The fight against Saber appears to be won, but you know what they say about counting chickens.
What They Say:
Episode 6: “A Blank, and the End of Night”
It looked like Rin and Luvia’s attacks had managed to defeat the Class Card, Saber, however they failed to deliver a fatal blow, and everyone faces a counterattack from Saber’s Noble Phantasm, Excalibur. When Illya receives an attack boasting such unprecedented power, a sudden change occurs?!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
So, Luvia and Rin’s special attack is ready and…it certainly creates a scene, as it appears to blast a hole in the riverbed, making a massive crater. Afterward, Rin and Luvia return to their normal bickering. Rin even goes so far as to make fun of Luvia’s “princess curls” (that odd curled ringlet style that often appear on upperclass female characters in anime), saying only a masochist would wear such a hairstyle. So, the fight apparently over, the comedy of the first couple episodes is back.
But…why isn’t the mirror universe bubble not collapsing? That would be because the girls’ attack did not finish off Saber. It caused clothing damaging, destroying her armor, but Excalibur is still there and Saber unleashes a massive counterattack. So much for the humor, as we see a scene of devastation: Illya is the only one we are sure is alive at this point. We even have the cliched “sad piano” background music that often plays in the aftermath of horrible destruction. Miyu is alive too, but there is no sign of Rin or Luvia for the moment. The ground where they stood is a barren hole. Talk about sudden mood whiplash, an effect that anime producers seem interested in exploring often of late. Wow, they even went for the “loud yell of sadness and frustration.” Gilding the lily a bit are we?
Illya has broken down, curled up into a ball. Miyu still has it together, but she’s just as clueless as to what to do, other than run. Saber is unrelenting even against two unarmed little girls. When all seems lost, however, it appears that something awakens inside of Illya. We see a chain break and Illya calls forth a hidden power. She takes out the Archer card and activates it, even without Ruby. She appears to call forth Archer’s reality marble, Unlimited Blade Works, at least that’s what it looks like to me, and she now dresses like Archer and even has a bow. It looks like she has become the embodiment of a Class Card avatar herself and begins to fight Saber. Illya even makes use of Archer’s blade creation abilities (then what was the bow for?).
Miyu can only watch in awe as Illya appears to have transformed herself into a Heroic Spirit, putting her at a level where she can fight Saber. Finally, Illya even pushes her use of Archer’s copying ability to make a copy of Excalibur, which she uses to counter Saber’s ultimate attack and defeat her. The fight is finally over, and we get some after the fact voiceover that Illya herself had no memory of what she did, only what Miyu and Sapphire (who came out to find Miyu, as the girls had escaped underground in the face of Saber’s attack) later told her. There is no explanation for what just happened, at least not yet.
I’ve been slightly confused about what the aims were of the creators of this show. At the beginning, it looked like Prisma Illya was going to be a magical girl parody show, and a very good one at that. Even the early trailers seemed to point in that direction. With the more serious fights that erupted against Caster and especially Saber, including quite sincere moments of pathos, it seemed like the show was turning in the direction of action, with some humor mixed in at times. We have that here, but I don’t think that’s the real intention of the creators of this show either. It’s taken until this episode, with the whole Archer transformation, to get a better read on what the team behind Prisma Illya are after. I think I finally get it: they just want to throw in a huge pile of cool things Fate-related into a show. This show is basically just a love letter to the Fate fandom. Thus this fight we have here, which was beautifully animated (one hopes they didn’t blow the entire budget for the second half of the season on this one episode), with fluid and complicated fighting scenes. Saber is an obvious fan favorite, so she gets a lot of attention in this series.
If we look at it this way, that the point of the show is not to be a magical girl show per se, but just a magical girl-flavored tribute to everything Fate, then everything we’ve seen so far makes quite a bit of sense. What remains to be seen is how much of this kind of material they plan to get into, as there are a number of other well-known franchise characters, other than the Servants, who have yet to make a real appearance. Otherwise, I find it somewhat hard to explain what the point is of including a “game-breaking” ability like Illya’s, which basically means she can transform into Archer (or better yet, perhaps Saber in future) when things get too rough to handle using the Kaleidosticks. True, she has to be pushed beyond the point of despair to activate the power, but if they face another strong Class Card (Assassin and Berserker will not be too easy, one assumes), then this trump card will certainly come into play.
Leaving aside the higher level commentary, it’s nice to see the entirely expected, but still heartwarming, growing friendship between Miyu and Illya. It did not take fighting between them to do it, it took fighting alongside each other, and that was a nice departure from what has become more usual, where friendship follows defeat.
In Summary:
The fight with Saber looks to be over, as Luvia and Rin unleash their super attack. It is super…but it’s not enough to finish Saber, who counterattacks using Excalibur. All seems lost until Illya, pushed beyond her breaking point, unleashes a new ability…that pretty much blows everything else out of the water. This isn’t magical girl parody anymore, but it’s not really a fully viable action-magical girl show either with an overpowered ability like that. Then what is this show? It’s a tribute to all things Fate, and you know what? I can live with, and more importantly, be entertained by that.
Episode Grade: B+
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
