Allison to Lillia - Episode 4

You know, I tried really hard to be nice about Allison to Lillia, and even had some kind words to say about episode three, but it seems to have taken those compliments, shrugged its proverbial shoulders and laughed in my face with episode four.

Following their escape and the death of the old man, the first half of this episode is basically nothing but dog-fighting (with planes in the sky, not dogs, in case any of you are confused), and to be honest - Yukikaze it ain't. I could have likened it to watching paint dry, but seeing as paintballs were involved at one point that would probably be too literal, so let's just say that the animation really didn't help the show here, as it was so shoddy you couldn't even tell which way the planes were facing half the time. To top it all, the two 'bad guys' who got shot down and forced to land with their engines in flame suddenly seemed to appear with completely working planes again two minutes later so that they could be shot down again... Then again, maybe I just blacked out for a moment from all the excitement and missed something important.

From then on, it's a case of enter cave, find treasure, end war. Job done. Yes, that's right, the major storyline of the this half of Allison to Lillia seems to have finished already, in some kind of bizarre anime equivalent of premature ejaculation. Having found the treasure, I was fully expecting the rest of this half of the series to deal with the intense and gripping struggle to get this wonderful news out to the world and stop the war, a story which would have had plenty to offer regarding both action and suspense as well as the deeper philosophical point that some people will always want war to meet their own ends, no matter how pointless it may be. Instead, all we get are a couple more bad guys who assume the treasure will make them rich, before being killed in a freak firearms accident. Great.

All I can hope from here on in is that the story can actually improve now that the war is out of the way, although considering how ably they managed to totally screw up telling what should have been Allison's major plotline, I'm not holding out much hope. Normally I would have dropped this series here, had it not been for the move to a new story, and the entire Lillia arc to keep me hanging on for something better further down the line.