Miyu looks really good in hers.
Impression
It kind of reminds me of one she wears later on in the series. I’ll say no more, but while we’re on the topic of plot, it seems like we’re returning to it next week! Sort of. It looks like half-filler and half-plot, which is… well, baby steps, right? Just like how Illya keeps delicately stepping around the issue of Miyu and the secret she’s hiding.
After all this time, Illya must have noticed that there’s something strange about how Miyu seemingly doesn’t know anything about the world around her – and we can add a fireworks display and having fun at a festival to that list. Miyu somehow knows a lot about economics though, in questioning why everything at the festival was sold so high above its normal retail price. The short answer is because it’s a festival. The long answer is because the vendors in the area have a local monopoly over what they sell. It’s like how they sell things like popcorn or ice cream at exorbitant prices in cinemas – there’s no other place you can really buy it from within the local area, making it convenient. So at a festival, demand is inelastic because people want to enjoy buying stuff alongside the festival atmosphere, and thus still buy them at high prices. The real answer is because Signum is on the front of those masks, and Signum is awesome.
…That isn’t Signum, is it?
I know Prisma Illya takes after Nanoha a lot, but sadly that doesn’t seem to extend to intellectual property. I’ll just chalk it down to a strange coincidence – just like that freaking bottle which came out of nowhere and just happened to undo Illya’s sash while she just happened to not be wearing anything underneath. Like Ruby said, there are unwritten rules to this sort of thing, you know? I would have been happier had her sash just undone itself – an explanation for that bottle is just as likely as Miyu having become a magical girl by coincidence! Oh wait.
I love how Illya started worrying about being little perverts now, after all the stuff they’ve done – they kind of already are. Well, mostly Kuro. It’s always her in the end – I’m not really surprised to learn that not wearing underwear is a minor thing for her. At least they added a couple more items to their list of fanservice achievements – there was that scene where Shirou thought Rin had peed herself, too. That was probably one of Luvia’s finest petty revenge moments thus far – I actually had no idea what she was truly up to with the water balloon until it was too late. Alas, neither was Rin.
(And speaking of lewd things, I finally watched the latest OVA. I might do a separate entry for it, but I thought it was very… generous. A bit too generous, even.)
I just want to say that the “no underwear under a yukata” thing is very tradtional. And I don’t mean a traditional fanservice tool, I mean it’s a Japanese custom. Not everyone follows it, but a lot of people do.
So it’s not a misconception? Does it depend on context by any chance – so are people more likely to have no underwear if the yukata is worn for bed as opposed to a festival or something?
I do not have that much in detail, but my understanding would suggest the reverse, actually. Modern underwear (bra and panties) make visible impressions on the surface of a yukata: essentially everyone can see what the person is wearing. That’s disruptive to the proper appearance, so, assuming I understand correctly, people would be LESS likely to wear underwear with a yukata when wearing it for a public occasion like a festival, and more likely to wear underwear with a yukata on occasions when no one is likely to see them.
It seems perhaps more than a little odd from our perspective, but then it isn’t usually quite as easy as it looked here for a yukata to come undone and the person to be exposed.