Allison & Lillia – 18

「ご褒美のキス」 (Gohoubi no Kisu)
“Reward Kiss”

Episode at a Glance:
With the plane sinking, all the children easily swim to shore, while Treize struggles his way towards land after being tossed overboard by Lillia. After Treize nearly drowns, Lillia resuscitates him as per Carlo’s suggestion; however, Treize has no recollection of it happening upon waking up. When Treize dries his clothes, Lillia notices a pendant around his neck which she figures is from Ikstova. After she asks him where she can buy one, Treize offers to give it to her as a present one day, which she’s thrilled about, so he asks her to remember this promise well. While the children are engrossed by Allison’s flying in the sky, Lillia compliments Treize on saving everyone, which he feels is the first time she’s said that to him.

Help later arrives in the form of the Roxche army, who provide food and transportation back to the orphanage, and inform Lillia and Treize and Mateo is alright. Carlo then asks to have a man-to-man talk with Treize, who has already realized that she’s a girl named Carla. Seeing as Treize already figured out her secret, Carla gets him to keep it a secret from Lillia so that she can surprise her in the future with long hair. While promising to do so, Treize decides to reveal that he’s a prince in return, who has something very important he needs to accomplish before he turns twenty (i.e. marry Lillia).

Elsewhere, Travas thanks Allison for a job well done, and introduces her to Graz Axentine, or Axe for short, who graduated as a top student from Allison’s father’s school. (I wonder if there’s relation to Captain Graz from episodes two to four.) Seeing how cute Axe is, Allison strongly suggests that Travas hasn’t been cheating on her, making him realize how scary she can be. At a hotel, Treize asks Lillia about that reward kiss she promised him, but she tells him it’s no longer necessary.

Travas later meets with Treize and reveals that Morso was actually behind the whole incident. As it turns out, he was originally tasked with gathering and educating orphans thirty years ago as part of a secret Sou Beil mission. The purpose was to sell these children to rich members of Roxche and gather information for the war; however, since the war had ended ten years ago, Morso was abandoned and has since been acting on his own accord. Hearing this, Treize realizes that Travas and his Secret Intelligence Bureau would’ve let the plane crash and children die in order to have evidence against Morso if Lillia and him weren’t onboard, but thanks him for saving everyone.

Over a meal with Lillia, Treize tells her that he plans to return to Ikstova for now, and decides not to tarnish her memory of Morso, who has already been killed. He also invites her and Allison to Ikstova, which she takes him up on. On the train ride home, Jan and Ema inconspiculously bump into Lillia again and ask her if that guy he was traveling with is her type, so Lillia explains that she couldn’t really stomach how he could do almost anything, but finds it cute how there are things that even he can’t do. Back in Ikstova, Treize visits a bookstore and tries to buy a book on swimming.

 

Next Episode:
「冬のイクストーヴァ」 (Fuyu no Ikusutoova)
“Winter Ikstova”

Impressions:
For a reason I have yet to determine, there was no episode last week, so I wasn’t putting this post off or anything. In fact, I was actually a bit disappointed when this episode didn’t show up last Thursday, because I was looking forward to watching Treize drown and receive his reward kiss in the form of CPR.

Aside from that, I didn’t really suspect Carlo to be a girl, but the revelation didn’t affect the overall story in any profound way, so I somewhat question its purpose. If anything, it’s just another secret that Lillia is left out of the loop of. The bigger revelation though was that Morso was behind the whole incident. While I suspected that there was more to him than appreared, I don’t think anyone really could’ve foreseen that he was gathering and raising orphans with the intention of selling them to Roxche as either house workers or slaves. I can’t really imagine any good connotations associated with trading humans though, so I’m somewhat inclined towards the latter. In short though, it was an elaborate scheme that was explained entirely in the second half of this episode, which seems to be Allison & Lillia’s customary way of wrapping up an arc. On that note, this arc’s conspiracy seems needlessly deep, but it does bring everything that happened earlier into a slightly different perspective when I think about it, so it’s a welcomed unfolding of events.

Next week, it looks like we’re having a nice change of scenary with everyone heading to Ikstova, which should be interesting as we’ll probably see more Allison, Benedict, and Fiona. It’s been a while since the “Allison & Wil” portion of the series concluded, so I enjoy seeing characters from that half and how they’ve changed and haven’t changed. Hopefully, this next arc involves them just like this past arc did.

 

Cast:
– Lillia (リリア) / Mizuki Nana (水樹 奈々)
– Trieze (トレイズ) / Yoshino Hiroyuki (吉野 裕行)
– Allison (アリソン) / Kuwashima Houko (桑島 法子)
– Travas (トラヴァス) / Morikawa Toshiyuki (森川 智之)
– Axe (アックス) / Toyoguchi Megumi (豊口 めぐみ)
– Carlo (カルロ) / Fukuen Misato (福圓 美里)
– Ema (エマ) / Satou Ai (さとう あい)
– Jan (ジャン) / Konno Jun (金野 潤)
– Bookstore employee (書店店員) / Nakanishi Naoya (中西 尚也)
– Children (子供達) / Shimeno Junko (〆野 潤子)
– Children (子供達) / Nishi Yuuko (西 優子)