Allison & Lillia – 08

「王女様と英雄」 (Oujo-sama to Eiyuu)
“A Princess and a Hero”

Upon hearing Owen tell Benedict not to make matters worse in Ikstova, the crowd responds accordingly. However, Fiona offers proof that she’s the real princess by showing Owen and Warren the royal pendant she’s been carrying. While he’s shocked to see it, Owen refuses to recognize it as sufficient proof, telling the crowd that there’s no one who can verify it. Hearing this, Warren asks Fiona to look at the pendant, since he’s a surviving royal bodyguard from ten years ago and had played with Francesca once.

After seeing the pendant, Warren recognizes the royal crest with the flower on the reverse side and declares Fiona to be the real princess. After being accepted by the people, Fiona shows Owen a button with his family crest, which she obtained ten years ago on the night of the fire when she was taken hostage. Using this as evidence, Fiona accuses Owen of being a perpetrator of the palace raid. Warren’s men quickly surround Owen with guns, but he grabs Fiona as a hostage. Not wanting to fail at protecting the royal family again, Warren charges in, but gets stabbed in the leg by Owen. With everyone distracted, Owen runs off with Fiona while Benedict gives chase.

Hearing this while in the audience, Allison and Wil head back to their plane, while Owen proceeds to take Fiona to the roof. Benedict shows up shortly after telling him to stop this futile resistance, so Owen lunges towards Benedict with his dagger. Having blocked the stab with his wristwatch, Benedict punches him back. Allison and Wil they fly by overhead, which draws everyone’s attention, so Owen tries to grab Fiona one more time, but the angered face of Francesca haunts him, causing him to fall back and off the roof. (It seems like the air turbulence from Allison’s plane helped push him over too.)

Later on, Allison, Wil, and Benedict pay a visit to Fiona, who’s now been reinstated as the princess of Ikstova. While the four of them talk alone, Fiona thanks everyone for helping her, shortly after which Wil suggests that Fiona isn’t the real Francesca, but her twin sister. Having planned to explain everything to them anyway, Fiona says that she had an older twin sister whom she met just once and was entrusted with her royal pendant. At the time, Fiona was unaware that she had a twin sister, even though Francesca had known. As for the Owen’s cuff button, she found it in the belongings of the late old man who had raised her. Although Francesca told Fiona that someday she would understand when to use the pendant, it was only after seeing the propaganda poster did she feel compelled to carry out proper judgment on Owen.

Having heard Fiona’s side of things, everyone’s still puzzled as to how Wil knew about her being a twin, so he explains that it was because of the princess’ symbol he saw back in the village. On that particular symbol, the flower was facing towards the bottom right, whereas on Francesca’s pendant, it’s facing towards the bottom left. As it turns out, the symbol in the village was made for Fiona in the first place, to complete the twinflower. Hearing this, Benedict realizes that Fiona’s villagers were dispatched from the royal family to protect her all this time, since there were multiple clues, such as the one-side age difference and their soldier-like behavior. Unaware that she had been protected all these twenty years too, Fiona is moved to tears.

Realizing that Wil noticed the twinflower’s secret, Allison wonders why he can’t notice her feelings at all.

 

Next Episode:
「元戦場に架かる橋」 (Moto Senjou ni Kakaru Hashi)
“Bridge Spanning the Original Battlefield”

Impressions:
So Francesca turned out to Fiona’s older twin sister, who also entrusted Fiona with her pendant. Owen on the other hand was involved in the fire ten years ago that wiped out the royal family. To be honest, I didn’t expect my speculations to actually turn out so precisely, given how they didn’t really hint that Fiona was a member of the royal family. In fact, the story purposely misguided us last episode when Fiona said she was an imposter. While this is true, the notion of an “imposter” probably makes one think of a commoner trying to stake claim to the throne, so it wasn’t really logical to suspect her to be blood-related. As for why she decided to pretend to be Francesca, I guess it would’ve been difficult for citizens to accept her as “Fiona, the twin daughter of the royal family that no one knew about” when her existence was never made public.

I did have some minor qualms with this episode, but they were over little things like how they let Owen slip away so easily with a knife when he was surrounded by police officers carrying guns and Benedict blocking a knife thrust with his wristwatch. Also, Owen’s death was a bit sudden, with him simply being haunted by the face of Francesca and falling off the building mostly on his own accord. In any case, it seems like this Fiona arc is already over, much like how quickly the treasure arc ended. At the current rate of four episodes per arc, I’ve noticed that the series doesn’t really feel rushed story-wise (i.e. nothing feels out of place from a lack of coverage), but it does feel really quick in the sense that the pacing never settles down. In other words, I never seem to get a chance to “absorb” what’s being presented.

In this particular episode alone, they revealed that Owen was the culprit, had a somewhat suspenseful incident following that revelation, then resolved everything with his death. All in one episode. I have to say this is quite a drastic change from say, Naruto‘s pacing, which sometimes feels like it’s going a scene an episode. In Allison & Lillia’s case, I can now say that the series as a whole would’ve been better off if they didn’t try to cram both the Allison and Lillia stories all in two seasons. With more time to spare, they could’ve afforded to tease us with cliffhangers such as Owen being revealed as a culprit.

In the next episode, it looks like we’ve switched from planes to trains, with Fiona and Benedict still tagging along. (Doesn’t she have a kingdom to help govern now? o_O) With that said, I’m not sure if the time frame has lapsed or if Benedict is simply wearing a disguise. Also, I found out that episode twelve’s title makes reference to Lillia, so it seems like the second half of the series is going to begin fairly soon.

 

Cast:
– Allison (アリソン) / Mizuki Nana (水樹 奈々)
– Wil (ヴィル) / Kumai Motoko (くまい まとこ)
– Benedict (ベネディクト) / Yamadera Kouichi (山寺 宏一)
– Fiona/Francesca (フィオナ／フランチェスカ) / Noto Mamiko (能登 麻美子)
– Owen Nicht (オーエン・ニヒトー) / Hayami Shou (速水 奨)
– Police Inspector Warren (ワレン警部) / Utsumi Kenji (内海 賢二)
– Audience (聴衆) / Konno Jun (金野 潤)
– Audience (聴衆) / Matsuo Daisuke (松尾 大亮)
– Audience (聴衆) / Azuma Masataka (我妻 正崇)
– Audience (聴衆) / Oomura Kana (大村 歌奈)
– Audience (聴衆) / Teratani Mika (寺谷 美香)