With this episode, I guess that we’ve reached the second novel of the original “Allison”-series. It does worry me a bit that the creators are trying to stuff 10 volumes of light-novel material into just twenty-six episodes (For the sake of comparison: Soul Eater with its 11 volumes has 52 episodes to work with, and Saiunkoku spent 78 episodes for 12 of them). Apparently, there are going to be six story-arcs in this series, with the latter ones taking up two volumes. This means that each arc will be about four or five episodes long.
While the chance for a rushed story is quite big, this short format does keep the story fresh. I’m really wondering whether the director will be able to pull it off. I think the biggest reason for this short series-length is the budget, which you can also see in the animation, which has always been not that special for this series. In any case, at least the director has already shown that he’s very good at characterizations, which should be more than enough to keep me interested.
In this arc, it’s not likely that Allison and Will will board some kind of airplane, and the story is actually quite similar to a random arc of Kino no Tabi: Allison and Will end up in a hostile town, in the middle of winter. This town seems to be very afraid of outsiders (especially if they come in a military car). In the meantime, Benedict follows them, because he’s worried that Allison and Will might have run into trouble due to an unexpected blizzard, after which he meets the mysterious girl we see in the ED. Also, throughout the episode, we can see Allison trying to find courage to confess to Will. She’ll probably propose properly around the end of this arc.
Light novels are quite different from mangas, actually, and some light novels are different from OTHER light novels.
Saiunkoku Monogatari are light novels full of dialogue, and if 12 of them were used to make 78 episodes, it would mean 78/12 = 6 1/2 episodes for a volume. Spice and Wolf, for example, adapted two of them in 13 episodes. Sounds right to me.
Soul Eater is a manga, 11 volumes can EASILY be used to make a 51-episodes series. Five episodes per volume sounds right to me for this kind of series.
And as for Allison & Lillia, yes, there are 10 light novels, but I don’t know crap about their pacing or descriptive deepness, so it can be used to make a 26-episodes series OR a 52-episodes series, with a hypothetically second season.
You don’t know, maybe the author spent pages describing the universe for the sake of the reader’s amazement, and these descriptions were simply designed in the anime. A picture is worth 1000 words…
All of this to say : don’t worry about such details and enjoy the show, there’s too many things to take in consideration in order to have a proper discussion about the subject.
The first novel was definitely streamlined; they had to cut a lot of smaller details or scenes and focus on the plot. I don’t think they did a great job with this, cutting too many of the best bits.
I’d also point out that the characterization is the work of the novel author, Keiichi Sigsawa, and the director is doing a fairly average job of presenting it. It isn’t his biggest weakness, but he definitely doesn’t seem to have much grasp of how to make a story feel properly epic.