There was a Chibi Tamago event where apparently if you join and don’t contribute, you get a punishment (I did join this one, but was planning to pace myself more since it was meant to run until the end of the month). However, by the time I finished 3 episodes of Illya, the event was almost over. (Seriously, the new manga/LN system is pretty broken, because a 10 episode anime gets you 4 pts, a 10 volume manga gets you 20 and a 10 volume LN gets you 30.)

Said event was to consume fantasy, superhero or anti-hero anime/manga/LNs, so something like the Einzbern Consultation Rooms don’t count but Illya does…which is why I’m currently 2 posts ahead in impressions.

Synopsis

Detective Waver 13: Waver gets closure.

Prisma Illya 1 – 3: Two talking sticks – yes, sticks! (that’s what they’re called, but they’re actually wands…) – called Ruby and Sapphire drag Illyasviel von Einzbern and Miyu Edelfelt (respectively) into a fight for 7 Class Cards that look all too familiar…and they’re doing this all at the behest of Rin, Luvia and the Mages’ Association.

Impressions

• Oh, Flat, you stupid…
• Waver’s exasperated faces are great. No wonder Reines likes to toy with him…
• I can assume Rail Zeppelin is a Ghost Liner, yes?
• Can I guess that Adashino ~likes~ Waver…? Update: Turns out that’s not quite the case.
• Ooh, Waver without his shirt is se-okay, I’m getting distracted. Seriously though, Waver never showed his Family Crest in F/Z. I never even knew what it looked like until now! The fact it’s such a simple design in comparison to his Command Seals is…kinda underwhelming, really.
• I think there’s a bit of a pattern between Jakurai (from HypMic) and Waver…namely, they suck when it comes to drinking. (Also, of course, the long hair. Don’t forget it, never forget it.)
• Shut up, Add!
• For some reason, I felt like a lot of that last part, while getting closure for Waver, it almost had connotations of “I’ll meet you on the other side, Rider”…so it felt kind of sad, to be honest. That talk between Reines and Olga I don’t think I’d understand without Apocrypha and Grand Order, but I guess that’s to be expected in such a huge franchise. Anyways, moving right along!
• I’ve been a bit worried about what I’ll have to subject myself to for the sake of Magical Girls…
• Was that…Taiga?
• Who’s Liz…?
• Okusama, huh? (Okusama = someone’s wife, although I don’t think Kiritsugu and/or Iri are dead in this timeline.)
• The subs I’ve got say Shiro is adopted here too (when it’s not in the Japanese – note I found a source which has the Japanese text, which is why I’m microanalysing the translation), although I wonder exactly how much of UBW is going to be true in this anime…
• Hmm…a bit of digging reveals Luvia’s not a Master. So throwing out Lancer is really just a joke on how Lancer gets roasted early on in Grail Wars, right?
• Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh…squick, much…(Thank goodness the source I was using edited out the loli fanservice, so I can tolerate this series a lot more…but still, suggesting you have a romance with your step-brother, even if it’s known you’re not related from the beginning, is…you already know my feelings on that, based on my reaction. Shiro is, what, 15? About twice Illya’s age!) Update: Okay, so he has no confirmed age in Prisma Illya, but he’s 17 in F/SN so I’d assum the same or similar, seeing as he attends the same school. It’s fine if it’s platonic, but this is clearly an Onii-chan, daisuki! thing the likes of which Oreimo throws down! Thank you for calling it out though, Ruby.
• Oh my gosh, this looks like the Rhongomynaid (Detective Waver) and Excalibur (or whatever Saber’s Noble Phantasm is called) summoning beam! LOL!
• Ruby, you lech! Don’t go praising the angles! *shakes fist* (Seriously, what if magical girl mascots were paedophiles…? *blank face* Welp, considering what’s out there on the internet, I wouldn’t be surprised if a hentai or something had such a concept.)
• Hmm? Turns out the word for Servant means something like “celestial hero”. Makes sense.
• Nice callback to Saber and Shiro! Update: Refers to the below image.

• Anyways, next time I’m trying another source, so be thankful I could analyse the language to my heart’s content with this episode.
• That other source was Crunchyroll, so at least this is more legal than the last source I tried…(I’ll always try to stick to the more legal source if possible, so either way I was going to choose CR if I had an option. That said, CR is so slow that I can watch it on my phone now with ads and it will be way faster than with adblock on PC, so I might suddenly be ahead some days and then fall behind when I don’t need my phone.)
• I thought Illya would say that her parents are dead…turns out the show’s not that grimdark (to the point where it wouldn’t set the show after Kiritsugu and Iri’s deaths), huh?
• Do the sticks have a gender? The subs said “she” for Ruby…
• LOL, it’s Rider. I thought Lancer was gonna get his butt kicked all over again (thinking more along the lines of Cardcaptor Sakura).
• It’s Gay Bul-I mean, Gae Bolg! (I’ve been reading TV Tropes again…can you tell?)
• This episode was pretty pedestrian. I like it more than the first one.
• What’s up with the CGI…?
• Oh! Bunbun, who does Yuki Yuna! Update: They only did the illustrations for some of the series. They also did SAO illustrations, although that’s of less significance to me.
• The sticks do have genders!!! That’s like claiming Jesus for kakera with Mudae! (Yes, that’s possible. I got him – the Saint Oniisan version of him, natch – in one server.)
• The power of fujoshi…is amazing! How did it get to a girl who’s so young?!
• These angles are a bit disturbing…
• “Casao”, LOL.
• Magical girl nakama, huh?

The Basics of Magical Girl Series

It seems this series – now that I’ve finished the first season – most closely resembles Cardcaptor Sakura, with a bit of what I’ve heard of Nanoha (I haven’t watched it – I don’t think I’ve ever seen it legally obtainable anywhere and it’s probably one of the magical girl series I care about the least because, much like Prisma Illya, Nanoha originally comes from an eroge + inherent potential for loli fanservice). I mean, Ruby is a dead ringer for the star version of Sakura’s wand! Illya collects cards! I could go on.

Cardcaptor Sakura was always a bit of an anomaly in magical girl series in general since most people expect what’s known as the “magical girl warrior” on TV Tropes when it comes to parodies – the sentai-esque setup, superpowers and transformations. Well, we did get the transformations with this one – in fact, Illya’s use of the Archer card and likewise Miyu’s use of the Saber card to give themselves new outfits/powers resemble the form changes in Mahoutsukai PreCure (again, something I haven’t watched, but I’ve read about) and other series.

Magical girl series are seen by some to be easy to parody due to the narrative template you can easily fill in, but the truth is that some of the best critiques and parodies come from within the genre itself. For example, in Sailor Moon, there’s a scene where the title character uses a pizza instead of her standard purification item!

As for what said template looks like, it goes something like this:

• What makes the heroine so special, or was just chosen at random? How do heroines get chosen?
• Are there magical boys? (This has only started showing up in the wider anime consciousness in the last few decades, although you could argue it’s been around for quite a while before that, especially in more comedic series.)
• What’s your team theme, if there is a team? (Consistency is key usually, but in a lot of the modern series such as Madoka Magica, each girl has her own theme.) How is your team structured? What weapons do they use, if any?
• What are your bad guys like? (team structure, team theme) Do they have a mascot? What’s the aim behind their wanting to do evil? (Or is that their aim – just to do evil?)
• What’s your mascot like?
• How do magical girls summon and receive their powers? Magic? Technology?
• How do magical girls fight? More kicks and punches like PreCure, or more beam spam?
• Do you want to lean into the yuri undertones, or is there a guy being fought for? Do you want fanservice? (Obviously, this depends on the audience you want to aim your work at.)

…Well, this last segment actually turned out alright for once. That’s what happens when I give myself enough time to write the thing…