a headless chicken, but remember, she’s only ten years old, and unlike Fate Stay Night’s Illya, has known only a life of being surrounded by family and friends. This is a terrifying situation Illya is finding herself in, and she’s barely holding in that terror. And this is only the first episode.
In a sense, Tanaka is a Deus Ex Machina of sorts, since her appearance actually is helping Illya somewhat from avoiding a panic induced breakdown.
True, especially since the story has Ilya separated from Ruby somehow.
Just without spoiling much
[spoiler]those 2 new gals are using “Install” so yes they are wearing certain heroic spirits outfits, albeit one is “cheating” the heroic spirit system since it shouldnt be avaliable to choose him due to Nasu reasons[/spoiler]
Just to be safe, I threw your remarks into spoiler tags. 🙂 This is one franchise that folks get upset over spoilers. 😛