And this episode is exactly why I fell in love with the first season! This episode features Watanuki and Yuuko, exploring a certain concept again, just like many episodes in the first season did. Now that I’m watching this series raw, I have even more respect to the fansubbers of this series. Not only do they have to translate, they also have to find out the different jargon that’s used to denote all the different spirits. It took myself quite a while that “Zasshiki Warashi” basically means “Vestal Sprite”.

There aren’t many series that take an in-depth look at their own themes, but the ones that do nearly always turn into real gems. Jigoku Shoujo, Ghost Hound, Mushishi, just to name a few. At first sight, the episodic format of Jigoku Shoujo, Mushishi and xxxHolic might seem distracting, but it’s much easier this way to explore your theme from different angles, rather than through one continuous storyline. That’s also another reason why Ghost Hound deserves so much credit with its looks at psychology.

This episode is about dreams, and about transferring the dreams of others to yourself. In this way, the creators also manage to slip in a bit of foreshadowing about Himawari’s upcoming story-arc (I have no idea what’s up with her, but the manga-readers seem to love her background). There must be at least something wrong with her, if she’s dreaming of giant one-eyed spirits that swallow her. We also manage to see for the first time Domeki’s grandfather, who reveals something interesting about Domeki as a child: he used to dress in girly kimonos. I can’t wait for the next episode to see Domeki’s reaction when he finds out, and even more to Watanuki’s reaction to Domeki’s reaction.

Okay, this episode was fair enough. It did a good job in pointing out the inexperience of the two main leads. I don’t like how easily Alto managed to learn to perfectly control his craft, but at least he still doesn’t understand tactics yet. What also surprised me was that Ranka didn’t end up winning the miss Macross Frontier-contest. At that point, things seemed so obvious that I thought that the creators were just trying to give her an important role in a quick way, but thank god I was wrong, and the creators turn out to be a bit more subtle than that. After all, it’s probably the first time she sang in front of such a huge audience, she felt out of place, she was full of nerves. It would have been a very glaring plot-hole if she did end up winning that contest.

This episode also introduces a bunch of new characters, among which a big-boobed giant with bright blue hair who can turn into a little girl whenever she’s not piloting. She offers another hint as to why Ranka’s special: her brother rescued her ten years ago from god knows where, so who knows what happened in her past? At the same time, this giant, when she’s in little-girl form also has bright hair that has a mind of its own and it’s just as brightly coloured. They could be of the same “race”.

We also learn that Saotome’s father is some kind of famous person, though they seem to hate each other. No sign of his mother yet, if I’m not mistaken. This episode also introduces a human factor in the enemies, as this time, a manned mecha comes to attack Macross Frontier. One thing I hope for this series is that it’ll provide enough attention to these “bad guys”, and doesn’t focus too much of its screen time on Ranka, Alto and Sheryl. I’ve seen many series that screwed up with their villains, simply because these people weren’t fleshed out enough. A damn shame.

In other news, the animation was different from usual. It seemed much messier than the previous three episodes. I like this kind of animation; it makes the characters feel alive, rather than a bunch of drawings in a series that just uses minimal animation.

This was definitely the best episode of Allison to Lillia yet. I’m really surprised and impressed by it: I thought that the entire Allison-arc would revolve around the war and the search for the treasure, and yet both storylines get resolved in just one episode. It really makes me wonder what the rest of this series will be about.

I think it’s clear by now that the plot-twists in this series take a lot of liberty, as symbolized by Allison’s whimsical nature. In this episode, Benedict also changes sides really easily, and the war is over before you know it. There’s not even a scene where the important people see the treasure; it just ends and we can only guess the real reason behind it. But I think that that’s one of the charms of this series, and it manages to keep its combination between a light-hearted mood and serious themes this way. I’ve been a rather large advocate of realism lately, but this series shows that you can be good even without a huge focus at realism.

Also, that airplane-fight in the first half of the episode was very impressive. It’s been a while since I watched a fight in mid-air that didn’t involve mecha. The music also showed some of its best sides so far in this episode. Overall, if these four episodes gave away a small taste of what’s left to come in this series, then I’m in!