Alternate titles: Prisma Illya, Prisma Ilya, Fate/Stay Night but with Magical Girls
Manga Adaptation by Silverlink
Simulcast on Crunchyroll

Premise: An alternate universe to Fate/Stay Night where Illyasviel von Einzbern is a magical girl hunting down artifacts called Class Cards.

Iro’s Verdict: The Magic is Gone

This pretty much takes out everything I liked about Fate/Stay Night and throws it to the wind. Remember the moral quandaries, clever action, and nods to myth and legend in Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Zero? There’s pretty much none of that here, just anime cliches (“LET’S GO HOME TOGETHER ONII-CHAN”) and skeevy lolicon fanservice. It plays like a bad fanfiction, which is fitting because that’s exactly what this is. It’s the most cliche magical girl show ever but with a Fate coat of paint, which just means the plot coupons are the Servant class cards and they get power from the Kaleidosticks from Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, instead of whatever either of those were in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Maybe some people just want a cliche magical girl show, but I know I don’t. (BUT I’LL STILL BE COVERING IT OH GOD)

Zigg’s Verdict: Lower Class

I think what surprised me about this was just how many levels it was terrible on. The art is ugly as sin, all big-eyed deformed parodies of traditional FSN designs. It’s creepy as all hell, with the extended bath scene an outrageously blatant attempt at underage ogling. Meanwhile, the extended conversation between the magical wand…thing and Ilya has an incredibly unsettling stalker-ish vibe which led to me imagine the stick wearing a dirty mac and leering constantly throughout. There’s also practically no plot beyond the increasingly tired ‘collect these things!’ and yet the show still manages to go out of its way to cram massive dialogue dumps in, proving it’s faithful to its heritage in at least one regard.

The thing is, I say this as someone who has relatively little attachment to the Fate brand (I liked Fate/Zero a bit). For a fan like Iro this must be like seeing your favourite franchise repeatedly beaten up and then left bleeding in the gutter. This could have worked if they’d treated it as a super silly spoof and piled on the knowing in-jokes, as it is it’s just a tired lame magical girl show hiding behind someone else’s character designs.

Lifesong’s Verdict: Been Here Done This

I found this first episode moderately enjoyable, but I have one major problem with this anime: It brings nothing new to the table. I doubt that I really want to watch a magical girl show just because of Type-moon branding. So far branding is all this has going for it. I am not impressed.