Allison to Lillia - Episode 19

It's time for the beginning of a new Allison to Lillia story arc, and with the New Year approaching Treize has invited both Allison and Lillia to Ikstova to celebrate, while also hoping to use the opportunity to reveal the truth about his identity to Lillia. For goodness sake man, just tell her already!

Oddly for a series that has prided itself on Allison stealing planes for much of its duration, Allison and Lillia take the bus to Ikstova this time around, becoming delayed when the road is blocked at one point due to an avalanche. Luckily it appears that a travelling shovel salesman was on the bus, as there were plenty of spades to go around to help clear the snow. We were actually fed a false hope around this point that the episode would become some hysterical attempt to drum up an Abominable Snowman story, but sadly even Allison to Lillia's writers have too much savvy to go down that particular route.


Instead, we get to see Wil/Travas hard at work even on a day off, where Axe (what an awesome girl's name, you wouldn't mess with her) reports that someone is spending vast amounts of money buying expensive colour film. Whatever are they doing with it? Wil realises that they could be making a below-par anime series called Allison to Lillia - They must be stopped at once! Okay, he doesn't realise that (there's some nonsense about revenge going on instead), but we later hear that Fiona and Benedict have hired some innovative colour film-makers to record their New Year celebrations. Coincidence? Of course not.

So, we see the film crew doing their thing, with the female head of the crew insisting that everybody call her leader, I can only assume so that she can look unfeasibly angry for the entire duration of the episode. Why she's spent so much on film I have no idea, as her cunning plot for revenge doesn't really involve it at all, as she pulls a gun on the New Year revellers (Fiona included) at the stroke of midnight, shooting the ceiling to really drive the point home, or to waste a bullet depending on which way you look at it.

So, that's where we're left at the end of this episode, which was really all about the build-up to what happens next. Once again, Wil manages to be entirely too late to actually do anything useful to stop any cunning plots, which increasingly makes him look like Inspector Gadget minus the gadgets than any kind of useful secret agent, while Treize singularly fails to say "Hey, I'm a prince, I'm really rich, can we go to bed now?" to Lillia - Why do I get the feeling that particular issue is going to get dragged out to the final episodes of the Lillia half of the series? Regardless, I'm now looking forward to seeing what kind of ridiculous plan the world's angriest woman has in store next episode. I just hope it doesn't involve Bigfoot...