Analysing FSN #5: Illya!!! An Overview

The exclamation marks are because I’m excited to write about her. Saber’s not bad (<- severe understatement), and I like Rin more than I remember in Fate, but Illya is easily best girl. Her scenes are the highlights of the reread for me so far, and I thought it was about time to do an overview of how she’s characterized in them.

I did start on the last post before this one, but in typical fashion, Archer was a bitch to write about, so I ended up finishing them at about the same time, which means I can double-post today. Don’t get used to it.

The main character trait really emphasized about Illya is her ‘innocence’. But what does that mean, exactly? Well, for example, she doesn’t really understand the concept of lying. She just assumes that people will be honest if they agree to something.

Which is weird, because she clearly understands deception, seeing as how she pretends to leave the castle in order to lure in Rin and Saber. But for her, I think that’s more like a prank than anything.

Speaking of things that are weird – you don’t usually call people innocent when they are totally okay with murder. Even compared to pieces of shit like Shinji, she does some really nasty stuff in the bad ends. So on the one hand, she’s a typical magus, totally unbounded by human notions of morality. On the other hand, it’s not like she would do any of that stuff during the day. That’s against the rules, Shirou, don’t be silly.

Shirou’s first hypothesis is basically that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. If he just explains to her why killing people is bad, maybe she’ll change her mind. Then she kills Shinji, and threatens to kill Rin and Saber, and he’s like oh. Oh, shit. She basically has no sense of morality to begin with.

Now, there’s a temptation to talk about Illya as though she has two personalities – one is the good, childlike one, and the other is the evil, adult one. There’s an obvious shift in the way she acts when she’s fighting as a Master and just playing around with Shirou. But it’s only in how she acts. Her fundamental motives and beliefs don’t change at all. Like, look at how easily she says something outrageous while eating lunch with Saber. They’re both the same picture.

You know how mankind’s original sin in the Bible is eating the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Well, Illya clearly didn’t get the memo on that one. It kind of makes sense, symbolically speaking, that she’s a homunculus, an artificial human. She’s just built different, I guess.

Another prominent way she’s depicted as is possessive. Look at her room in the Einzbern Castle – it’s filled with dolls, and there’s a pretty strong implication that Shirou, tied up in a chair, is just another one of them to her. Her feelings for Shirou are characterized by her wanting him – and if she can’t have him, nobody can. Same sort of way a child might treat their toys, right?

It’s a lot scarier when you’re doing it with a person, but Illya hasn’t really learnt the difference between a person and a toy yet. Simply put, that’s what innocence means – a lack of understanding. Illya knows a lot about magic, and how to fight in a Grail War, but when it comes to engaging with, and relating to, other people, she has a way to go.

This might make her sound like a psychopath, but in reality, she’s just a child. She already shows signs of improving just by interacting with Saber in a safe, loving environment, which is most definitely not what she grew up in. Like, no offense to Berserker, but the only person in her life who cared about her was a giant monster that can’t even talk, summoned specifically for the purpose of murdering people.

So, conclusion number one: Illya is precious and needs protecting.

Conclusion number two: Prisma Illya is just a totally different character, right? They don’t share a single point of similarity in either their personalities, or roles in the story. I get that it’s totally possible Illya might turn out like that under better circumstances, and I don’t blame Hiroyama for using her for his manga, but the fact that we have to go to an alternate reality to see Illya living a happy life is kind of tragic. Like, don’t even get me started on the people who unironically think that Fate/Kaleid is supposed to be a substitute for an actual Illya route, are you fucking kidding me?

Ahem.

Next time I’ll be talking about Saber and Shirou again, I assume (it’s almost like they’re the main characters, or something). This post from u/Reymon271 really got me hyped up for the bridge scene.