Fate Kaleid Prisma Liner Illya

Even though it has a ridiculously complicated name, Fate / Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya is a wonderfully camp magical girl show. As a long time “majou shoujo” fan I was really happy to discover this spinoff to Fate/Stay Night. [Warning, this post is GIF heavy]

“Mahou Shoujo” or “Magical Girl” is a beloved genre of anime which generally boils down to the following plot points.

1. We meet a regular, every day, school aged girl.

2. Girl finds item that bestows her with magical powers, or, Magically animated object finds girl and bestows her with magical powers.

3. Girl is enlisted to fight “evil” in whatever form that takes.

99% of all series in this genre follow this plotline, and then spice it up with various other tropes. Sailor Moon is a long standing and soon to be rebooted classic example. Most of the time these types of series are light hearted affairs that really only exist to sell toys and entertain young girls.

Lately though, it has become cool to create shows with much deeper stories, and darker heavy themes that one would not associate with children’s entertainment, such as despair, utter helplessness, and sorrow.

They also feature some fantastic fight choreography with kickass heroines doing amazing things, check out this key fight in the series.

Prisma Illya is the story of two young girls, Illya and Miyu, who are selected by two magical weapons to become Magical Girls and fight evil. Along the way they become good friends, and learn about their own weaknesses as human beings.

Illya is a huge fangirl of magical girls, and though reluctant at first to accept her powers, she decides it might be fun and runs with it. She is a naive girl, with a very positive upbeat personality and this combined with her extensive knowledge of magical girls, allows her to become a natural in no time.

Miyu on the other hand is utterly practical, and extremely smart. She excels at all aspects of her school life, is incredibly athletic and also understands high art concepts. Unfortunately being so rigid does not mesh with the way Magical Girl abilities work, and thus she takes a while to fully grasp things like flying.

One of my favourite things about Prisma Illya was the fact that it pokes fun at common Magical Girl tropes, such as the ever popular transformation scenes, and also the over-sexualisation of young girls, with things like panty shots.

The animation style used in Prisma Illya is gorgeous, with generous use of colours and spell effects that are very impressive. In particular I liked the watery effect used during the transformation scene, gorgeous!

Obviously I really enjoyed this series and I think if you’ve got any interest in the genre you’ll have a ball. It is short at 10 episodes for Season 1, with a second season coming sometime this year. Give it a chance and I think you’ll be surprised at how much fun these types of shows can be.

Have you already seen Prisma Illya? What did you think? Can you recommend any other shows that I might like?