Rin Tohsaka (CV: Kana Ueda) and Luviagelita Edelfeldt (CV: Shizuka Itou), Luvia for short, are maguses that have to work together – despite their obvious rivalry – as magical girls to collect Class Cards and become the apprentices of the magus master. Due to their fighting their kaleidosticks Ruby (CV: Naoko Takano) and Sapphire (CV: Miyu Matsuki) finds new masters for the task, and these two happen to be Illyasviel von Einzbern (CV: Mai Kadowaki), Illya for short, and Miyu (CV: Kaori Nazuka) – two middle schoolers. Now Illya and Miyu have to risk their life to help Rin and Luvia to collect the five remaining Class Cards out of seven.
This is a Fate/stay night spinoff with Illya as the main character. I’ve seen a bit of the anime adaptation of Fate/stay night, but I am not very familiar with the original series or the visual novels. This specific spinoff is originally adapted from a comic series with the same name. Despite not knowing much, I was doubtful of how good it would be. I was assuming it would be a fan-service show with magical girls in it. Although not entirely wrong (First transformation start from an already completely naked Illya! Also, we have that panty shot in Illya’s transformation!), I was pleasantly surprised to get a deeper storyline.
The basic idea is pretty straight forward: fight some kind of magic monster thing (sorry, my terminology is iffy), win and get a class card. There’s only 5 of them that needs to be collected, and with the show being 10 episodes I just didn’t get how they’d make it.
Turns out winning wasn’t as easy as you’d think. One enemy required the girls to train and figure out how to fly, and another enemy was really tough to beat because they couldn’t flee. Suddenly getting 5 cards took a lot of time!
Through the series, you follow Illya and her growth. She didn’t really believe what was going on and just kind of went with it and when she did get in a situation she could have been killed, her survival instinct kind of kicked in. She also got scared of fighting. But she still fought for her friend, because although Miyu herself said it was alright, Illya realized that Miyu needed her, just like she needed Miyu’s support during the battles.
Basically, it’s a magical girl spinoff which is about friendship – the development and the appearance it can have. Not to mention, you never know where you might get a friends. It’s also about overcoming your fears and do what you believe is right, just like illya did.
I like it. I also watched the specials which were a complete waste of time, but the actual series was a nice magical girl show. My Fate fan of a partner didn’t though, so I think you need to take this show in as a completely different work with just shared characters.
This post is available thanks to the love and support of my readers and patrons. If you want to support the blog, read this page!
If you want me to review your work, email theannyblog@gmail.com or send me a message on my Twitter for more information.
The Anny Blog 