Recap: Rin takes Ilya to claim the Rider class card.

Iro’s Thoughts:
Wow, this show is really bad! So bad that I want to drop it! But I probably won’t, because otherwise I’ll barely be doing anything on this blog. Yay obligations!

Anyway, the show’s first real fight happens this episode, and it’s pretty mediocre. In typical fashion, it takes place in the “Mirror World”, which is basically closed space or whatever-they-call-it-in-Nanoha (that is, a convenient excuse to allow collateral damage without actually allowing it). They fight Rider from Fate/Stay Night, who really should explode into gibs if a light breeze brushed her. So perhaps we’re expecting a cool fight with Noble Phantasms and awesome magecraft? Not really, Ilya just throws a bunch of boring beam attacks. Yawn.

I’m being slightly unfair, because Miyu pops up and saves the day with one of those aforementioned Noble Phantasms, leaving the episode on a cliffhanger and establishing herself as the quiet, stoic, opposite-colored rival girl that exists in EVERY MAGICAL GIRL SHOW EVER. Sadly, this was the most interesting thing that happened all episode, and it still involved creepy lolicon fanservice. Someone out there thinks those outfits are hot. Think about that for a second.

And because this is a bad spinoff of Fate/Stay Night, we get the requisite half-assed references to the original work. The class cards obviously correspond to the Servant classes, and more specifically the Servants from F/SN; Miyu uses Lancer’s Gae Bolg on Rider before she can use Bellerophon. The letter Ilya gets is pretty much verbatim to one Rin gives to Shirou in the Heaven’s Feel route. In a reference to Tsukihime, the Ruby and Sapphire kaleidosticks have the same actresses as twin maids Kohaku and Hisui. Lastly, El-Melloi II (aka Waver Velvet from Fate/Zero) and Wizard Marshall Zelretch make cameo appearances as Rin’s superiors. Of all the fucking things that could star the first animated appearances of those two, it has to be this shit. Figures.