The Fate franchise is huge and varied in both scope and tone. Some works are serious and dark, while others range from parody to slapstick comedy. The new film Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya: Prisma Phantasm is most certainly the latter.
Prisma Phantasm is a spin-off of two different anime. The first is 2011’s Carnival Phantasm–a series which takes characters from various Type-Moon works (mostly Fate and Tsukihime) and puts them in comical situations that often parody either the source material or general Japanese pop-culture–or both at once.
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The second is the Fate sub-franchise, Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya, which re-imagines the Fate/stay night characters and story in a magical girl setting. And as implied by the title itself, when you mix Prisma Illya and Carnival Phantasm, you get Prisma Phantasm.
Like Carnival Phantasm, Prisma Phantasm is presented as a series of vignettes–some related or each other and some completely independent. Among those, three situations pop up again and again over the films hour-long runtime.
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The first is actually a continuation of the short comical OVA released as an extra in the Blu-ray release of Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya: Oath Under Snow. In it, Sakura and Emiya discuss the film. However, as it goes on, it becomes more and more obvious that this is the yandere Berserker version of Sakura seen in Fate/kaleid liner’s third season and not the kind and pure Sakura seen in the film. Humor ensues.
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In Prisma Phantasm, it is Shinji (in his assassin form), Sakura’s brother, who joins Berserker Sakura on the talk show-like stage. She orders her brother to do a series of part-time jobs she has planned (as revenge for killing her in Oath Under Snow). When he tries to refuse her, she… convinces him in a rather brutal fashion.
About half the film is spent following assassin-form Shinji as he learns (or fails to learn) the value of hard work as a house cleaner for Emiya’s family, a butler for Luvia, a helper for Bazett, and a ramen shop employee for Kotomine. Basically, the film revels in Shinji’s pain and humiliation as he is forced to do jobs for people he sees as beneath him. And frankly, it was cathartic as hell.
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Shinji, in his various forms across the Fate franchise, is almost always irredeemable. Envious of his family and friends, he is an outright rapist and murderer. While he dies in many versions of the story, it is usually a quick death. Thus, seeing him bullied by his most egregious victim and forced to wallow in his own shame is a revenge fantasy that pretty much every Fate fan is sure to get behind.
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The next loose storyline revolves around Kotomine and his ramen shop. Each minute-long vignette features one of the other Prisma Illya characters entering and, one way or another, trying some of Kotomine’s infamous spicy mapo tofu ramen.
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This section of the film is just an expansion of the already comedic bit about Kotomine’s stupidly spicy mapo tofu ramen found in the main Prisma Illya series. Here it’s just kicked up to 11. The joke is simple: will each given character be able eat it or will they end up unconscious in a bowl of spicy death. And believe it or not, it’s incredibly funny–especially as it merges with Shinji’s story by the end.
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The final overarching gag is a series of vignettes showing what would have happened if, in the first episode of Prisma Illya, the living wand Ruby went to one of Illya’s friends instead of Illya and turn her into a magical girl. They’re somewhat enjoyable, but I must confess that since none of them appear in season three or Oath Under the Snow, I had almost completely forgotten about them.
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Other than the repeating jokes, there are two excellent one-offs that stand out. The first shows a world where all the villains of Prisma Illyai’s third season are all gender-swapped. This, of course, means that Angelica Ainsworth, who is basically a gender-swap of the normally male Gilgamesh, gets gender-swapped again. It’s even more hilarious than you’d expect.
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The other memorable one-off serves as the climax of the film as a cast of ever-expanding characters attempts to play a game of kick the can. It starts off normal, but by the end, it is the kind of chaos you’ve come to expect from anything Carnival Phantasm-related.
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In the end, it’s hard to think of an anime more directly aimed at the most hardcore of hardcore fans than Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya: Prisma Phantasm–and it shows. If Prisma Illyai is your drug of choice, you’re going to laugh a lot during this film. But with that hilarity comes a barrier for entry. Even if you’re a fan well acquainted with flagship title Fate/stay night, it’s doubtful that you’ll understand half the jokes made in this film. But even then, I’m sure we can all agree that spending a half-hour shitting on Shinji is a worthwhile use of our time.
Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya: Prisma Phantasm was released in Japanese theaters on June 14, 2019. There is currently no word on a Western release.
I just wanted to give out a big thanks to Joshua Ott for sponsoring this review with his Patreon donation. (At the $60 a month tier, you are allowed to pick anything up to an including a 13ish episode series to be reviewed–which is released in addition to the one article a week I normally put out here on BiggestinJapan.com.) So thanks again!
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