I have to admit that Illya from Prisma Illya is more enjoyable than the one in Fate/stay night. While I enjoyed the first season despite having a few flaws, I like how they made this spinoff into a magical girl show with the usual clichés as Illya and a mysterious girl named Miyu uses magical sticks to transform into magical girls to collect Class Cards.
The 2nd season eventually introduced Chloe, which is basically a darker skin version of Illya from Fate/stay night. While most of the second season was focused on her, there were many enjoyable moments, especially the fight at the end with Bazett. With that, will the second part of 2wei, 2wei Herz live up to the prequel? Somewhat.
I have to say that it is kind of expected that 2wei Herz will be a slight disappointment compared to the first half since it focuses more on the 8th card, which is obviously Gilgamesh along with Miyu’s origins. Since his appearance only took four episodes to build up, most of the season focused on episodes that felt like fillers.
While I did not mind them since they were enjoyable, they were somewhat underwhelming. Sure, there were some great episodes such as the awakening of Mimi, various scenes of Chloe kissing Illya, the beach episode and Miyu finding Illya’s charm that she lost at an amusement park, it does not quite match up to the funny moments from the first half of 2wei to be honest. Not to mention, the lack of real fights until the end made this sequel slightly disappointing. As a result, this show felt more like Carnival Phantasm with all the comedy rather than a magical girl show since the Illya, Miyu and Chloe barely use their powers.
However, the final fight did not disappoint at all considering that Illya basically gave payback to child Gil for what he did in Unlimited Blade Works. Sure, we learned that Miyu is a human form of the Holy Grail from a parallel universe when she gets captured by him, the fight was still very enjoyable, especially when Illya becomes badass as she combines the powers of Ruby and Sapphire and beat the crap out of Gil. Not to mention, Illya’s reunion with Miyu after the battle was rather heartwarming.
Overall, while the third season of Prisma Illya does not quite live up to the second season in terms of enjoyment, it is still entertaining. Sure, it somewhat lacks the magical girl feeling compared to the first two seasons, but watching Illya beat up child Gil made the show satisfying enough aside from the yuri scenes. Hopefully with the fourth season, 3rei will bring more magical girl action to the table as other people from the parallel dimension start to chase after Miyu now that Gil was defeated.
Overall Rating: 8.4/10, B, Good
Once again Miyu shows us that she is worthy representative of the yuri nation in her quest for Illya’s love, as difficult as it is. Thankfully she got past the “more than friends” stage with her. Now she just needs to reach the sacred lovers stage.
My beloved Luvia, Rin, Bazett and Leysritt blessing us with their swimsuits was glorious. Irisviel also showing off her majestic figure was a surprise bonus to me. Too bad Sella didn’t join the fun.
Mimi’s awakening was a very important and surprising episode to me.
The Illyas kiss scenes were steamy as usual. Glad we got some.
As you know I too found this season good but overwhelming overall. Now the wait for 3rei begins.
Yep, looking at Luvia, Rin and Bazett in their swimsuits is gorgeous… while there are not that many Miyu and Illya moments except the amusement park and the ending notably, hopefully they will show more in the 4th season.