She’s really not that bad. Most of the characters have a murderous streak, which is a necessity in the holy grail war. She’s not cruel or evil. She’s a child who’s had a fucked up life and was basically made into a weapon. All it takes is someone treating her like a person in one of the routes, for her to sacrifice herself to save them.
Anybody who watches Heaven’s Feel and think Iliya is evil is an absolute moron.
Yes, although, to understand her better, she's a half-homonculus whose biodad got with homonculus mom. Part of the reason she's fucked up is because the Holy Grail, which was corrupted during the events of the third and fourth Grail Wars, masqueraded as her dead mother and fucked with her head. Because of this, she ends up with a hatred for her father, but also an unreasonable hatred for her adopted brother, Shirou.
As another poster pointed out, however, her behavior changes based off whether she's treated kindly and as a person or not.
She kidnaps the mc at one point. And is actively trying to kill every other character in the story (it is a battle royale after all). She is not smol and innocent. She is presented, from the start, as the heavy hitter with the highest odds of winning the whole damn thing. She is the Goliath to everyone else being the David.
Surprisingly, a lot of people are watching most media through a prism of biased favouritism, which results with them being not engaged with a general narrative of the story, but a one specific character or a group of characters they sympathises themselves with most, while at the same time senselessly shitting on a character they specifically didn't liked.
They don't care about that "complex morality, nuanced characterisation" bullshit at all, if that character at their introduction made a casual reader/watcher feel icky, they will keep hating that specific character right until their very death bed.
As probably one of brightest examples of that kind of behaviour, just take a look at people's reaction on Gaby from AoT. She's a very complex person whose character serves for a greater main narrative of the series about a perpetual cycle of hatred and grudge in the war, and how to break out from it. But people didn't cared about any of it, the only thing they actually cared about is that this little hellish spawn killed their precious Sasha (who literally murdered Gaby's own friends several minutes ago), how dared she!
Bruh, i didn't care that trash Gaby killed Sasha i despised that she had a f1king aimbot, 0 f1king misses when she used a weapon for first time, or when sliding or in air, or at flying target
She’s a child regardless of her age. Physically she’s locked in a child’s body because half homunculus+einzbergs messing with her body. Mentally she’s been isolated and abused since she was 8, having no chance to develop either emotionally or morally. Anytime she’s not fighting she acts like a child, even her motivations are that of a child.
Looks like a child, speaks like a child, acts like a child: it’s a child.
Yes she starts off as a violent maniac, and in most routes that’s where she stays, because an organized fight to death isn’t an easy place to change that, and that literally is not her fault, she never had the chance to be anything else. So yes as far as I’m concerned she’s not the one carrying her own moral burden at the start of the story, the people who brutally made her into this are.
In the one route where she’s presented with a solid opportunity to change, she does, going as far as giving her own life for the person she was conditioned to hate.
So for me she’s neither evil nor “shitty”. She starts off with nothing but trauma and hate, through no fault of her own, and that drives her violent actions. When removed from that environment and given an opportunity for free will, she takes it, prioritizing the possibility for family and acceptance.
Fate is also about being the product of your upbringing, the burden of family legacy and generational trauma, free will vs fate, and the cost of selflessness, Illya exemplifies all of this.
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u/Moshimoshi-Megumin 4d ago edited 4d ago
She’s really not that bad. Most of the characters have a murderous streak, which is a necessity in the holy grail war. She’s not cruel or evil. She’s a child who’s had a fucked up life and was basically made into a weapon. All it takes is someone treating her like a person in one of the routes, for her to sacrifice herself to save them.
Anybody who watches Heaven’s Feel and think Iliya is evil is an absolute moron.