Anime Review: Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya

Fate Collide is an amazing show. This may be a surprising statement for those of you who know about the show. You may think it's fun, enjoyable, something to sit down and relax to, which it is. But it is something much more than that. It is more than it appears. What makes it stand out so much is how it is able to succeed in doing three things. First, it succeeds in being a fun magical girl show. Second, it succeeds in being a fate show. And third, it succeeds in combining those two aspects together. For those unfamiliar, Fate Collide Prisma Ilia is part of the Fatesday Night franchise. Fatesday Night was a visual novel released in 2004 that has received adaptations for each of its routes, then there are prequels, spinoffs, and a cooking show. And Fate Collide is one of the spinoffs. A magical girl one at that. Ilia Aresville was one of the antagonists in Fatesday Night. But this spinoff asks the question of what would happen if she lived a normal life, raised by a loving family, in a world that does not have the holy grail of wars, and then becomes a magical girl. Yes, this is stupid. But that's why it works. Ilia here is very much what you'd expect from a magical girl protagonist. She's a good person, she cares about her friends, and she wants to have fun. And then is thrown into an adventure where she must collect cards that have great power. Wait a second, this sounds familiar. To understand Fate Collide, you have to understand how it's structured. The anime has four seasons and a movie, while the manga is split into three different parts. Season 1 adapts the first part of the manga, seasons 2 and 3 adapt the second part, and season 4 of the movie, and the season 5 I hope for, adapt the third part of the manga. And each part of the manga has a different overall tone and goal for what it wants to do with its story. Part 1 is really standard. It is a magical girl story that just wants to have fun with the concept and the ridiculousness of turning Fate into a magical girl show. Part 2 starts digging deeper into the world of Fate, and starts getting into the darker types of storytelling Fate is known for, though is still largely a fun show. Part 3 is much more serious than the others, even getting very dark at times. And the increasingly dark tone is somewhat analogous to the routes in the Fate visual novel, which I think is really interesting. And there are a number of plot similarities between the three parts of Collide and the three routes of Fate. And I do have to credit TV Tropes for pointing this one out, because it's very interesting. Alright, so let's get into the plot of Collide. The series starts off with Illya living an ordinary life, until one night while she's taking a bath, a magical stick named Ruby tricks her into becoming a magical girl, and she is tasked to retrieve the Class Cards throughout the city. The Class Cards are basically the heroic spirits that you'll know if you've seen Fate Stay Night, but this time they're trapped in cars and are basically mindless, so it's more like Cardcaptor Sakura here. Illya is soon joined by another magical girl by the name of Miyu, and then they are guided by Rin, who you will know from the main Fate, and Luvia, who I wish was actually in Fate more, because she is great. Rin and Luvia were the magical girls before Illya and Miyu, but then their magical sticks quit on them, which was an awesome scene. For this video, I'm going to try giving an overview for all three parts of the series, without spoilers, at least as much as I can, and just explain to you why I like each part so much. Season 1 had a ton of great comedy to it, mostly just regarding the craziness of the situation. There are some good slice-of-life comedy moments, such as with Miyu joining Illya's class at school and her trying to get used to the world she's now in. I also love Shirou's role here, since he went from being the main character of Fate to Illya's brother, who has no idea of anything that's going on. He also gets a bigger harem than he did in the main series. That's a constant running joke that is always funny. And then he tends to have lots of bad stuff happen to him for comedic effect. Shirou is great. One of the things that really helps the comedy is how the animation enhances it. The characters have the best reaction to the different events, especially Illya. Season 1 also focuses on the friendship between Illya and Miyu. Miyu is very closed off at first, but does grow closer to Illya throughout the season, and Illya learns how much Miyu means to her, and that gives her motivation to fight. And speaking of fighting, Fate Collide has a ton of action. Season 1 has Illya and Miyu fighting against the various Herc Spirits, using their magical girl powers and the powers of the cards they have to fight. The action as a whole is done really well. Each battle has a good back and forth, with Illya and Miyu needing to figure out how to stop the servants that they're fighting, and also learning how to use their powers better to do so. These are life and death battles for the characters, and one mistake can cost the characters their life, and this is something that Illya learns the hard way. While the first season isn't overly dark, the fact that these battles have real stakes gives them more weight, and the animation is just really good. One of the battles in particular, around halfway through Season 1, just stands out because of how well it's done. The heroes are so overwhelmed here, and you can feel their desperation for a way to win. The overall fun concept and comedy combined with the great action makes Season 1 very stand out, much more so than I would have expected from a simple magical girl spinoff. That alone would make me recommend Klee. In fact, I made a video where I already did so, but it is only a small taste of what Klee offers. Part 2 introduces a new magical girl who is either named Kuro or Chloe, depending on your translation. She's a very interesting character because she's very much a foil to Illya, and also because she makes out with everyone she can find to get mana. Yes, fake Klee is weird. Kuro starts off as an antagonist to Illya and Miyu, wanting to kill Illya at first, and through Kuro, we start to see more of the Fate style of storytelling interweave itself with Klee, and this blend becomes very interesting. Illya has lived a very sheltered, ordinary life, but through her encounters with Kuro, she's forced to confront some of the dark sides of the world and her family's past. After all, this is still a Fate anime. Season 2 focuses on the relationship between Kuro and Illya, which I enjoyed quite a lot. The comedy and drama work well here, and then the season culminated in one of my favorite fights in all of the anime. Seriously, that fight blew me away, and I'm doing a full video on that one later about why it is so good. Season 3 then takes a break from the serious storytelling for a while with a number of plotless comedy episodes. It starts off revealing that there is an aged class card, which if you are familiar with Fate, you'll know it's Gilgamesh, but then season 3 puts that into the background for a while just to have more slice of life episodes. I could complain that these episodes did not advance the plot any, which they didn't, but the comedy was really good, and one of the focuses on Khalid's storytelling is showing these characters living and enjoying an ordinary life, not burdened by the darker sides of the Fate universe. And once you put this into context of the darker storytelling in season 4, it does have a lot of power to it. The season then ends with the battle against Gilgamesh, which, it was great, although did not impress me quite as much as the season 2 finale. I do like Gilgamesh's character here, though, because they turned him into a kid. They kept his arrogance and haughtiness, but also added in a touch of playfulness and how you'd expect a kid Gilgamesh to be, which was great. Season 4 of the anime, or part 3 of the manga, is where things get much more serious. While the other seasons and parts had some serious storytelling, it wasn't nearly to the degree that we see in season 4. Season 4, and then the movie itself, ended up getting very dark at times. There are some bits of comedy and fun, but this is much more what you expect from a conventional Fate anime. During this season, Khalid pushes its world building much further, fleshing out a new family of mages with their own goals, and there were a lot of mysteries with what was really going on, along with some great suspense with all the challenges Illya and her friends faced. Hiro also got to shine quite a lot, which I loved. Gilgamesh was great in this season. I loved seeing him as a kind of good guy, or at least an anti-hero, who happened to have the same goals as Illya for a while. And another thing I appreciated about this season is how it fleshed out more of the world of Fate. Fate is such a massive world, but the series I've seen tend to focus only on one small aspect, the Holy Grail War, which leaves a lot unexplored. But Khalid was able to do something more, give more context to the Holy Grail Wars, even if they are different in this case. I've really enjoyed the battles, too, in the last few episodes of the season, seeing the hero so overwhelmed, and, again, being desperate for a way to win. But they got a hand from a couple of surprising places. I love bad puns, by the way. I also need to talk about the movie O Thunder Snow. It is a flashback arc that takes place during part 3 of the manga, providing a lot of context to the events we saw in season 4. It is a prequel, so we know how the story is going to end, but getting there is a very fulfilling story. O Thunder Snow is the Fate Zero of Khalid. It's darker, more tragic, and lays the foundation for what Khalid is. It also focuses a lot on Shiro, which may seem strange when Illya is in the title of the anime and hardly appeared in the movie, but it makes sense, especially, again, if you consider it to be the Fate Zero of Khalid. One of the things that the movie does is that it makes the entire series better. For example, I said in season 3 that it had a lot of pointless comedy episodes, but when you consider the events in the movie, the comedic episodes have a point to them. It also gave a lot more of the background to the characters and their interactions, even since the beginning of the series. I don't know if the author planned it all this way or was able to just fit in this justification, but it's really impressive. Even thematically, the movie ties everything together, from the stupid fun parts of the early seasons, to the dark storytelling in season 4. It all makes sense now, and it really shows what happens when the ideals of magical girls is thrown into the world of Fate. Fate Khalid really just is impressive. Though, admittedly, not without its flaws. The major one, for some people, is its inconsistent tone. I like Khalid quite a lot, but that's because I like both the comedic and serious parts to it. In fact, I like it because it has both than I would if it only had one or the other. But a lot of people will be turned off, either by the initial comedy without much of a plot, or they'll like the fun comedy and then be turned off by the more serious storytelling later on. And I know a couple people who do not really care for season 1, and while I think they might like the later seasons because it gets more serious, I can't really blame them if they're not wanting to watch more. Though, maybe I could convince them to just skip straight to the movie. Another issue is that there are definitely parts when the characters are against impossible odds and then they just find a way to win with the power of friendship, which I can't be too mad since this is a magical girl anime, but it feels like it would give more weight to the battles if there was a bigger cost to their victory. And even when the show gets serious, the characters are mostly unharmed after the big fights. Then the other issue is the fan service, especially considering these characters are like 10 years old or so. And I'm not a fan of fan service in general, so it just adds to the creepiness when the characters are this young. Now some of it, I can see the justification for it. It's there for comedy, or to make fun of the genre, or that there's some sort of plot reason for it. But then the show proves it can do comedy without fan service, so I could really do with toning it down a bit. Which they do later in the seasons, at least somewhat. Fakely, it also needs another season, which so far has not been announced. There is an OVA, which will maybe lead to a season 5 announcement, which will finish adapting the manga that I think the manga is still ongoing to, so we'll see. Plus the manga is monthly, and the typical episode of the anime adapts multiple chapters of the manga, so it may be a little while. But I hope that Khalid is popular enough to justify more anime when they are able to make it. And now I guess I should get back to the question in the thumbnail, and that's if Fakely is better than Fate Zero. Well, it's hard to say. The thing about Fate is that you cannot judge one series on its own. Every series builds on the others, creating more than just a single series to judge. Fakely is like that too, building on top of the mainline Fate series, and while you could watch Khalid on its own, there's a lot of context that you will miss if you have not seen the others. So while Khalid does a lot of special things, it's only able to do as much as it does because of Zero and the other Fates. But let's put aside all that and look at what the show's accomplished. Fate Zero is a very philosophically rich with its ideas of what it means to be a good ruler, and it's filled with larger-than-life characters. There's a certain weight to the conflict, and even more so if you know that the characters will fail. Fate Zero has a very cynical outlook on the world, which is the opposite of Khalid. Even during the darker parts of Khalid, Ilia still had hope, and it may be naive, but she wants to see everyone. Force her to choose between two terrible options, and she will find you a third option. There are a lot of things that Fate Zero did really well, and I can't help but respect it, but I don't recall being as excited about it as I had been with Khalid recently. The blend of different tones and genres in Khalid, the way it all tied together, and heck, even the absurdity of everything that is Khalid. It's something special. And yes, I like Zero, but I'm not going to make three videos about it. With Khalid, well, I have ideas. So that's my answer without giving a complete answer. Thank you for listening or watching to this video, whatever you do. I hope you've enjoyed me fanboying about Fate Khalid more than is probably good. So I will see you next time with another magical girl show video, I think. Talk to you then.