I have seen several variants of the simple joke where a group of Nazis or Star Wars Stormtroopers are overlooking some atrocity and one of them turns to the other and simply asks, “Are we the bad guys?” By the end of the episode, everyone on Illya’s team has to ask themselves that question. As it turns out they might be the greedy bastards who damn millions just for their own selfish desires. Now, in this case, their selfish desires in not seeing their friend ritually sacrificed so it is not the standard villain motivation (unless you are the villains of Magic Knight Rayearth.)  They just have to sacrifice a whole world’s worth of people to save her.

Well, this is a magical girl show. They will find another way that requires neither the ritual murder of Miyu nor turning another dimension into the Upside Down. But they don’t KNOW that. They have to make the choice to potentially damn the world and hope MAYBE there is some chance that there is another way. They have to be villains with the desperate hope that eventually their actions will be redeemed. The Trolley problem in anime form.

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 Let’s face it. It is a bit of karmic justice that Illya is the one who ends up with her soul stuffed in a doll. Fate/Stay Night Illya loved to throw people’s souls in various objects. Most of the time Shiro winds up with his soul smooshed into some doll if he gets captured by the Einzbern’s White Holy Grail. Mind you she also saves Shiro’s life with the same technique at the end of Heaven’s Feel but that is only when she is on her way out while being consumed by the Dress of Heaven. Illya’s always a little nicer when she is second away from death. There is a reason Fate/Stay Night’s Illya’s wresting name is Cutie Heel Bloomer.

Now magical girl Illya is a far kinder version of the character whose general methodology would not casually play with people’s essences for fun and profit. But much like Karna, she has to pay for the crimes of past lives despite the fact that she had done little to deserve such punishment in this timeline.

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