Perhaps it is reminiscent of forgotten childhood books and stories, and just maybe this is how its charm really resonates. The soaring elation of flying in a plane for the first time, the anticipation and trepidation before setting off on a journey to somewhere unknown, the thrill of getting swept up in a dangerous train caper – Allison to Lillia at its core is about that, and about tapping into a nostalgic, childish form of escapism. Speaking of planes and trains, they are featured heavily in this series, and help to form the setting which is one of the ways in which it gains an atypical feel to it. The war-era West is the perfect choice of fictionalised setting as a time when technology and machinery still had a degree of magic to it. Allison to Lillia really capitalizes on this feeling of wonder, taking us for flights with a sense of gusto and amazement that must have existed before planes became a banal form of commute.
The setting may be a refreshing change from the generic Japanese High School but the characters that populate it are still distinctly Japanese in their behavior and culture. The result is like an antique Western adventure characterised by a familiar anime tone. The romantic aspect of the series plays out largely very predictably and bashfully, and the female characters are spiced up with some bouncy moe features to their personalities. Much of the show revolves around the relationship between the core duo getting caught up in these antics. In the first half, the duo comprises of Wilhelm and Allison, and in the second Treize and Lillia pair up to assail the world. In both cases, one of the characters is trying to confess to the other (and propose marriage no less) for much of their half of the show. Cue the botched/interrupted confessions and romantic obliviousness of the resilience seen only in anime! It is in this that she show loses a lot of points, with characters who are supposed to be so adventurous being so gratingly nervous with each other, and with the female characters being made so cute that it sometimes seems a bit jarring. Jabs at their believability aside, the main characters are really very likeable, and, especially in the case of Lillia and Treize, their interplay with each other is a lot of fun and gives the series a lot of its personality. Even if I may cringe when Treize is unable to confess, they are good enough characters that I genuinely did want to see things turn out happily for them in the end (which isn’t to say that it doesn’t – no spoilers from me!).
Believability is misplaced a bit in other areas of the show too. The creators may have spent so much effort nailing the essence of adventure that they completely neglected the details of said escapades. In a lot of cases, the villain presence feels contrived and there are quite a few relatively glaring leaps of logic in the plot that are ignored in favour of in-the-moment suspense. If you’ve seen the show I’m sure you’ll be able to think back to some times where you disconnected from the flow of the show and had to think “why are the villains going to all the trouble of doing this when they could have just..?” or “how is killing a seaplane load of orphans an optimal way to draw attention to a nation’s poverty crisis, at all?”. Often it gets ahead of itself, which unfortunately erodes the credibility of some of its stories. This may be the fault of the original creator; while Kino’s Journey was quite abstract and could afford the absence of realism, Allison and Lillia tries for conventional storytelling that relies in suspension of disbelief.
Mediocrity seeps into it from one other angle and that is the visual production. The score may have not been great music in its own right, but it got the job done in providing an extra edge of tension or drama where needed. The animation and direction, however might have been just a tad bland for this kind of show. Some scenes looked really great – some of the dog fights were done very well for a tv anime. But the background art was too simple and the episode direction was boringly conventional. I’m not asking for trippy 3D camera pans or anything like that, but the direction did nothing to add atmosphere to the series. It was generally just close up, followed by another close-up etc – the minimum thought needed in getting the animation into a frame. The director is not an unknown, Nishida Masayoshi worked on Mokke recently and I recall that suffering the same blandness. On the other hand, the character designs were very different and, especially for the female characters, very nice indeed. With their rounded, feminine features both Allison and Lillia often looked very beautiful (as opposed to just cute).
There is a message and a moral to each of its arcs, but it does not burrow too deeply with themes into the darker side of humanity. Rather, Allison to Lillia is washed over with a thick coat of optimism that is essential to this fun-spirited nature. To those of you who retain the childish yearning for adventure and exploration, Allison to Lillia should prove to be very enjoyable, providing just the right mix of tension, charm and romance. If you can latch onto this brand then it’s got to be a healthy change from or alternative to the kind of escapism fueled by the moe genre. It’s not particularly complex, involved or intelligent (quite unlike Kino’s Journey) but I’m sure it never tried to be and it works quite well as simple, wholesome entertainment, if you can overlook some logic gaps.
